It’s never just about the music. It starts with the music, the music gets inside you, hot flashes of noise rushing through your veins, but next thing you know you’re living inside of it, wearing it like a jacket. It starts with the music, but then it’s the dirty bathrooms of bars, the sun rising all peachgold as seen from your best friend’s apartment; it’s the smoke and the sweat, the rails of drugs and the rail drinks, the salty lips of all the boys and girls you’ve kissed. There may come a day when you stop going to as many shows, a day when your record collection has grown to include other kinds of music, but you can’t shed it that easily. Because it started with the music, but became your whole life—and you can stop the girl from going to Kenosha, but you can’t take the Kenocore out of the grrrl.
Over the course of this month I’m gonna be making a series of posts over on Substack, all revolving around southeastern Wisconsin. The first three will be previously published pieces (which have either only appeared in print publications or were on websites that are now defunct); the fourth will be a brand new piece for paid subscribers only. The first one, about my involvement with the punk scene in Kenosha, was originally published at Witchsong in 2015.
