punk rock confidenial: follow up. good things.

NOTE #1: immediately after posting "punk rock confidential" i DID do something proactive, and i think the solution will be seen as a good thing...

so i agonized over that "punk rock confidential" post. i seriously wrote - and rewrote - read it out loud, over, and over...

posted it on the myspace blog. took it down. there's no room for that shit. just naysayin' to nay say. what i'm gonna do now is tell the good things. the hopeful, idealist side of me cannot breathe easy knowing that i've only put "bad words" into the air.

i gotta come clean.

there's more than a little bit that is amazing about this fuckin' scene. always has been.

in real-life, this is where i'd say: don't get me started - whew! thank god it's not REAL life. just blogging.

o.k. so, since you're here (or you're not...i mean, it's a tiny blog in a world full of more interesting shit...maybe i should learn to use flash-html?) i'm gonna talk for a minute. about the good things. past, present, future.

diggin' up bones:

since the dawn of minot's crazy little music scene. before the liberty - back to a garage on 5th street - i wasn't there, so this is hearsay - Nobodies Children played a show. for friends, i'm told. and a few kids were there.

punk rock in minot had begun.

here we are: 15-20 years later? i can't be sure. i told you, it's hearsay. there have been multiple venues since then. cheese factories, golds, sweethearts, cores, mc3s, liberties, that one places, amps, red carpets, mcgruffs, odd house parties, odd locales (public library - msu - fairgrounds) - and the occasional eatery show (bellisi-fuck-offs, and bagel stops) -

punk wasn't ALWAYS present, but it was - if you looked hard enough - generally the catalyst...the punks have been bringing people together around here (even at that wanna-be-fascist joint over by the college...they served coffee?) for a LONG damn time.

now - the question - was it the acts or, the community - that made minot the top notch spot in the dakotas? i mean it - top notch. look around: where's the other venue? how long have we consecutively had venues (barring strangely unsettled periods that lasted under six-months at a time?) YEARS is the answer. grand forks had kafe kosmos...that place was rad. for the whole year it existed. bismarck had the midtowner pretty regular - but that was just a hall they rented. they had the screaming bean - but that was the same story.

minot has maintained an all-ages atmosphere for a decade or more.

whoah!

and the kids came out...and bought merch...a national reputation would follow. we don't have a fuckin' gilman street, a roboto project, and we can barely sing the ABC's - we're not adding NO RIO any time soon...but we're lucky enough to have had lots of REALLY great acts: from bikini kill, to link 80, smackin isaiah - to a wilhelm scream...defiance ohio, josh plogue - shit! - the lords of lightspeed - the ergs! - these things have to do with the dedication of punk rock emissaries, kids who booked 'em - but that doesn't mean shit if kids didn't dance so that great band "X" would tell great band "Y" that they should come here. know what i mean?

so, for the "past" portion, let me say: we've got years of dedication put into this shit. the things the first kid did influenced the second kid and so on - i'm still doing things based on models started over a decade ago - do i do new shit? of course! and kids down the line will do new shit too...

and there will ALWAYS be that kid down the line around here - if any of these past years mean "precedent..."

fast forward. bump ahead. meld. it's now the present...

we've got kids who were a part of those formative years coming back. some of this shit is getting archived now. we're - at a basic level - giving props to minot's punk past - rich, varied, messy - brutal. the weak shit and the awesome shit. it's all a part of the fabric.

we're retaining kids in a way that we've never been able to pull off before. audiences are bigger. stranger concepts are taking hold. different ideas are coming to the table. skill-sets are being developed - and shared...

the retention is the most fascinating part: older kids are coming back, and shows regularly have a good amount of twenty-somethings in attendance. we're young adults; we're taken more seriously. now we can get shit going. i talked two different store owners (both my bosses - and hell - sue really sort of suggested it...) into having acoustic artists play in their shop - FOR MONEY! this is a big deal.

it's all ages. and we're getting paid.

no, money doesn't always matter - but guitar strings cost money. shit - make that guitar pay for itself!

that's just me. just what i can do. other kids do other cool shit. it's easier now to do a lot of things. we know where to snag free copies for your zine - we can help you silkscreen a t-shirt - we know the best bars - and a good chunk of us fuckin ride a bike.

how's that for punk growing up?

whoah! it's big. don't take it for granted: things have NOT always been this way.

so right now we've got great powers, and with them comes - GREAT RESPONSIBILITY...

spiderman!

so, for the future - we need to get those kids out there to come on in...we need more music. we need that pride that comes from an all local show. we need to know one another's names - as this thing grows - we SHOULD be able to grow with it.

i think we can.

MORE NOTES:

#1 - i REALLY don't give a shit which out of town act played here. it IS, however, a source of pride - and should be - i suppose. that's why i listed all those kick ass bands. there were/are more than a few amazing artists here that are just as good. it's about exposure - really. aerosmith started in a garage. right? i dunno...

#2 - which leads me to my next point about what's awesome now - tours! when i was a young pup not that many of the bands around here were touring...now: diabolic octopus, potential caskets, crime rate in iowa, the crooked gospel, jazmine wolff, last great summer, & father, son, & holy smokes! are all slated to be touring...what?!?! that's awesome for minot. we're gonna be gettin' repped and doin' show trades like mad!

#3 - the audiences aren't ACTUALLY bigger than they were before...not in attendee head count...they're pretty even with the norm. the "bigger" i was talking about was VARIETY. so many different people...so many different kinds (ever heard that No Doubt song? ha!) now we have acoustic performers, poets (what up lou!), crazies, deadheads...

it's nice.