All of the punk-rock bands of the era would come in and play, and my job on Punk Rock Night was that I would go into the slam pit, and... I was 24 or 25, and I'd slam dance in the pit.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
To see classic rock, you had to go to an arena. But punk was happening everywhere, even in little towns in the middle of nowhere in Maryland. I'd drive out to places I'd never been, just to go and see it.
I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.
In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didn't get to when I was younger.
I'd go dance at talent shows, and because I was young I had the upper hand on a lot of other crews. People thought it was cute. I used that to my advantage.
I would walk down the hall with my guitar and play for anyone that would listen. As a young kid I was really driven and I was going to make it happen no matter what.
There weren't a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn't have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.
I was two and a half and my folks would put it on the record player and I would run around the house screaming, but I haven't been that hip since.
Jazz in the 1920s and '30s was dance music, teenage music for parties, for being wild and young. There's this punk feeling I really love. It was something so radical and different and new and not codified. People didn't have a definition of what they were doing.
By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.
I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin.