Small Town Punks

It is great to be up and running again here on AAP. Here is this week's question, with apologies if it sounds like I'm patting myself on the back:

Dear ASK A PUNK -  
I figured it would probably be a pretty good idea just to mail you and tell you that the blog (er.. whatever) is great! I've been searching for a site or something similar that covered mostly punk subjects. That search, being a major pain in the ass for a 16 year old newfound punk. The constant reminder from so many people that "punk is dead" was really almost getting to me (not that I'd give it up) until I found coincidentally within a 2 day period the Dead Kennedy's album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables and this site.

So, yeah, man. Really, a young small town punk who is the backbone of the total 2 man scene amongst an ocean of pop and "Post-Hardcore," anti-self expression fourth Reich bullshit wanted to tell you that you're great for doing what you do! Maybe a few question answers are due, wouldn't you say?
But yes! Thank you very much for doing this and you better get back on top of it! As unlikely as it very well may seem, there are still some young people out there who need to know stuff. Word of mouth is a dead form of syndication so the internet's our next best choice.
Thanks a lot, man.
Cheers from an aspiring musician from Nowhere, New York
Have a good one! - LT
P.S. Sorry if anything here is less than coherent. I've drunk.

Dear LT -
Thank-you for checking in. I'm glad I left the site up during the hiatus and that some people were still finding it and reading it. I'm sorry it has taken so long to respond to your email, but here it is.

I came from a small town too, so I know you probably can't wait to escape the place. But instead of thinking of your current situation/life as some kind of purgatory to escape from - try thinking of it as an incubator you'll eventually emerge from. - The change in wording DOES make a difference. Don't sit around waiting for your life to start "once I'm out of this place" ...start it NOW. When I was discovering punk I had to go out looking for it... miles and miles and miles in every direction from my tiny-ass hometown, just to find a record store with a Ramones album. Now you can have it all delivered to your computer... take advantage of that. You said you're a punkrocker, but do you play an instrument? If not, WHY NOT?! You can go on youtube and find FREE guitar lessons, drum lessons, bass lessons, etc etc etc and of course there are 1000s of other resources - like my site or even Henry Rollin's column for LA Weekly - not that I'm comparing myself to him... or if you're anti-Rollins (and I understand some are) keep looking elsewhere. It is all out there, and it costs nothing. When you're ready to start recording your stuff you can do it at home - on 'garageband' if you have a MAC or, if you have a PC you can download (for free) a program called 'audacity' which is almost as feature-rich as Pro Tools. You and your generation don't HAVE to run off to 'The Big City' like we all had to... so take advantage of that. If your town doesn't have a "scene" guess what?  That means YOU are the scene. It is yours. Create it yourself. And...at the risk of sounding like your parents: stay in school, get that HS diploma ...and then you'll at least have the option of maybe escaping to a small college somewhere, or if not, at least you'll be better prepared for the long fight ahead (ie: life.)

I have caught a lot of crap here on AAP from people who said I wasn't punk-rock enough because I have a huge 'live and let live' streak - but I'll say this anyway: Even if the seemingly brain-dead pop and 'mainstream' folks have no respect for your music etc, try to find something redeeming in them and theirs... or ignore it, but don't REACT to it. Life is an F-ing struggle for EVERYone and even if it seems like 'they' all have their shit together etc... trust me: "They"  don't. "They" never really do. Everyone in their teens is shit-scared, they just use different tactics to hide it, and some are quite intimidating and impressive.

I won't judge on the under age drinking but I should warn you about it. I started at 16 but I've been sober since I turned 31... and that was a long time ago (I'm not quite as old as Rollins, but I'm close.) Be wary and try not to  throw all that new-found punk rock passion down the bottomless pit of illicit chemicals. There are too many bodies at the bottom of that pit already.

Stay Strong and again - thanks for visiting the site. Tell your friends.

Children of the Con

Since Ask A Punk was originally launched in early January 2008, it seems fitting that the relaunch is (ok, finally) happening at the beginning of a new year. The hiatus that started in Aug. '11 served its purpose - It gave me the chance to take care of a few other issues in my life & work and just sort of gave me a break from the self-imposed weekly deadlines and the feeling that I wasn't accomplishing much with the blog. 

I also discovered I was wrong about that last thing.

Even though it has been a year+ since my last, official weekly post, my handy google stats page tells me that I still have regular readers/visitors to the site, and my inbox is filled (ok, semi-filled) with "When are you coming back?" messages, along with plenty of new questions. This was all as flattering as it was unexpected.

I wanted to come back when I tacked up that most recent post in May, but I discovered I still had too many other things to deal with. I did spend some of that time creating an eBook (which you can see me flogging in the right-hand column.) Now I have finally cleared the decks and am ready to get back at it. ...but I also want to do it better this time. I am actively soliciting advice & opinion on how I can improve the site and do a better job of reaching people. I'm still on the fence about some of it: "include more links", "include more pictures", "do interviews." Do more links & pictures really equal deeper reader engagement? I'm still not sure. I think greater interaction does. This site will never be a record/band/show review site, but I have added a new "music+" page that will contain essays, posts on topics not covered by the regular weekly advice post... and maybe even an interview or two... but you'll notice that the main page is still the weekly Q&A. I still think that is the most important part of this endeavor, as well as the most satisfying.

What I DO want to encourage is more participation. With the revamp of the site, the "comment" section is harder to miss, so I hope people start leaving more comments, and adding their own advice. 

Enough blather! Let's get on with it!  At long last, here is this week's question.

Dear AskAPunk:

My dad's insane. I know many people say that, but he really is. Maybe insane isn't the right word because he is scary-smart and hyper-intelligent. The problem is he is, basically a con-man. Always has been. When we were growing up, my sisters and I never knew what he did for a living. Our mom worked in an office, but dad would vanish for days or weeks at a time, or months. We were told he "traveled a lot for business." which, when you're a little kid is the only explanation you really need, because why would your mom lie about your dad? But she had to, because the truth was, he never had a real job, was always hustling people out of money and then hiding from either them or the cops. I remember several times us all getting dressed up and taken out for a "day with dad." Invariably the day would include a meeting or an "unexpected encounter" with some adults we had never met before, but who seemed to know my dad. Those adults would often call my dad by some nickname or first name we had never heard before. We would never see these people again. Years later, we figured out that they were new marks he was setting up and we were being trotted out as proof that he was a stable "family man" or something. It still makes my skin crawl to think about it. I know it all sounds crazy and almost old-fashioned, even though we're talking about stuff that happened in the 1990s, but I swear it is true. The truth slowly started to come out, as it always does, as we got older and we could figure things out for ourselves, and his getting sent to prison didn't help any either. By the time dad got out of the pen - he was a model prisoner of course, always smiling and cooperative like he was on a con -  I was in punk bands and trying to get through community college, because of course there was no money for college. One of my sisters joined the army and the other just got a job. He moved back in with my mom and went back to his same old crap, only now he was also trying to work angles with us. He nearly hustled my army sister out of her government cash and stuff - I don't know the exact details, and I can't tell you how many people have told me they had met our band's "manager" or how many times he'd asked one or all of us to help him out with some shady little meeting or delivery that never sounded quite illegal. I finally had to tell him to fuck off out of my life. It wasn't easy, even though by then I was totally living on my own, because we live in a small-ish city in the Northwest US and I can't totally avoid seeing him or running into him somewhere, and yeah, I think he plans some of those "chance meetings," especially when I see him with people I don't know. He never beat us up, or did a ton of drugs (as far as I know) he was and is just a scumbag. I'm sorry I haven't even gotten to my question yet. There are a couple of them: 

1) I'm scared sometimes that I'll follow in his footsteps whether I want to or not. At school I often find myself having to fast-talk my way out of things with teachers or the accounting office, and I am remarkably good at it. How do I safeguard myself against this? 

2) Why the hell didn't my mom divorce him a million years ago and save us ALL from all this bullshit? How can I get over my anger and resentment at my MOM for that? 

3) How can I keep him the F out of my life and away from my band?

 - Not so easy money.

Dear NSEM -

Your story reads like a post-grunge "Paper Moon." I'm glad you've stood up for yourself so far and done your best to get past the family bullshit, because that is pretty much what you'll have to do. Here are my answers.

1) 

Sometimes we all have to fast-or-sweet talk teachers, administrators, bosses, clerks in the accounting office, club bookers or the various other people who stand between us and what we're trying to accomplish. For good or ill, this is a normal part of human interaction, especially in our particular culture. Try not to over-think that part of it. What you have to make sure of though, is that you are scrupulously honest with the people in your life - the real relationships that help to define who you are as a person, and when you meet new people, be sure that your first thoughts are "how can I help them?" and not "What can I get off this clown." I'm not saying you have to become a push-over or a full-time good samaritan, I'm just saying pay attention to the first thoughts you have when you're dealing with people in your life. When meeting someone new, a con-man like your dad's first thoughts would be about finding some advantage he might have over the other person - some weakness in them that he can exploit... and, to him, even positive human traits like kindness would be considered a weakness. 

2) 

Even though you didn't state your gender, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're a girl. Even in the most well-adjusted of families, Mother/Daughter relationships are almost always more fraught with issues of anger and resentment etc. From what you wrote, I don't think your mom was your dad's accomplice, just his enabler. Even though your dad is a lowlife, he and your mom clearly have some kind of deep connection, although a clearly unhealthy one. This isn't going to sound like a very punk-rock answer, but what you have to do is simple: Forgive her. ...and try to very gently coax her toward admitting the truth about your dad to herself, keeping in mind that that might never happen. YOU have to decide if you want a relationship with your mom, just your mom (and it sounds like you do.) That relationship, now that you're an adult, has to be about you TWO, and not about the shifty ex-con elephant in the room. If you can see yourself still loving her, then love her, and let it go at that. Don't make your dad the only topic of conversation between the two of you, in fact: make it the one-and-only topic that is off-limits if necessary.

3)

Cutting him out of your life is easy, as long as you stick to your own rules. I'm guessing it isn't possible to simply MOVE somewhere else, so instead you have to build a wall around your life and keep him out. Send all his emails to your spam file, unread. Never take his calls and if you get a call from a number you don't recognize let it go to voicemail first. If you "bump into" him somewhere unexpectedly, and he is with his latest mark, immediately say something like: "Great to see you Dad, I didn't know you were on parole" ...do that a few times and I can promise he will start avoiding you. Wouldn't that be nice? As far as the band stuff goes, make sure he has no access to your websites, twitter feeds or whatever you use to engage your fans online. Bring a photo of him to gigs and give it to the door guy, telling him there's $10 and a beer in it for him if he doesn't let the guy in the picture into the show. Two beers if he shoves him. and finally, and most punk rock of all: Write a song about the bastard. Heck, write a whole album. Put his picture on your website too - let the world know that he has nothing to do with you or your band. That would be pretty punk rock, wouldn't it? YOU have nothing to be ashamed of, he is the criminal.

I hope that helps. Do your best, and remember, if nothing else, your dad did give you one very useful gift: I bet you can spot any conman from a mile away.

Back in the Saddle.

The official weekly return of  ASK A PUNK will happen soon. Still working out the kinks in the new eBook - It IS available for download at smashwords.com but some technical glitches are delaying creation of some other file types etc. Should be straightened out soon. Hopefully.

So in the meantime...

Tell your friends, wake the neighbors and fire up those questions. After a brief and much-needed hiatus, I was stunned when I reopened the AAP website and mailbag and discovered a few shocking things: 1) Even with no new posts, tweets or whatever for months, the site was still averaging 500 on purpose visitors per month and 2) People were still sending in sincere emails seeking real answers to their questions. Seeing all that, I knew it was time to get back on the keyboard even though, to date, this website has earned me less than $5.00 in "ad revenue" etc.

Obviously this has never been a money-making gig for me. It was, and is, an attempt to do something at least a tiny bit more useful than it is self-indulgent here on the Internet - which is still a pretty rare concept for a blog. So I reopened the website and reacquainted myself with the Blogger platform so I could update the site a bit and make it look/fee a little bit fresher.

In a concession to commerce I have done one important thing. As you will discover as you explore the site: The first two years of posts are no longer accessible. I still have about 100 post available for free reading, but if you want to go alllll the way back to the beginning (which I obviously encourage) it'll cost you a whopping $1.99 for the Ask a Punk - Volume 1 "ebook." In it, I collected the best questions and answers from the first year. That's 40+ posts, more than 40,000 words, for less than two bucks. It is now available for every kind of "ereader" out there including your ipad, kindle and nook. At this early stage, I haven't completely figured out how easy or difficult it will be to find my book in all of the online "stores" so, since I used the awesome smashwords.com site to do the distribution, I'm encouraging everyone to start on the book's official smashwords page. From there you'll be able to download it to anything, including your home computer.

Also: for a limited time, I'm letting everyone get their copy of the book for FREE. All you have to do is use the following coupon code at checkout:  HF29Q  

There are less-than-altruistic reasons for doing this of course. I am hoping to boost my "download" numbers so the book (and blog) can get some notice from the outside world... but I also want to give as many people as possible, especially my regular and loyal readers, the chance to get the book for free and to hopefully write a review of it, either on the smashwords site or (even better) on whatever site they used to buy it. I can't begin to tell you how helpful a few positive words in a short review would be to this whole Ask A Punk endeavor.

In other AAP Relaunch news, as you look around the updated site you'll see a few new pages including one labeled "Music+." I'm still not 100% sure what this page will include but I know there are always a few things I want to say that have nothing to do with the week's AAP question, so I'll probably be posting additional non "Q and A" content on this page. What it won't be is a real "reviews" page - meaning I'm not going to waste my time and yours giving negative reviews about things I don't like or am not into. Instead, I'll be sharing things I'm excited and positive about. We'll see what happens. I might even put those "essay"-type posts in the regular AAP blog page, but only as additional content and never as a substitute for the weekly questions from readers.

So that's the news. Welcome back everyone. Feel free to start sending in your questions again and please, as we relaunch this whole thing, try to be less shy. What does that mean? It means please post more comments and get more involved. I'll keep hitting my deadlines of course (I can't stop myself) but let there be more feedback. I've never claimed to be the guy with all the ultimate and unassailable answers... just a guy with a reasonable level of common sense and the ability to look at things from several angles.

It is good to be (almost) back.

Ask A Punk - the relaunch.

Yes people. The hiatus is now officially over. Ask A Punk will re-start the weekly advice posts very soon - so please start sending in those questions again.


During the time I took off from the site I was pleasantly surprised by the continued emails I received from regular readers (from all around the world) asking for me to bring back the weekly column... I had looked at my site "stats" plenty of times, I knew just how big, or non-big, my readership was, I had no idea how loyal they were. It was a nice, and humbling, thing to discover, and it made me want to get writing again.


I also spent some time learning about eBook publishing and am happy to announce that I've just uploaded "Ask A Punk volume 1" on smashwords.com. This eBook compiles the best questions and answers from the first year of this website in one convenient, low-priced, package. Download it today FOR FREE using the coupon code: JY34H  ...but if you do, please give us a review or some kind of useful feedback.


While you're waiting for the new weekly postings to start, please check out the newly freshened up website. I have added a few new features and pages that will be filling up with content in the coming days. I have also learned a few lessons about the downside of being an "internet island" so you'll notice a new "link role" at the bottom of the page... this will be growing on a weekly basis as well, so if you're a friend of AAP and would like to swap links, let me know.