Having a guest speaker talk about his experiences with punk rock was very unique and interesting, as it is not a field I normally hear about. Listening to Rich Stremme take us along his punk rock journey was very captivating. For him, his story started when his family moved to Connecticut and he was 11 years old. His aunt and uncle took him to a show and he found a group that sparked his interest, realizing that he wanted to be a part of their world. At the age of 12, he started making zines in order to start communication with people he did not know. Zines allowed him to network with people and create scenes with those in his area. His first show was to see the Anrthax and they later moved from the eastern part of Connecticut to the western part of the state for more space. He noticed that predominantly males attended these events, revealing the culture surrounding punk rock at the time. When he went to this show, he spread his zines around and met people that he ultimately wanted to begin a band with. Once he began making his own records, he sold them for a third less than what it cost him to produce, therefore he proved that the value for him was not in climbing an economic scale, but only socially become known. One of his most vibrant memories is the show he held in a poor neighborhood in Texas, nevertheless with people attending from both sides of the border. The events he experienced during this show felt surreal to him, as helicopters circulated with lights trying to catch border-hoppers. He channeled his experience in El Paso into the writing of his vinyl, Ashamed To Be White. After he graduated college, he moved to Brooklyn and met a graffiti artist, Revs. They initiated a collective band named God Squad and always had a mission; they would make crosses out wood and place them all over the city. Overall, punk rock is a free space, thus it does not need to be audio or physical, but whatever one can carve out and express, as Rich Stremme quotes from Ian MacKaye, concluding the essence of this topic.

Punk rock in the present-day is incredibly diverse due to its regionality and tendency to change with the political landscape, so I was curious what exactly we would be learning about the genre/culture during this seminar. I was somewhat involved in the punk community in my high school, but had just barely scratched the surface of what being punk meant.

Because of the subversive nature of punk, the word itself seems to come with a negative connotation in the mainstream. Many seem to associate punk with delinquency, but I view it as an exercise of free thought and expression, which is inherently anti-authority. Every person experiences punk in a different way depending on the demographics they fall under. For instance, the Mexican kids that Rich met in El Paso saw the punk community in West Texas as a place where they could be accepted. 

Furthermore, I find that punk is more than just rock, it can be any form of expression, as long as that expression is anti-system. Graffiti and verbal protest are some very outstanding examples of this, but the ideals of punk apply to smaller actions such as the repurposing and repair of items, since not purchasing items new goes against the consumerism that is constantly being pushed onto us. This also goes to show how punk has evolved over time to address modern issues.

One thing that Rich mentioned that I found very interesting was that many of the few girls that got involved in the hardcore/punk scene during the 80s and 90s started off as photographers for shows, because that is exactly how I found myself going to shows in which my friends were performing. I also believe that the gender ratio at these shows has since shifted due to an increasing number of female artists in the scene.