Halloween 1975 and the Birth of PUNK
And news about PUNK #23 & #24
Forty-nine years ago, I rented a storefront on Tenth Avenue and 30th Street that soon became “The PUNK Dump.” This was where we launched PUNK Magazine a few weeks later. Here’s the back story:
At the time I was living in Brooklyn with a roommate (who was a Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers fan: UGH!) while working for Will Eisner as an apprentice. It was a miserable existence. When Eisner closed his office for the summer, I suddenly I had no way to pay the rent. Based on a tip from Eddie McNeil, I ended up spending most of the summer of 1975 working for Ged Dunn, Jr. in our hometown (Cheshire, Connecticut), painting houses. (I knew both of them from running my improvisational comedy group, The Apocalypse Players, in 1971-72.) Ged had an apartment in the center of town so I got free room and board (along with a half-dozen other workers: that was a crowded living room!). I got paid minimum wage on top of it, so it was a good deal at the time.
Ged was also supporting a short comedy film directed by Eddie McNeil: The Unthinkables. Eddie had access to a vintage automobile and wrote a story about deranged gangsters stealing toilet paper and using the vintage car to make their getaways. We shot scenes for it over the summer when we weren’t busy painting houses. The three of us got along great back then, especially after I brought The Dictators Go Girl Crazy, played it for Ged and Eddie, and explained that there was a new rock scene happening at a sleazy, downtown bar on the Bowery: CBGB’s! I had seen the Ramones @ CBGB that summer and was convinced that the punk rock scene was going to be (in the words of the Dictator’s song) “The Next Big Thing.” Ged and Eddie both seemed intrigued, but they might have been a bit doubtful that I knew what I was talking about since Ged was a Springsteen fan and Eddie hated rock music (except for early Beatles and Chuck Berry). But I bought Patti Smith’s DIY 45 rpm single “Piss Factory,” saw Television and Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell open for the New York Dolls, had records by Iggy and the Stooges, the MC5, the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls etc. I saw the writing on the wall.
After the summer of 1975 ended, Ged got bored with college. He was attending Transylvania University in Kentucky at the time, decided to drop out and start up small businesses with Eddie and I in New York City. Eddie and Ged were going to start an educational film company while Ged and I were going to launch a magazine together. Ged had $5,000 for start-up costs (around $30,000 adjusted for inflation in today’s value). What could go wrong?
After Ged made his decision I spent most of October 1975 looking for an office space that we could work and live in. I couldn’t find anything. My Grateful Dead roommate was freaking out on me, since I had to move out by Halloween or else. He had a new roommate lined up, and there wasn’t room for both of us.
Finally, just before Halloween, I found the former headquarters of A&A Trucking office on 10th Avenue and 30th Street through an advertisement in The Village Voice. The space still had a few desks, file cabinets and chairs left behind and it was big: around 1,200 square feet. No shower, not even a bath tub, but lots of space. Considering the rent was only $195 a month (approx. $1,000 today), and that we could all live there? It was a bargain.
Ged refused to put up the rent money, so Eddie McNeil and I had to pool our resources. I had a few hundred dollars from my freelance artwork while Eddie was able to scam someone and somehow the two of us able to pay the first month’s rent and the security deposit. With the few leftover dollars we bought a few gallons of cheap wine and threw a housewarming party on Halloween night! Only a few people showed up but it was a fun bunch (including Hal Drellich, who later became the first official PUNK Magazine Art Director) and Rose Lasagne (a sculpture student from the School of Visual Arts who contributed to a few issues). We played records, got drunk and had a great time!
Eddie and I had to trust that Ged would actually show up and start doing business with us, but a few days later, with all of our money spent on the Halloween party? Those were some dark days… We had no money and no food… Luckily, Ged eventually showed up and we were able to get drunk and eat food again!
I have a lot of Halloween memories, some good, some bad. It’s often a day/night when strange things happen. So I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween this year! (Election Day looks much scarier day this time around!)
HOW TO BUY PUNK Magazine #23 (LINK):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/296722610468
The new issue of PUNK seems to be going over well, so I am planning another event to mark the official 49th anniversary of PUNK in early January, hopefully with a new issue and a rematch of the rain-shortened “Battle of the Bands.” We are looking for venues now for “The Play-Offs,” which will narrow it down to a winner or perhaps a “Showdown” event between the two best bands. These bands are all so good that it’s difficult to choose a winner!
I’m hoping to make this an annual event. (I say “we” because lately I’ve gathered a small team of people who are intent on making everything happen! I’ll be introducing them soon.) I won’t be doing another “Battle of the Bands” outdoors again: Too much can go wrong. But maybe I can stage a two-day festival of punk rock bands at Tompkins Square Park this summer.
Meanwhile I will be devoting the next year or two to promote the 50th Anniversary of PUNK: “The music movement that no one asked for, wanted nor respected.”
Punk rock been around now for more than 50 years, despite more negative press and scorn from corporate media than any other art form. Rock And Roll music in the 1950s faced the same derision in the early 1950s, but overcame it years later after The Beatles adopted it and rock ‘n’ roll became popular. People made fun of hippies and psychedelic rock for years, but the music rapidly took over the mainstream after Woodstock. Punk rock? We are still ignored by the mainstream. For instance, there’s no Grammy award for the “Best Punk Rock Album.” Meanwhile the Grammys gave an award to the “Best Polka Album” until 2009. They don’t give awards for polka music anymore, but there are dozens of award categories for Opera, Gospel, Folk, Bluegrass, Contemporary Blues, Traditional Blues, Regional Roots, even Chamber music, “immersive audio,” “American Roots” and all kinds of categories that are not relevant to contemporary music.
Punk rock deserves to be at the table. I think it is a disgrace that 49 years after punk rock was born that the music establishment continues to ignore the contributions that punk rock has made to American culture. FUCK THE GRAMMYS!
On the other hand, this why punk rock is still a legitimate outsider culture. Maybe we don’t want recognition from The Grammys. But I name this as an example of how The System screws punk rock.
(Almost) no one is getting rich from punk rock. (More on the soon, I hope, the millionaires who make millions from punk rock and refuse to share the wealth need to be called out!) It’s still a fringe movement. Maybe it’s time to change this shit.
Please leave your comments below on my personal thoughts. Should punk culture remain an underground and therefore ignored culture? Should we stay pure and underground? Would a Grammy Award for “Best Punk Rock Album” be a bad thing?
I want to know what people think.
In my humble opinion punk rock has withstood the test of time and deserves to get some respect from the mass media and the mainstream that has ignored and suppressed it since PUNK Magazine was published in early 1976. It was much worse than most people know, so I am reposting the news item from when Jimmy Carter’s administration launched the “War Against Punk Rock” in 1977:
I am hoping to find an independent journalist who can investigate the Jimmy Carter “War on Punk Rock,” and trying to get a budget for a deep dive. So if there are any investigative journalists out there, please contact me.
CHECK OUT THE DESTROY ART STORE FOR PUNK MERCH AND MORE:
Wow I didn’t know the office was the size of my house, haha!!
Grammys are the worst and certainly rigged like all those awards now.
I think the whole appeal of punk is that you can just be yourself. The acknowledgement of gross, embarrassing aspects of life - That would be lost if the movement became popular. Because mainstreaming things entails making them squeaky clean. Punk isn't for everyone, and that's the caveat that makes it so special, yet destined to be "underground". Although, at the same time, culturally, its far reaches have been taken for granted.