(originally appeared in Inner Muscle, June, 2000)

Rick-a-loo! Diggin' kinda deep for topical matter eh, Yale? Nah, it ain't like that, because incidental to the fact that I am a real-live, degree-holdin', card-carryin' geograffer certified by no one less than the University of Montana (or "UMont" as the richies call it), this is a matter that's been in or on my mind since the late 80s.

I had seen that video... fuck, I forget what it's called... you know, the one where Youth Brigade gets in that school bus and drives all over the country getting into adventures and solving mysteries (Is it "Another State of Mind"?). It occurred to me that, prior to that, the punk scenes in this country were by and large isolated, and as a result, had managed to carve out signature sounds like the "DC Sound" and all that. Moreover, I can't think of any other genre of music (with the possible exception of hip-hop) in which a band's hometown is of such momentous import. Like, who knows where Toad the Wet Sprocket are from? Who gives a fuck? It just doesn't matter, you know? It has no bearing whatsoever on their sound, their politics, or anything.

Sentenced to a two-hour detention sometime in high school, I passed the time by tracing a map of the US and filling in where all my favorite bands were from. I became ever more exacting and fastidious, making sure to include lesser-known bands from the hinterlands like Dissent from Rapid City, SD. This little arts-‘n'-crafts activity was just as fun and enriching as you can no doubt imagine! Not only was it a superb time-kill, but it served to provide a spatial orientation to exactly where the action was goin' down, where the hot spots were, and what the distribution was. Also, you could see how, in many cases, the influence of a particular cultural center would spread in a roughly radial pattern from its origin. But sometimes not! For instance, it was surprising to me that, while Chicago and Minneapolis were both cultural centers, and so close together, they seemed to exist in mutual exclusivity. Each was its own gravitational center, acting independently of the other. Then there are totally unexpected outposts like House of Large Sizes (still around today)from Cedar Falls, Iowa, or 7 Seconds from Reno, or the Melvins (originally) from Aberdeen, Washington. And what about Athens, Georgia? I mean, say what you will about REM and the B-52s (and don't forget Death Tractor!), but for a town that size, I say that's fairly commendable. More surprising still was the fact that certain urban centers are completely underrepresented. Like Miami, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia, or Indianapolis. I mean, sure there were a couple-three little dick-ass bands tooling around there, but wouldn't you think that a city like Philly could come up with more than just the Dead Milkmen? Six million people in Detroit, and all they got is Necros? (Keep in mind that this study was conducted in about 1989; I'm sure that, with the advent of Kid Rock, Detroit is enjoying a modern-day rock renaissance.) Indianapolis was home to the awesome Zero Boys, but why didn't any of their rough-hewn Rust Belt moxie rub off on other Indianapolites?

At the time of this study, I was all about Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, so the primary action blob was around the Los Angeles area, with nearly every little LA satellite suburb amply represented. There was the Minutemen from San Pedro, Descendents from Lomita, all that SST/Lawndale shit, all your Huntington Beach goings-on, your Orange County Social Distortion/Youth Brigade/Agent Orange stuff. And don't forget the Venice Beach scene with Suicidal Tendencies, Excel, No Mercy, Beowulf, all that shit. Of course, this was before every single band from suburban LA was of the NOFX/Pennywise/Offspring school of thought.

In DC there was Minor Threat, Government Issue, Bad Brains (sort of), Dag Nasty. All the DC bands seemed to loosely revolve around the Dischord label, but as far as "scene unity" (very important in the 80s) goes, you couldn't do better than DC. The straight-edge deal seemed to be confined to the eastern seaboard for much of its existence. As far as a cultural phenomenon like that goes, it's pretty much textbook spatial distribution; as a geographer, you wouldn't really expect it to surface on the west coast. For one thing, the bulk of the punk rock press at the time (i.e. Flipside & MRR) were based in California, so news of any cultural development from the East was slower to get anywhere. Californians are notoriously solipsistic anyway, so why should they care about some goofball straight-edge movement?

Later in life, Rusty would come over to 1010 Ronald and we'd try and think of bands from every state, and we had trouble with quite a few states, like Maine, Vermont, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma (Flaming Lips?), Wyoming and lots more. Well, we kinda had an implicit rule that it had to be a punk or indie band, and it had to be of at least a little renown. Not like, "My cousin saw this band The Felching Ballgaggers and they were from Maine!" And when Charlie Beaton sent a Banned single to Alternative Tentacles circa ‘92, that big fat orange blob Jello Biafra wrote back saying it was the first band from Montana he'd ever heard of! And you know what state I think should be kickin' way more ass is Florida! They got like five major metropolitan areas and the only band from Florida that I can think of off-hand is Less Than Jake. I Thanks, but no thanks! Sure, there was Roach Motel from Jacksonville or whatever that band that George Tabb always wrote about, but who ever heard of them before he plugged ‘em every month (retroactively, I might add!) in MRR? Here again, geography comes into play: Florida being a peninsula and all, it's not really susceptible to cultural penetration; not the punk rock kind anyhow.

But nowadays, with them newfangled computers and that dang ol' Interweb thing and all, none of this really amounts to shit. Distance no longer = friction. You can have a band that you might think is 100% Chicago, only to discover they're from Anchorage. You can't guess a band's hometown by their sound with any degree of certainty. Dang near every little shithole town over 10,000 people has a punk rock band in it, probably even Kalispell (hee hee). I guess I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, punk rock used to be kinda like our little secret; I never even really thought that punk rock was a style of music so much as it is a state of mind, but now you say "punk rock" and people immediately think Green Day, whereas I say the Minutemen are punk rock, even though they sound closer to George Benson than the Germs. I say I play in a punk band, and people are befuddled that I don't have blue hair. It's like all you have to do is fill out some paperwork and BING! you're a punk. On the other hand, more bands around means better odds for discovering a truly great band. That's kind of specious reasoning, but it gets me by.

I wrote this in a real hurry, so if you thought it really sucked, blame Josh.