My Awkward Association with Punk Rock Part 2

My punk rock journey began in part 1.

Solitary Refinement

I spent my freshman year at a small, conservative school not too far away from the state penitentiary. It wasn’t great. I was perhaps the weirdest kid on campus and I really wasn’t that outwardly strange. Finding like minded individuals was nearly impossible and finding anyone to start a band was a pipe dream.

My roommate moved to another dorm not long into the year because he said our dorm was too loud. He wasn’t wrong. We did like to party, but it was only a lot in the context of that school. Most of the time, I kept to myself. My Resident Advisor intentionally left my room off the list for vacancies, which meant I got to live alone the entire year.

I submerged myself into those mail order record catalogs. If I wasn’t in class, I was listening to music or playing guitar (or writing). The deeper I went into myself, the more obvious it was that I was in the wrong place.

I transferred to Ohio University, a much larger state school that had bars and clubs and people making music.

The Glory Days

I spent five years at Ohio University, three finishing my undergrad, two in grad school, and during that time I became a bizarrely active member of the “scene.”  I put that in quotes because I didn’t think such a thing existed, but often found myself in situations where I was planning shows that my band wasn’t even playing in.  The younger kids were really into creating a community, which was great, but I’ve always been a misanthrope, so going out of my way to organize social functions was very strange.

There weren’t a lot of “indie” rock bands at OU back then, and by default my first band, Middle Kittanning, became this strange kind of figure head.  A lot of that probably stemmed from the fact that we had a PA that other bands could borrow.  It also probably stemmed from my aforementioned involvement in the “scene,” as it were.  As if to firmly cement myself as part of this strange sub-culture, I got a job at a local record store.  Now I was that guy in that band who also worked at the music store.  I was defined by all of this.

I realize all of that sounds pretty arrogant and I don’t mean it to be.  We’re talking about a couple of dozen people in this so-called “scene,” at least at this point (it seemed to get larger as the years went on).  And Middle Kittanning really only filled a void left by the graduation of a band called Mr. Hand, who were a stark contrast to a lot of the garage rock that was going on at the time.  I was nothing special.  I’m just trying to make it clear at how completely submerged in this I was.

The kicker came in grad school when I moved into a house with other like minded individuals.  We had a basement full of musical equipment.  We were all in bands of one kind or another, if not multiple bands.  We had shows in our basement which bled out into parties in our house.  We became that house.  Every town has one of those houses, where the loud angry bands play through shitty PA systems and boys with patches and girls with pixie hair get drunk and awkwardly try to make out with each other.  We were that house.

The infamous 18 Oak St.

I remember a really nice kid from Memphis, new to OU, setting up a meeting with myself and another member of the house, to discuss the upcoming punk rock events.  I’d suddenly been roped on to the underground social committee.  A band once showed up at our house to play a show, but no one had told us (or anyone else).  They were on tour, so they just hung out.

Eventually, we even had recording equipment in our basement and a audio production major who could use it all (two, really).  Records were now being recorded there by bands from other towns.  It sounds arrogant to say that the house was a hub of some kind, but it really was.  I don’t remember there being a house like ours in the years previous.

A funny thing happened while my head was buried in all these things at OU: the music scene in my hometown of Kent, Ohio become a big deal.  Okay, that’s relative, but it seemed like every punk rocker’s eyes would light up when they learned where I was from.

I mention this because it became important when I finally left the nest, graduated from OU, and moved to Atlanta.

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