crunchysteve

I play guitar as a main instrument. In fact, I'm the kind of guitarist who moved to bass guitar so I could get gigs. Rock steady, reliable, hardworking, avoidant when it comes to personal practice. A slacker. Then I discovered punk. In conservative, rural Northen Tasmania in the 80s.

Heavy Metal was acceptable to my peers. Prog was preferred by my smarter ones, but everything I liked was "wrong" and I was already bullied, although, I was also standing up to them. Because Punk.

British punk was political and I was the kid of trade unionists, and the grandson of a late trade unionist. So, it was The Damned and The Exploited for me. Even the metal I hid behind we bands like Iron Maiden, bands that were carefully willing to be on a bill with punks and shared punk politics, to an extent. The first like minded bandmates I ever met were in grades 11 and 12, senior secondary school because by then, the jocks had all left school and got jobs. The nerds had their revenge easily when Australia was still an egalitarian country. All 3 years of it, and for a little bit after "The Dismissal" a literal coup d'etat. Legalistic, using the courts to overthrow an elected government. Australia became more Thatcherite than Thatcher's or Blair's Britain and more toady to the US than we had even been in the Vietnam era in the 60s, where we drew a lottery based on young men's twenty first birthday and those whose names came out were sent to South Vietnam to be killed by communists to keep America happy with us. Punk had to be my politics!

From my earliest memories of that war on the TV news, to 1972, I was terrified of growing up to 21. I know now, too, that I was autistic, and trauma from recurring war nightmares made me very flappy, so short fast loud guitar rock was cathartic - to listen to, to play. Science fiction about rebellion and fighting for freedom was comforting and it was the Star Wars era. Then punk friends came out of the closet an grade 11, a new campus and most of the jocks had fucked off. Van Halen fans filled the power vacuum, but we could hold our own against them. We were louder, more distorted. I bought more replacement speakers than I bought guitar strings.

Today, there's punk artists in most genres and the punk genres almost outnumber all the other genres combined. But we still hide in the shadows, because today, the jocks are in Parliament and we punks, because of our politics are "union thugs", "dirty greenies" and "terrorists." I'm proud to have been all three. (The latter, not really, but I was called a terrorist in the media because of some risky culture jamming I did in the nineties, but I was never caught for it. Ironically, tye media was my day job, punk rock made me into an audio professional.)

to this day, if the genre has punk in the title (loving dance punk these days), the artist is hard edged and political hard left or the fans are my people, lefty, artsy, union/green, activist (active or, like me, were activist, it's my music. Grow old, never grow up. Cultivate allies to crush the people's enemies. DIY music is, by its very nature better and truer art than mainstream label shit. Except Bruce Springsteen. That guy managed to always stay ahead of his label's damage control people and became bigger and bigger. Midnight Oil get credit from me, too. They were a nightmare for the label - and for recognising the people my people stole this land from - playing "Beds Are Burning" at the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony - absolute heroes!

Oh, one more thing. Google Gogol Bordello. That's where the heart of punk is these days. Eastern and Northen Europe, standing cheerfully angry, outside EBU's fake "apolotical" tv pop festival - the "eurotrash" movement has won!