A Punk Grows In Utah

Brothers and sisters, I guess I should start off with a little intro about myself.

I grew up in Salt Lake City Utah...well, Sandy, which is a suburb about 10 miles away from salt lake. I graduated from high school with a C average. I have no higher education. I've never written anything longer than a Facebook post. I'm not going to pull the generation X cliché "I didn't fit in" bullshit.  I fit in to the extent that I chose to, but let's just say I wasn't the captain of the football team. I hung out with all of the skater/stoner kids even though I was neither. What we had in common was music.

At my house we had pretty much any kind of music at any given time. My folks had all kinds of classical, jazz, and a little bit of country music. My older brothers were into the 70's arena rock, Kiss, Rush, Billy Squire, Journey etc. I think what really set me on my path was when my oldest brother brought home a Frank Zappa record. It was Sheik Yerbouti. Over three decades later and I still have it in my regular rotation. That, more than anything, ignited my thirst for anything out of the ordinary. Pretty early on I gravitated towards the new wave, mod, punk...whatever you want to call it. Anyway, I was all in.  These days, a scroll through my iPod would include anything from Miles Davis to Mayhem. I go through a lot of phases. Right now I'm listening to a lot of old hardcore and anything heavy. I'm a big fan of doom/stoner/sludge stuff.

So, you've probably all seen that SLC punk movie. It's not a bad flick. It's mildly entertaining and somewhat accurate. I never wore the punk rock uniform (spiked green hair, leather jacket, safety pins etc). The people depicted in the movie were about 10 years older than I am, but things were pretty much the same. Salt lake skews toward the vanilla, and the stereotype of it being very clean, conservative, religious, etc., is more or less true. I wouldn't have it any other way. However, my fair city does have an amazing music and art community. I've been an active participant since my early teens, mostly as a fan, but occasionally on stage behind a drum kit.

As much as I love to talk about the music I like, I love to talk about music I hate even more.  I will probably do plenty of that... it'll all be in good fun and should NEVER be taken personally. So enough about me, this isn't a match.com profile. I want to talk about a favorite song of mine. Attitude by Bad Brains. This has always been a go to when I've needed a boost. It's simple, short, to the point, and sets me straight when I need it. It's fast. The bass and drums are solid and the guitars sound like a swarm of angry bees. Throw HR's voice on top of that and you've got gold. They lyrics are simple: "Don't care what you may say, we got that attitude. Don't care what you may do, we got that attitude." "We got that PMA." PMA stands for positive mental attitude. If you're not a fan of Bad Brains or have never heard them, it's time to pull your shit together and get your life on a better path.

That's it for now.  Thanks mom for reading,

PMA Joel

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