The Rise Of the Underdwellers

By Oscar Barajas, NewsTaco

I was a teenage mess. I was constructed of acne, bad hair, and flannel shirts. There was so much rage, and that rage needed an outlet. You might find this hard to believe, but girls were not paying attention to me. I had not found what I was good at, so my motivation was to find something to be tremendously bad at.

At the time some of my friends had migrated from our social pack in favor of girlfriends and female company. I must admit, our little social fraternity was not exactly conducive to the opposite sex. After all, we got a kick from throwing darts at each other. A hundred points would go to the one who could nail someone in the elbow or the neck. I am sure that if you would have swabbed the inside of our cheeks, you would have been able to find some genetic link to Beavis or Butthead.

One of the things that was popular during my formative years was backyard punk rock concerts or gigs. Every Friday night someone would throw one at their house. The music was abrasive and in-your-face without apologies. In short, it was a perfect companion for the things that I could not bring myself to say, without having a dart thrown at my neck or elbow. Nothing was funnier than watching from the back as the police would show up due to a noise complaint and the band onstage would break into a rendition of “Happy Birthday”. To add insult to injury, sometimes audio setbacks would delay a show as late as 11:00 PM only to be shut down 15 minutes later. As the popularity of these gigs grew, some of my other friends decided to start up musical bands.

There were gigs happening every weekend. Usually you would get a day’s notice, but it was definitely worth shuffling that albatross of nothingness that was anchoring down the weekend. I never had the courage to go up and talk to any of the intoxicated girls. After all, it was not like you could ask them to dance with you. Secondly, more times than not, they were usually there with their boyfriends, who always played in the most untalented bands. Coincidence? I think not. My theory was that those guys already had girls, so they did not have to waste their time crafting songs in order to find girls. Secondly, I never had to courage to jump into the pit. There was always the promise that someone would pick you up as soon as you fell, but at the same time falling down has never been an activity I look forward to. One could not deny that there was major male bonding occurring as sweaty masses crashed against one another with a soundtrack, but I found comfort in the back yelling at someone six inches away from me as we attempted a conversation.

Those were the best five or six years of my life. I think I must have been 22 when I realized that I was not welcomed anymore. I had become an old man caught up in the frenzy. It was a young person’s gig and they certainly let me know it. Besides, the music had changed. There were some bands trying their hand at being Rage Against the Machine clones, and I did not recognize the people on stage anymore. Besides, at the risk of romanticizing the past, it seemed that the older bands played for the sheer act of playing. These other bands took the stage with a mindset of how they were going to shoot the second video for that new single they had not even written yet. Punk gigs were the one thing that brought the cholos into the circle, knowing they could get enveloped by the masses, and yet come out without a need for escalation simply because you knew you were going to be all right as you emerged from the other end of the tunnel.

[Photo by copyriot]

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