The Day My Punk Died

I was in the Studio at Webster Hall last week. If you’ve never been to the basement of one of Manhattan’s more prominent music venues,it’s probably because you’re making a conscious effort towards being elsewhere.

The barely advertised, 300 capacity space is an embodiment of the punk ideal. That is to say the 300 person limit is more a challenge to see how many people can actually fit inside, and there’s no barricade between the small stage and the audience. You can imagine (or may have experienced for yourself) the clumsy stage-diving and crowd-surfing that has all but become a rite of passage into the club-within-a-club.

I’m no stranger to this kind of show going behavior,and it was something I always looked forward to when I’d see a band.

I found myself standing amidst the faux anarchic chaos as I usually do during these kinds of concerts, but not in my usual enjoyment. In the middle of a crowd raising hell I was static and contemplative, wondering why in the world I thought this was so cool for so many pivotal years in my life. I thought of all the friends-turned-enemies I had made at these shows, the memories of failed relationships, and the unnecessary aggression that stands as a cornerstone of punk culture. There was such an aura of negativity in the room permeating my body that it physically sickened me.

So I decided to leave the Studio at Webster Hall, and with it all the ties I had to this music and everything it stood for. And while that sounds completely disheartening, it was enlightening.

I figured Citizen and Polar Bear Club would still have enough finger-pointing stage divers to deem the show a good one regardless of my presence. As I ascended the stairs to street level, I looked up for a split second at the marquee outside the venue. Listed to play Webster’s other, larger room that night was Poliça, a band I knew of but had never listened to. In my mind I spontaneously gained entry to the show and experienced something so life-affirming it would render me a different person for the rest of my life.

Since my life is unfortunately not a deliciously cliche-ridden Hollywood blockbuster, that didn’t happen. But, I still felt that my actions had caused a significant change in me. For the first time in my life I was one of the people consciously avoiding the negativity, instead of reveling in it.Punk may not be dead, but the punk in me had certainly died.