Book Review: My First Time - A Collection of First Punk Show Stories, Edited by Chris Duncan

"It wasn't a career move to be in a punk band then."
--Joey Queer

Chris Duncan has edited this collection of stories about first time experiences at a punk show. Most of these narratives take place between 1984 and 1987 and document that pre-internet time of discovery. The authors include people from the U.S. to the U.K.; straight edge people to drug-frenzied partiers; male, female, and queer; musicians, authors and visual artists. Each writer speaks of discontent in their daily high school or college lives, and nervousness preceding their first show. There is even a story by an at-the-time 40-year-old mother of a band member who worked as a bouncer at her first show!

My First Time: A Collection of First Punk Show Stories is a great trip down memory lane if you lived it and a useful primary source document if you are simply interested in the history of the era from another kind of participatory viewpoint or a more cultural perspective.

Punk shows gave a sense of belonging to us misfits, a place where the alienated could fit in. We went to a show because someone told us about the band, or maybe we had a mix tape with a song or two from the band on it, or we read about the band in one of the hundreds of zines listed in Factsheet Five or Maximum Rock & Roll (called MR&R in the book, of course; I guess you just have to be cool enough to know that). Or maybe you were lucky and lived in a large enough city with a cool enough record store or college radio station. Remember those 4 a.m. punk shows?

No Myspace. No Youtube videos.

Notable stories are those of the Queers' Joey Queer of the Boston scene. His entry, "I used to do acid," contains war stories of bands and booze and drugs. Also, Jillian Lauren's "Jackie Was a Punk" documents the memory of this woman's first punk friend and how punk saved her life: "That summer I learned that other people felt as angry and alientated as I did, but they weren't killing themselves, as I often contemplated. Instead they were making music."

Article Author: gette

Georgette Nicolaides is a writer, musician, and visual artist. She plays noisy violin in the ambient/psychedelic project Atlantic Drone and is currently reading about eight different books. &#@%$ ADD! …

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