Home by Brandon

• Like a lot of other kids growing up in the 90’s I came from a broken home. My parents divorced when I was pretty young and I ended up living with my dad whose health was rapidly declining. To sum it up I was just another lost youth in America. We ended up moving to a beach town in southern San Diego called Imperial Beach. At the time I was really into Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. It was my escape from everything going on at the time.
  
  One day in 1996, I was handed a cassette that would impact the rest of my life. Joe and Daniel, some punk kids I associated with at our lunch table of outcast and misfits handed it to me and told me to check it out. Punk O Rama, a compilation of the bands on Epitaph Records at the time. I distinctly remember the bright green design with red font naming all these bands I never heard of before.
  
  I put the tape in the cassette player at home and was instantly blown away. It wasn’t like anything I had heard before. It was fast, aggressive, and angry. This was during a time without internet, where music was not at your fingertips and the only sound I was exposed to was on the radio. At the time, grunge ruled the airwaves so I was listening to Nirvana, Weezer, Pearl Jam but I was also hanging around goth kids so I would listen to The Cure, Depeche Mode, Marilyn Manson, Tool. So sonically, this was like a sledgehammer hitting my brain and exposing me to a whole subgenre I never knew existed. The opening track is Bad Religion’s “Do What you Want” and that just set the pace for the rest of the compilation.  Suddenly I didn’t feel lost. I felt like I found something. As cliché as this sounds, it spoke to me in a way music never had before.
  
  After that, there wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I’m asked weekly for new music from those two. So I started getting exposed to The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Clash, Rancid, Bad Religion. I started hanging with them more, going to thrift stores and dressing the part of a 90’s punk. On an average day it was combat boots or vans, ripped jeans, some sort of obscure t shirt found at the thrift store or surplus military shirt and a camo military jacket.   Joe and Daniel were S.H.A.R.P’s (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) so I got introduced to that whole scene. A few months later, I got invited to go to a local show with them which I lied to my father about saying I was going to a friends house to spend the night.
  
  That night we took the bus go to the show at some underground venue in the middle of Coronado, which was completely out of place for this military beach town.  Seeing all the punks gathered with their standard issue punk uniforms was an experience in itself. It was a three band bill of locals I can’t remember. The first band went on stage, started and the crowd erupted in a circle pit (Mosh Pit). Granted this crowd was only at most 50 people but to a 12 year old slightly sheltered youth who a month prior was drinking Mountain Dew and rolling dice to defeat Orcs, this was organized chaos. Watching bodies slam into one another and get knocked down only to get swooped up by another to safety, made me realize this was about more than music. This was a community. At that moment, I knew I found more than a group of kids that seemed to understand the feelings was going through. I seemed to have found a home.
  
  Over the following years, I got more into the punk scene. I learned more about the history, and even started a few bands. I’m not as active in the scene now that I’m rapidly approaching my mid thirties and a father myself, however I never left the ethos behind. Punk gave me a sense of belonging when I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. It gave me a community to be a part of when my father passed away a couple years later. It gave me a home.
  - Brandon
• IG @a.sinners.heart