I just wrote and deleted a long blather about what is or isn't "punk," but realized that I've already said all that stuff about a million times, and everyone probably just rolls their eyes now when I start to go off, so better to skip it. ;) In its place I offer up this old man nostalgia excerpt from my wonderful and amazing blog:
Three years later the Ramones were playing in a bar in St. Paul. A little dive that held, at most, 100 people. I was only 17 so I couldn't get in to see them. But I had memorized that first album and I considered the Ramones to be messengers from god, so I was outside the bar while they played.
I broke away from the pack and went around back to the alley and the wall nearest the stage and found a hole in the wall where a ventilation fan was mounted. I slid a milk crate under the hole, and when I stood on it, I found that if I jumped high enough I could see through the ventilation hole. I balanced on the crate for 40 minutes, hopping up and down, catching 2 second glimpses of the back of the Ramones, in St. Paul, in 1977.
