For more than a decade, I’ve identified with and invested myself in punk music and subculture.\u00c2\u00a0 As I get older, I struggle with feeling like punk as I know it can be a little too much like Project Runway, “one day you’re in, the next day you’re out”.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but I do feel like my standards of what makes an ideal show have changed since I first got into punk.\u00c2\u00a0 If I can trust my memory, I think what made for a good show as a teenager was feeling like shows were a space made by and made for youth (without being mediated by adult regulation or supervision) and feeling part of a group of people who I knew and who could identify as separate from the dominant youth culture of my community. \u00c2\u00a0 The absence of violent dancing wasn’t a huge part of my standard for a good show, nor was equitable gender dynamics.\u00c2\u00a0 Both are things that I notice and agonize over now.\u00c2\u00a0 These days, I think a lot about who is encouraged to be in and who, by neglect is pushed out of punk subculture.<\/p>\n
What is hard to reconcile is identifying with a subculture that rejects adult authority and now feeling like some of the people I most respect are parents or teachers.\u00c2\u00a0 It was never this cut and dry, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 My first introduction to a diferent way of making and experiencing music, one that was exciting then and remains endearing now, was at the hands of two teachers at my high school, Mr. Nagle and Mr. Barnes.\u00c2\u00a0 They formed the Alternative Music Club\u00c2\u00a0 and through this club helped students set up shows featuring bands from my school, nearby schools, and friends of the teachers during the club period of the school day and after school.\u00c2\u00a0 I still see this as an awesome and totally appropriate collaboration between adults and youth where the adults shared what they knew and loved without totally mediating it for their students.\u00c2\u00a0 This, I would imagine, was not an easy line to tread for Mr. Nagle and Mr. Barnes.<\/p>\n
Living with kids and meeting\u00c2\u00a0 more and more parents in the last few years has made me realize a changing standard that I have for punk music.\u00c2\u00a0 One thing I’ve always liked about punk music, and live performance in particular, is that it has been a fun or celebratory expression of shared politics or values.\u00c2\u00a0 One of my greatest wishes for the music I’m involved with is for it to be a fun, excitng space that I can share with people with whom I have shared politics or values, even if they don’t have any affinity or history with punk subculture.\u00c2\u00a0 I see the comfort of people coming to shows with kids as one of the ways of judging how close we’re coming to this goal.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the people who are my punk peers don’t have kids and most of my friends with kids don’t identify as punk.\u00c2\u00a0 When they come together at a show it’s obvious that there is a huge barrier between navigating the distance between the concerns and responsibilities of people who have kids and the absence of any of those considerations for many who don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, I see people with kids struggle to break out of an identity centered primarily around their role as parents (whether they’ve chosen this for themselves or had it imposed on them) and engage with people without parents as another person and not just as a person identified as a parent.<\/p>\n
Will tried really hard to set up the last show of Defiance, Ohio tour in a way that might break through some of these dynamics.\u00c2\u00a0 We had it start early, made it a pitch-in, and had it in a picnic pavilion at a park near some nice hiking trails, a creek full of wildlife, and a bumpin playground.\u00c2\u00a0 Most notably, he put ‘kids welcome’ on the flyer.\u00c2\u00a0 These efforts had mixed results.\u00c2\u00a0 More people came with kids than most shows I’ve been to in Bloomington.\u00c2\u00a0 People seemed to enjoy eating together and it was nice for kids to have a place to play around the show, or to watch and listen to the show where it wasn’t so loud.\u00c2\u00a0 One friend’s middle-aged mother who was in town visiting came to the show and hung out and rocked out.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, the show was pretty slow to get started which tried the attention span and bedtimes of many kids and their parents. \u00c2\u00a0 There was also a noticeable division between the people who usually come to shows and people who brought kids, though this probably has more to do with people not knowing each other because the parents didn’t come to shows often.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, its something that needs to be worked on.<\/p>\n
Its nice to know that others are thinking about this too.\u00c2\u00a0 I read an interview with Zegota in a recent issue of Give Me Back and one of the band members said that he evaluated shows on whether or not his mom would b comfortable going to them.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, my friend Josh wrote this about an adult and kid friendly show he’s setting up in Ann Arbor:<\/p>\n
hey everyone! I’m sending out this mass e-mail to a whole bunch ofpeople to let you all know that this Saturday Sept 13th will be thesecond ROCK N’ ROLL FAMILY PICNIC\/POTLUCK.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 for those of you thatdon’t know what this is let me explain. the idea is to give parents andkids and friend of parents and kids a day to hang out in the park andsee some bands and do some art and play games and hang out in a kiddiepool and ride on a slip and slide and eat\u00c2\u00a0 some food. you know funstuff like that.\u00c2\u00a0 since it’s hard to go see bands when you have to paya sitter now you can bring the kids to the show.\u00c2\u00a0 the bands are notnecessarily going to be kid bands, but they will be bands kids can rockout to, if you understand what i mean. (like there bands that playaround town for adults but kids could get into them.)\u00c2\u00a0 so far PatrickElkins and Charlie Slick are signed on to play as well as a fewacoustic acts and hopefully one more rock band.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For more than a decade, I’ve identified with and invested myself in punk music and subculture.\u00c2\u00a0 As I get older, I struggle with feeling like punk as I know it can be a little too much like Project Runway, “one day you’re in, the next day you’re out”.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but I do… Continue reading awesome punk rock shows, kids, and change<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[38,580,579,101,488],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defiance-ohio","tag-defianceohio","tag-kids","tag-parenting","tag-punk","tag-shows","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-nu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}