Punk rock history has come full circle

When I was in 7th grade I first discovered PUNK ROCK. The Sex Pistols and 999 were the first two punk bands I heard and I was instantly hooked on this new kind of music. It was everything I was looking for, and on top of that, it was as different from what everyone else was into (except for a very small handful of kids that you could count up on one hand who would end up being friends of mine) as I felt I was different from those people. I especially couldn’t get enough of the Sex Pistols. I wore out my first copy of The Great Rock n Roll Swindle as well as Never Mind the Bollocks. I was a little too young to have been able to see them when they were still together, they had been broken up for about 4-5 years before I ever heard them for the first time. I always wondered what it would have been like and wished I could have seen them. Back in the mid 90s sometime, they actually did a reunion tour and I was excited to finally get my chance to see them. The forces of evil (ie: part of the MXV curse) conspired against me and I got sick and ended up in the hospital. I was released just a day or two before the show and was way too sick still to be able to attend and sadly had to give away my ticket to a friend. I was crushed. A week after the show, I caught a webcast of a show from that tour, but it just wasn’t the same. I thought there went my only chance to see a band that ended up totally changing my life. Now they are doing it again and I have a ticket, I am not sick, and I’m going to see them tonite! I am pretty excited about it. The assklowns are coming down – two of which are from that small group of kids I met way back in jr high who liked punk rock – and we are going to Potbellys (the official punk rock meal) and then off to the show. Some people scoffed at the fact that they are “old men” and the ticket price was 47 dollars. I don’t care what they think, if Ric Flair in his 50s can still go in the ring and outperform people 20 years younger than him, I’m sure these old punks can still kick ass. 47 dollars is a small price to pay for something that meant so much to me and gave me a place I could belong growing up amongst a bunch of people I didn’t fit in with or even thought the same way as. If it wasn’t for punk rock, who knows what I would have ended up as, and I can damn sure tell you my teenage years would have been far more miserable.

I wish I could be taking some pictures of the show tonite, but the venue is not very condusive for such activities. If yr in the city tonite looking for something to do, by all means go to the show and see what you may have been missing, and join me in a serum or two in honor of a band that changed the life of me, and I’m sure countless others.