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This probably won't come out right, mainly because I suck at expressing my ideas through words, but any way.

It all started in fifth grade for me. A couple of my friends were listening to the radio in class one day and they were all excited about hearing this new band "Green Day" on the radio. I had never heard of them (I was still listening to Oldies lol), so I gave them a listen. Green Day wasn't anything that special to me at first, but all of my friends were listening to them, so I thought that I would save up my money and buy Dookie tape (I didn't get into cds until 1999 ) when it came out.

I think a week or two passed and I had my dad drive me to the Blockbuster Music Store near my house and I bought Dookie. This was my first tape that I ever bought, and I didn't really know what to expect. So I listened to it and it was like something that I had never heard before. It wasn't the best thing ever, but I thought hey this is pretty good and I thought to myself that I am a "punk" now.

I didn't know really what a punk was; except they had a mohawk and they were just different people. I had always felt like I was different than most of my peers and I felt like anyone different from the norm, wasn't necessarily bad. My parents had gotten divorced when I was in first grade and since they had gotten divorced I had gain some weight (which I was teased for). So I always felt like I never fit in with the pretty/popular people, but I never really fit in with the nerds either. I was just a misfit, so I hung out with the skaters (later to be the stoners at my middle school). The skaters were also mostly from divorced families or they had trouble at home, plus they liked Green Day too, so it was cool.

Then about 6 months to a year later when I was in sixth grade, there was the big mainstream ska explosion. I heard Less Than Jake's Losing Streak on the radio and I am like, hey this is just like Dookie, except with horns. So I had my dad take me to Blockbuster Music again and I bought Less Than Jake's Losing Streak on tape of course. So I listen to Losing Streak for a while and think it's great, and I ask around school and see if anyone else think Less Than Jake are great, but no one knows what I am talking about. I guess it was a fluke or something, because not a lot of people in the mainstream had heard or liked Less Than Jake in 1996 even though they were on Capitol. So I am like hey, I like this great band that no one has heard of, this is great. I have something that the popular don't have, I have my own music.

Then in the summer after sixth grade I go to this summer camp with my Dookie and Losing Streak tapes and I run into a kid who has those cds, plus this new band that he found out about from another kid, called Pennywise. He doesn't have any of Pennywise's cds, but he says that they are good and that I would like them. So again I go with my dad to Blockbuster and buy Pennywise's About Time. Again it's different and I don't really know what to think, but it's not bad, plus once again it one level deeper into the underground of punk. So I go back to seventh grade with a few more pounds (I had gained more weight for some reason) and my new favorite band Pennywise.

Seventh grade was hell for me, I was about 40 pounds over weight and being in middle school, every kid let me know about it. Not only that, all of my skater friends now had started becoming the stoners, but I still had my music. No one at my middle school knew about Pennywise, but I did and that's all that mattered.

Right about this time in 1998, tapes are becoming harder and harder to find and so I finally make the decision to make the switch to cds. So I spend most of my money on a cd player at the newly opened Best Buy, but I need a cd to play in my new cd player. So I go to the cd section and everything is like $12.99 or higher, I am like I don't have that much money, I have like $6.00. So I am looking around all of the cds and somehow I end up in the V/A section. I am looking through the comps and find Punk-O-Rama 3 and I am like $6.00 plus it has a Pennywise song, sweet.

I start up the cd and the first track is NOFX - We Threw Gasoline On The Fire And Now We Stumps for Arms and No Eyebrows. I had heard someone mention NOFX from somewhere and I am like this songs is different, but it's not bad. I thought maybe I just need to listen to a NOFX cd in order to get the whole NOFX experience. So when I had enough money, I buy NOFX's Heavy Petting Zoo, mainly because it has a guy doing-up a sheep on the front cover and I am like that's pretty funny. So I open up the cd and see all the lyrics written all over stuff and so I start reading them while I am listening to the cd. I am like hey these lyrics are pretty funny and clever.

Now I am in eighth grade and my new favorite band is NOFX and I gain some more weight. I am now up to about 60 pounds overweight and I am still getting teased about it, but I now have NOFX and no one knows about them for sure. This is also about the time that I start to notice that NOFX and Pennywise aren't on major labels, so I started doing some research on Epitaph and Fat Wreck and find out they are independent labels. I am like this is really cool and powerful that people don't need major labels to put out their music. So now I decide that I am going to check out these other bands that they have on these two labels. I find Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphies, Rancid, Millencolin, No Use For A Name, Lagwagon, and others.

So now I am in high school and my weight levels out at 60 pounds over, and the kids are a little nicer, but they start to form the popular kids and the not so popular kids group. I didn't fit into either, I was smart, but not nerdy, but I was overweight, so I didn't fit with the popular/beautiful people. But I still had my new independent music to turn to and give me hope and an identity.

My high school was a mix of kids from two middle schools. So I am hang out with my skater/stoner friends the first day of high school and we meet up with the skater/stoners from the other middle school. Somehow we start talking about music and I name some of my bands that I like, and one of the guys from the other middle school says that we have the same taste in music. I am like this is great, so we talk about some more bands and he says that you must get Operation Ivy's Energy.

So I head over to Best Buy after school with my mom and I buy Operation Ivy's Energy. I put the cd into my cd player and I am like what the fuck is this. It's like ska with no horns and a guy screaming, and I felt like I had kind of wasted my money. So I start to read the lyrics and I am like these are some of the greatest lyrics ever written. So I listen to the cd again and start to slowly get into the music and lyrics. It was raw, political, social and great. It didn't leave my cd player for 4 months.

Operation Ivy became my new favorite band and I need more. I loved the music, I loved the rawness and I loved the politics. I need more Operation Ivy, but I couldn't find anymore, so I went online and searched for any websites about Operation Ivy. I found Operationivy.com and joined the forum. I lurked around there and read posts in the music section of the forum. People were recommending all of these bands that I have never heard of, Minor Threat, The Subhumans, and Black Flag. I am like I don't know about any of these bands, but I'll look for their cds.

So I head over to Best Buy and I don't see any of these bands cds there, so I am like this is weird, but I will keep looking. So this about the time I learn about local independent music stores that actually have these band's cds. I am 15 now, going on 16 and about getting ready to drive, but I still don't have a car yet. So, I have my dad take me to Twist And Shout, the biggest independent music store in Colorado. It was totally different than a Best Buy. It was a store the size of Best Buy, but full of music and everything devoted to music. I find all sorts of cds by the bands that I am looking for and my dad is like what the hell is going on, why are we buying music here in this giant store that smells like weed and incense. But he was cool about it.

So I buy like 10 cds from Minor Threat to The Adolescents' S/t and decide that I will wait until I have a car to go back to Twist and Shout, because it definitely wasn't my dad's cup of tea. So I listen to all of the new cds I got, mostly 80's hardcore, and I am like this isn't the best music in the world, but definitely different in a good way. This is also about the time when I am like 80's hardcore is the greatest thing ever and anything that isn't 80's hardcore is definitely for posers!

So I turn 16 and get a car and now I have the ability to go exploring other local independent music store and buy all sorts of cds. So, one day I buy a couple of cds and a Crass cd. I so drive home listening to the other cds that I bought, and when I get home I start listening to Crass' The Feeding Of 5,000 and I am like what the fuck is this. So I pull out the lyrics and start following along. I am somewhat shocked, but definitely interested in their politics and their statements. From the Epitaph / Fat Wreck bands I had got my leftist politics, but Crass took it a step further, which definitely got me a lot more into politics.

So I am now really into 80's hardcore, crust, and anarcho bands through the rest of high school and I totally reject anything that I don't think is cool, i.e. NOFX, Pennywise, NUFAN, Lagwagon, and especially Green Day and Less Than Jake. Also about this time I am getting into vinyl because a lot of the 80's bands were easier to find on vinyl. I finally decide to sell off all 700 of my cds in go strictly vinyl.

Then one day I am looking for new music on operationivy.com and this guy posts about a new band Against Me! and their LP Reinventing Axl Rose. So I googled Against Me! and find their website and some mp3s. I give them a listen and I am like what is this crap, it's slow and the singer's voice sounds like something from a screamo band on some of the songs. But people on operationivy.com keep saying what a great band Against Me! is, so I buy the Reinventing Axl Rose LP and force myself to listen to it. So I give it a listen all the way through and read the lyrics while listening to it. I am like this music is too slow and not hardcore enough, but the lyrics and message are great. So I keep listening to it and it slowly grows on me, until it's one of my favorite records of all time.

So I come to the Against Me! forums and start reading about the plan-it-x bands and other bands like Jawbreaker. So I give them a try and I am like these bands aren't hardcore, but they aren't band either. They have the politics and DIY ethics without sounding like crap.

I am now a freshman in college and I have started to lose the weight and get some self confidence, and I am totally like DIY OR DIE! And then it happened, I found Jawbreaker's Dear You, this was the record changed all of my views on the punk scene. To me it was the greatest punk album ever released on a major label, not to mention it was a pop-punk album. Once I heard that album, I realized that bands like NUFAN and Lagwagon and other pop-punk bands weren't that bad. They were pop-punk and they didn't need to be all that political to be good. And no, major labels don't necessarily produce bad music if the band is great and the label lets the band do their thing. Band signing to major labels are fine, as long as the band didnt denounce major corporations in their past works, i.e. Anti-Flag.

I started getting back into all of those old bands that I hated because they were poser bands like NOFX, Bad Religion, Lagwagon, Pennywise, and even Green Day. I realized that it didn't matter what label a band was on or how popular they were, it was whether or not they produced good music that was true to their lyrics (Obliviously Crass shouldn't be on a major label), and whether or not they were the same people as they were when they started.

The terms sellout and poser were only created by people who were afraid of losing their music to people who didn't quite understand it. We all had to start somewhere and the people like me or you will eventually dig deeper and deeper into the underground of punk if they care. A large majority of you "DIY OR DIE" people won't live your whole life by that phase, a lot of you will end up going to school and getting jobs, but you will still take your ideals of kindness (antiracist / pro-gay / etc.), peace, and non-consumerism through the rest of your life.

I feel that the punk movement will never overthrow a government or end capitalism, but it will continue to give a new generation of misfits hope and a new set of ideals that they will carry for the rest of their lives.

I am glad that I was an overweight misfit growing up, if I wasnt I dont think that would have gotten into this music culture we know as punk. I am now going to be a junior in college, I am back to a normal weight, and I now have over 700 records and counting. My music is what has gotten me through the good times and the bad times in life, and I will always have it to thank for that. I know this was a long story, but I hope that someone can identify with some part of it and understand where I am coming from.

P.S. I am not an English major, so there are probably a lot of spelling and grammar errors, but please don't fault me for those.