The Tamesis
In our conversation after class, I learned that her name was Emily and that she, like me, was a first-year day student, not a boarder; in fact, she lived almost across the street from the school. She confirmed my suspicions: she liked punk. The details are unclear right now, but she was or was in an emo band and was or was recently dating an older man in a ska band, or maybe it was the other way around. She looked like she was from another planet. Why haven’t I seen her before? Probably because she went out and did cool stuff.
Emily loves the Dead Kennedys (Nick and I instantly adopted their perfect song “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” as our anthem and mantra), but also a lot of local and semi-local bands that I didn’t know existed, fronted by scrawny guys with shaky voices playing violent guitar riffs and, in varying proportions, screaming loudly. “Thursday,” “Brand New,” “Taking Back Sunday,” “Saves the Day,” countless more locals and smaller variations: these were the Jersey and New York emo bands that I quickly adopted. Most of all Thursday, with its heavy riffs and cryptic lyrics that seemed to conflate a breakup with a world-historical event (“The first day was like this/We saw Paris in flames”), captured my heart and mind. Their voices were shrill enough to disgust normal people, but they were also sensitive and pretentious like me. I found their songs and those of other bands on online bootleg sites, searched for their CDs at the Princeton Record Exchange, and traded them with Nick to burn and make remixes.
I was in an improv group with Emily, but she remained an enigmatic, aspirational figure who always had one foot in the door. I barely made it through the school year and retreated to the Jersey Shore, where my family spent the summer. My emotional education quickly accelerated when I discovered Punk Shop on the Boardwalk. I spent hours there memorizing band names, album covers, and song titles. The people behind the counter are gruff, know-it-alls who uphold a proud Jersey tradition that is immortalized. Clerks, When I asked them what record they were playing, they sneered. (I know it’s Sunny Day Real Estate, I just don’t know which one it is. album! ) By the end of the summer, I was familiar with the spectrum of scenes and sub-genres, hardcore, SoCal punk and ska, with the occasional dash of metal thrown in (this was also the era of Slipknot, after all). I found my place through study as usual.
When Nick and I started going to shows that fall, they were completely different. I’d been to a few concerts at that time, but they didn’t ask for attendance like they did at punk shows. At the first Thursday show I attended (at the Crome Club in South Amboy), it became clear to me that being a member of the audience was of similar, if not equal, importance to being a character on stage. You bump into your neighbors sweating, shove and shoulder in the pit, or stand guard on the edge of the pit, screaming these words, as ridiculous as they may be, as you write them. The joy is in surrendering your own sense of self (my self-awareness was so immature and yet so damaged) to the crowd without thinking about who you are or what you are supposed to be. Dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, with a bland haircut and styleless wire-frame glasses, I essentially wanted to disappear.
