Leslie Clague

Short answer: in 1980, because it was a lot more interesting than anything else.

Long answer: In the late 70's I was a upper middle class suburban teenage girl who wanted to be an artist. My family lived right outside of DC, but I was very sheltered. All I knew about music or culture was what I heard on the radio, read in magazines, or saw on TV--mass media, in other words, which made for a pretty limited spectrum. I think that the definition of what was cool or acceptable was a lot narrower then, and of course high school isn't a very hospitable environment for difference. My school was in a really affluent area and the predominant style was fairly preppie. "Charlie's Angels" was pretty much the beauty ideal. There were a few people in my school who were considered "new wave", which meant that they wore bowling shirts and high-tops. I was nothing in particular (being an artist didn't count for anything) so I was ignored, which suited me fine because I was really shy. I got good grades, spent most of my time in the art rooms, and refused to take gym. In 1979/80, my last year of high school, rock music meant: Foreigner, Neil Young, Rush, Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Kansas, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Yes, Little Feat, Toto, the Eagles....you get the idea. I remember wondering what my problem was, because I didn't think the stuff on the radio was particularly interesting. I liked things here and there but for the most part it didn't grab me (in fairness, I have to admit that I appreciate the music of the seventies a lot more now that it isn't being shoved down my throat). There was other stuff around then, but it didn't get played on the radio, so I didn't hear it.

One of the first bands I heard that really jumped out at me was the B-52's. I think their first album came out in '79 and occasionally I'd hear "Planet Clare" on WHFS late at night and I'd turn it up and listen, completely hypnotized. It sounded like a signal coming from outer space. I heard more music like the Cramps, Blondie, and Devo which made me sit up and realize that something exciting was going on out there. "Out there" represented what I was trying to go towards to escape the boring, safe, confining aspects of my environment and my upbringing. Something exciting and creative, not mainstream. Something that not everybody liked.

My friend Carol and I would go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday nights at the Key Theater in Georgetown. People would line up outside the theater, some dressed as RHPS characters but there were also punks and new wavers.. The Georgetown bar crowd; people from the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, college students and Marines from nearby bases, would walk by and stare and make comments: "Oh my gawd", "fucking weirdos" and stuff like that. And being a perfectly harmless, inexperienced suburban girl, but inwardly feeling like a complete misfit, I really thought it was great. I was seventeen, and it was the first time it occurred to me that being a weirdo was an option. I found the idea a lot more appealing than fitting in, which I'd never managed to do anyway. Before the movie they'd keep the lights up and show odd film clips and play music, like "White Punks on Dope" and "Turning Japanese", really loud, and people would dance in the aisles in their homemade outfits. It was really more interesting than the movie, for me.

Of course you couldn't listen to new wave and not be aware of punk. The two overlapped a lot at that point--early punk was often called "the new wave". It was my perception that punk took it further, seemed more real, more serious, and more dangerous. I knew there were punks in DC and I'd occasionally see one in Georgetown. There were only a few of them and you could spot them easily, they wore kind of plain dark clothing and big black boots and spiky hair or shaved heads--which looked really shocking then. I didn't know about any local bands or shows. But I felt drawn towards punk, although I didn't know that much about it, and I started buying records. I picked up the first Dischord release, the Teen Idles Ep, just because it looked interesting and t here were so many songs on it--more music for the money! It sounded primitive, muddy and raw. That was my introduction to DC hardcore.

Carol had gone to college in Madison, Wisconsin, and she got involved in the punk scene there. I was at American University studying graphic design. I didn't know how to connect up to the DC punks, they were a small tight group, rather aloof, and I was too shy to approach them. So as far as live music went I kept to the new wave, as I thought of it; the more accessible stuff. I saw the Police, the Pretenders, the Fleshtones, and the English Beat. I went the 9:30 club about a month after it opened (in September 1980, I believe) and saw the Slickee Boys. Carol came for a visit in March '81 and we were bored and chafing for some action. We'd heard that there was going to be a punk show at the 9:30 club sometime soon and she wanted to check out the place. We went there and stood around a bit nervously. There were lots punks walking around (I hadn't know there were that many) and it turned out that the show was that night. Minor Threat, Youth Brigade, and Black Flag played, and it was just the most exciting thing I'd ever seen. The energy was palpable and it vibrated the room and everyone there was part of it. The way they responded to the music; dancing, shooting off the stage in all directions, yelling along with the lyrics, was exhilarating. There was a lot of anger, but there was also humor and intelligence and after that show I knew that I wanted to be a punk. My conception of punk included some romantic illusions and nihilistic elements, but I don't mind admitting that. I also felt that punk was idealistic, positive, exciting, and full of possibilities.

The transition from high school to college had triggered a bad depression that lasted for over a year and I spent most of that in a sort of gray fog, thinking about suicide. I'm embarrassed to put it this way but I will: punk saved me. I'm not saying it literally prevented me from killing myself. It did give me a way to redefine myself and what I might want do with my life. I had been going along with what seemed to be expected of me--and then came the realization that I wasn't interested in continuing on that road. I want to say that I didn't blame my parents for this distress. My folks are great. This sort of revelation happens to a lot of people, I think. But if you only know one way to live, it hits you pretty hard. I wasn't able to visualize any better prospects so I started to dislike being alive. I was definitely ripe for an epiphany--I'd say I desperately needed one.

I'd been interested in punk for a while but that show sealed it for me. Feeling that it was a serious decision and knowing that it would change my life in ways I couldn't foresee, I decided to be a punk. Yeah, okay, that sounds corny and pretentious and I hesitated before writing it down for you to read. But that was the way I felt, and it was the truth of the situation in a lot of ways. It did set my life on a new path.

So what did I do after making this momentous decision? After much nervousness, I cut all my hair off. It was scary to be an insecure girl and do something that I knew would make most people think I was ugly. I thought it looked cool, but most people didn't recognize that style as punk, they just saw a person who was as weird and stupid as to purposely make herself look unattractive. It was really enlightening for me to see the change in the way people treated me when I went from having long wavy brow n hair to short-and-spiked. Most of my old friends stopped talking to me. I would walk by cars and people would quickly lock their doors, which always made me laugh. I was working in the children's department at Lord & Taylor (an expensive department s tore) when I cut my hair off. They couldn't say much, since I carefully adhered to the dress code while I was at work. But when I started coming in with X's cut into the backs of my hands they got very nervous. It didn't look good to the customers. My boyfriend, who had a shaved head and wore combat boots and a black raincoat, occasionally, came in to see me and one of the elderly ladies I worked with once asked if he was brain-damaged. No, just a punk. It was a typical reaction (so was "what are you?" and "are you a Hare Krishna?").
I quit soon after that and I'm sure that the personnel department was glad to see me go.

One of the things I liked about the DC hardcore scene was the idea of straightedge. Nobody else could believe it. "You don't smoke, drink, or do drugs? What do you do for fun, then?" I had never been much interested in alcohol or drugs so it was great to be in a situation where nobody gave you any shit about not wanting a beer. Straightedge was about choosing to be in control at all times and living completely in reality; it also challenged the generally held notion that anyone who didn't drink or smoke or take drugs must be uptight, boring, or a religious nut. Straightedge wasn't an enforced rule; I don't remember anyone physically messing with or beating someone up just because they were intoxicated. Drunk people were tolerated and sometimes even considered rather amusing
(Unless they started messing with someone, or getting violent at a show), but they were also regarded as a bit pathetic. Teasing and mind games were the usual treatment and drunks would often get confused and then mad when they realized they were being made fun of.

I had been involved in the scene (I have to say: I really hate that word but have never been able to suggest a better one) for several months before I started taking pictures. It took me a while after that to get up the nerve to climb onto the stage at shows, which was the only way you could get a good shot of the band without getting constantly jostled or knocked over by the audience. It was funny, people would often act a bit annoyed at being photographed, but later they'd usually ask if they could see the pictures and buy some copies (that was how the idea to do a book came about--Cynthia and I were complaining about how much time we were spending printing copies of photos for people). I got the feeling that boys in bands (there weren't many girls playing yet) were afraid to be seen as arrogant rock stars, but they were proud of what they were doing and wanted it documented. It was the same urge that moved me to start taking pictures. It felt so important that I felt compelled to document it.

There are some things I never photographed, much to my regret. I never took any pictures of people hanging out in Georgetown, which was a central meeting ground and the place to go on Friday and Saturday nights when nothing was going on (that is to say, usually). Punks were already an unofficial attraction in Georgetown and had cameras pointed at them constantly from tour buses, cars at stoplights, people across the street. Nobody, including me, wanted to whip out a camera in that sort of environment and start taking pictures of each other.

Shows were special occasions and they were essentially private. I took lots of photos at shows and very few of more ordinary activities. I have so many snapshots in my head that I wish I'd taken. Sitting around in my boyfriend's basement eating Doritos and listening to the newest records. Hanging out in some distant suburb, bored shitless, while his fledgling band practiced their few songs over and over and over and over and over.
Going out to Anacostia to go digging through the dusty bins of gross seventies clothes at Classic Clothing Warehouse, looking for black or gray things. Loitering for hours upstairs at Ikaros, a Greek deli on M Street, secure in the knowledge that the proprietors were a bit afraid of us and wouldn't come up to ask us to l eave. Driving to a show and piling eight people in my creaking '64 Barracuda because I was the only one of the bunch who had a car--or a license. Looking for a show and getting lost, stopping at a 7-11 in a far redneck suburb or some part of DC where white people were rarely seen. Coming in to Georgetown later than usual one Friday and finding all our friends with fresh lumps and bruises, courtesy of some roving Marines. Going to the Smithsonian and freaking out busloads of out-of-town school kids. Earnestly assuring some poor idiot who was stupid enough to ask that yes, we were indeed members of a cult. There was so much joking around. I remember humor and absurdity as the defining mood, and I wish I'd recorded more of that. And all of the faces of the people who dropped off along the way; became yuppies, went back to school, became metal heads, lost the faith, vanished, died.......

I took so many pictures but they were only a tiny fraction of what happened.

I think it was photos--and media portrayals--that brought about a change in the scene. There had been a piece on punks in the Washington Post magazine (in 1979, I believe) and an article in the Post in the fall of 1980 about the Georgetown punks, both with pictures. The increasing visibility of punks in DC brought more people in to the scene. Most of them, like me, were misfits of one kind or another and had already been interested in punk. Between 1980 and 1982 the scene grew slowly and steadily and most of the new people started bands, took photos, put out fanzines or organized shows--contributed, in other words.

There were occasional scare features on TV, things originating out of California where the punk scene was really big and had problems with drugs, alcohol and violence. DC couldn't claim a "punk scare", since the scene was still fairly small and was know n to be drug-free. But the scene inevitably became less and less underground. An article in the Washington Post titled "Slam Dancing in the Big City" in July 1982 brought a abrupt jump in the numbers of new people. I remember that when the article came out everyone felt both proud and uneasy. I think we knew immediately that it would change things and attract people who had the wrong idea of what the scene was about. "It's going to turn DC into LA", someone said. The article and the accompanying photos took the journalistically exciting angle and emphasized the slam dancing and the aura of violence at the shows and the stereotype of tough, dangerous (male) punks. Shows at the 9:30 club (which was featured in the article) and any widely advertised shows became crowded with unfamiliar faces. There were a much larger percentage of jock types, Marines, skinheads and assorted assholes who regarded hardcore shows as nothing more than an arena to act out their aggressive impulses and feel cool and powerful. The core of original punks seemed to spend more and more time breaking up fights and restraining guys who didn't seem to notice or care that the tough DC punks they were successfully pushing around were often small, skinny, much younger, or female. Less troublesome, but annoying, were the people who came to shows to see the violent punk spectacle they'd read about. They didn't hurt anyone but they didn't do anything else either, just stood around gaping and providing an audience for the assholes who increasingly took over the dance floor (now "the pit", which sounded much tougher). Because the floor was increasingly dangerous for anyone who wasn't interested in being fodder for combat fantasies, a lot of people who didn't want to just be spectators were also forced off to the sides. This, for me, was when the DC scene changed for the worse. It was inevitable, I think. That sort of energy and community is rare and depends on so many factors; a particular time and place, people with certain qualities and the will to create something. As soon as punk was defined by the popular media as a violent spectacle, it attracted a lot of people who didn't have any imagination or creativity of their own. The scene was turned into something else, not entirely bad; some of the new people were cool, there were more shows, more 'zines, more bands. But I loved the old scene, the small and hidden community I'd chosen to get involved in, so the transformation was very sad for me. I stayed involved for another ten years or so but it was never as fun as it was in the beginning.

Luckily, because of some elements unique to DC, the center of the punk scene held solid. There were a lot of intelligent, disciplined, imaginative people who kept right on doing things, creating a continuity that you don't often see in punk scenes. Because straightedge was so prevalent there weren't many drug or alcohol casualties, which also meant that people stayed around longer. The DC scene is almost 20 years old, and it's really amazing that you can go to a show now and see and talk to people who have been around and doing stuff all that time. I think that the essence of DC hardcore lies in the qualities of the individuals who created it and are still there, working and sustaining an alternative community. I admire these people just as much as I did in 1981, when I decided to join them and I think I was incredibly lucky to have been in that place at that time. Although I don't live in DC anymore and haven't been actively involved in any punk scene for several years I still consider punk, specifically DC hardcore, to be my tribal affiliation and a foundation of the artwork I do now. I've seen firsthand that that there are alternatives to boring, corporate mainstream media culture, that you can create the community you want and make it last.