Timothy Lockwood Armstrong.

Timothy Lockwood Armstrong
January 6, 2006

I can't explain how much I love punk rock. It's the sort of thing that won't go away. Even if it was faultering, I'd fight to keep it around. Thankfully, I've never had to fight that hard. It's been an easy love affair.

I've spent years trying to duplicate the feeling of release it gave me when I was 16 and I've never been able to find it. So, I just add more of it. And while there might be periods in my life where it's not as prominent, it's there. I drove to Woodward this past weekend and listened to nothing but the Lawrence Arms the entire way and screamed every word.

In Ben Fold’s iTunes originals series, he does an Elliot Smith cover and before he plays it, he says a little bit about Elliot Smith, what a loss his death was and so on. But Ben also says one of the most profound things Elliot ever told him was “If you grow up with yelling in your house, the last thing you want to do is make records of yelling.” Ben goes on to talk about how this little rule might sum up what’s so wrong with modern rock music: “yelling as recreation”. But I think that was why I fell in love with punk rock so hard; I wanted nothing more than my parents to yell at eachother, at least be honest with eachother.

Rancid was the first punk band I really fell in love with. They were my cornerstone in all of it. And their cornerstone was a place called 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California. Gilman was the cornerstone for a lot of bands around that time; Operation Ivy played their first and last show there, Green Day, NOFX, even Jawbreaker had a stay there. So, when I went to San Francisco, I decided I needed to see it. I went with Angie and she decided that day we'd go to Gilman and we'd go to the Castro. It was the best day I had in the Bay Area.

The club is still open, still a DIY project, still won't let any band signed to a major label play there. Quite the testament to what it built.

It wasn't open, nor did I expect it to be. And one of these days, I'll see a show there. But it looked like every other brick building on the street. No signage, no remarkable characteristics. But it was absolutely worth the trip. I know what came out of there. No sign can tell me that.

I did like the duct tape piece on the brick. Oh, what a beautiful marriage punk rock has with duct tape.

(Taken with a Sony DSC-P32. What a trusty beast that camera was. Color balance is totally photoshopped.)