30 Years ...Since Letting the Wolves Out

from a well kept underground subculture into the mainstream lime light. If not, it sure as fuck was for me. Thanks to a late night, Colorado public access television show, PUNK TV, I discovered punk rock late one night that year via a Ramones music video. I just began skirting the edges of the punk rock volcano before Green Day's "Dookie" set it to blow, shoving punk rock down the hungry open maws of every MTV consuming teenage suburbanite. I fucking ate it up, spurning in me a craving I didn't even know I had: one for loud, fast, obnoxious, rebellious music. However, my punk nutrition was incomplete. Subsiding off a diet provided by the skateboard friendly punk rock bands that rose with Green Day's tide, I thought myself a well versed, burgeoning punk rocker. That is until one afternoon in 1995. Having arrived home from a productive day of skateboarding on private property and being chased away by the police, I plopped myself in front of the television to take in the current musical offerings MTV had on tap, when unsuspectingly beamed into my eager eyes was the music video "Ruby Soho" by a band called Rancid.

Based on my then accumulating punk rock experience, the music was undeniably that - punk rock, but the four weirdos hopping around on my television screen playing this particular strain were unlike any of the punks I'd encountered before. My punk rock journey thus far revolved around bands like the previously mentioned Green Day, Pennywise, and The Offspring, punk, sure, but were fashioned in baggy, dirty pants and t-shirts, not to different from the era's earlier musical phenomenon of the flannel clad, slacker, grunge rockers. The only outlier being the Ramones, who were well into their career at this point, and looked to me more like a biker gang with their matching leather jackets and bob haircuts, or Bad Religion, who frankly looked more like my dad in dress pants and polo shirts. Rancid didn't look anything like that. They had ripped, tattered, spray painted clothes, held together by numerous metal stud infused belts and straps. Thick, rusty looking chains hung from their tattoo infested bodies, ink covering their arms, their hands, their necks, which held aloft their bouncing heads, shaking seemingly gravity defying blue and red dyed single strips of spiked hair cutting a distinct silhouette directly through their centers. They had fucking mohawks. They spat out barely discernible words as they swaggered and swayed through various dingy, derelict, stained apartment rooms, and before I could stop my head from reeling the whole thing was over. "Holy shitballs," I thought. That was the punkest thing I'd ever seen. I'd hardly believed MTV even had the gall to play something like that at 4:35 on a Tuesday afternoon.

Before all the holier than though punks start getting their plaid pants in a twist, yes, I discovered Rancid, and subsequently, punk fashion via MTV. This wasn't 1977 in a Vivian Westwood design infested London, or the dubious sanitary conditions of New York's CBGB, nor was it the upswell of the violence prone 1980's Los Angelas hardcore scene. This was 1995. In suburban Aurora, Colorado. As far as I knew, I was the only punk rocker in town, and I'd certainly never seen anybody out walking their dogs amongst all the well manicured neighborhood lawns that looked like Rancid.

I couldn't shake the vision of these punks and their defiantly patch-worked, and pointy clothing (nor could I get the song out of my head). Suddenly my clothes were boring by comparison. They were, relatively, clean, as clean as a teenage boys clothes could be, yet not a single safety pin punctured them. I had no metal studs or chains, let alone a leather jack in which to affix them to. This would not stand. Was I not now a punk rocker? I had to look the part.

Thus began the ongoing battle between my desire to fully embrace a punk rock aesthetic, and my parent's desire for me to not. A constant give and pull that I inched forward little by little, first with a wallet chain, then a metal studded bracelet, then a leather jacket, eventually culminating with a full on punk wardrobe, looking like I walked right out of the Ruby Soho video by they time I entered high school. The only missing piece was that of a mohawk, the unattainable slash of hair my parents were cruelly unflappable on. Most of my rebellious fashion advances were inevitably met by my father stating "if you want to walk around looking like an idiot, that's your choice," but the mohawk ban was the hill they were willing to die on. I suppose I could have been real punk about it and just given myself a mohawk. My mother had taken to cutting my hair at home then and we had the necessary tools around, but they were particularly consistent with their punishments and I took them seriously when "grounded for life" was uttered. After all, what's the point of having a mohawk if others can't see it? It would be 2025, my mohawk clinging to my 44 year old head, my 78 year old father angrily staring at me during commercial breaks of whatever golf tournament he was watching. I'd not be married to the love of my life, living in Prague, constantly bullied by two weirdo little dogs. A lifetime of punishment dolled out over a hair cut. I shudder to think.

This decree only led me to explore other punk hair styles. Most dramatically, a head full of liberty spikes, which I formed into rock hard points using egg whites from my mother's weekly family grocery haul, so, who really won this fashion stalemate? Me, apparently, as I was granted permission to have a mohawk for one singular weekend, in the summer, on the days the least amount of people were likely to see me and spare my parents any embarrassment of having a child with a ridiculous haircut, making them the pariahs of the cul-de-sac. "There go the Gentilcore's," the neighbors would say as they pulled their children closer. "Their son has a mohawk."

My parents must have wondered where this newfound sense of fashion was coming from. Did they recognize the stylings from the late 1970's? Did they see those wild haired, metal festooned youth and even fathom that their first born son would eventually be counted amongst their rowdy ranks? Did they know that Rancid, and their 1995 album "...and Out Come the Wolves" was the singularity point? That while I sat alone in my bedroom drawing pictures of my favorite X-Men, listening to the rambunctious songs contained on that album their son was being swayed by lyrics about junkies, weirdos, and Billy Bragg, plotting to reshape his life, both in attitude and in style? If they had would they have rushed in and pulled the plug from my trusty three-disc CD boom box stereo? Despite the eye rolls, and arguments that followed, I like to believe that they in fact would not have, and were ultimately understanding, giving each other knowing looks as the opening refrain of "Ruby Soho" blared through the house over and over again, motivating my father to knock on my permanently close bedroom door and say "turn it down in there," but never saying turn it off, which I haven't in thirty years.