How Mount Pearl Punk Taught Me About DIY Culture

 

Blog Post by Kris Hamlyn of the Secret East

A poster for the Mount Pearl-based Scum Tribe Records showcase at The Hub in 2004. Poster courtesy of Matt Morgan.

The most formative memories of my adolescents were made at $5 all ages punk rock shows in the most unlikely of places. These defining experiences took place in the early and mid-2000s from loud and sweaty tennis clubs, banquet rooms, gymnasiums, hallways, locker rooms, basements and every odd space where young people were able to make punk music happen in the St. John’s metropolitan area. For me, it was more than just something to do, or something to do with my angst. In addition to a sense of belonging, the community of my punk peers introduced me to the fundamentals of a "do it yourself" mentality. These core values of how to make your own culture from nothing more than a common passion were life changing for me, and they still play a major role in who I am today.

My name is Kris and I am in the co-founder and writer for a blog and social media outlet called Secret East. Over these last few months, I’ve been the pen behind the posts for the Punk Rock Pearl series here on the Admiralty House Communications Museum blog.  The big focus of Secret East over the last number of years has been digging up and archiving the lost, overlooked or under-told stories of art and culture from Newfoundland & Labrador and the Maritimes provinces. When Elsa, the manager at the Admiralty House Museum, reached out to me with the idea of teaming up to celebrate the history of punk rock music from Mount Pearl, it was a no-brainer for me. The significance of Mount Pearl punk is much more personal to me than just a topic I had always wanted to tackle with Secret East. Punk Rock Pearl seeks to archive an underestimated youth movement of music, art and community, and for me personally, that history draws an undeniable lineage to why Secret East even exists in the first place.  I’m a St. John’s west ender, but my connection to Mount Pearl punk runs back to my early teens.  I first started regularly attending all ages punk gigs at the age of 12. While the shows I was frequenting mostly took place in St. John's, it would be a specific generation of teenage musicians from Mount Pearl — and a slew of route 21 Metro Bus transfers — that would make the biggest and longest-lasting impression on me. Many of the first bands that drew me in were from the Pearl, as were many of the first community organizers that inspired me to get involved. Eventually, it would be a basement in Powers Pond where I would make the transition from being a kid who loved punk music, to a kid who made punk music. From preschool to proto-punk Since I can remember, two of my biggest passions have been my love of music and my insatiable desire to create. When I was as young as 4 and 5 years old, I was making tape recordings in my bedroom of me slamming on a detuned guitar. I was scribbling the album art and logos for my fantasy bands on pieces of loose leaf before I could spell much more than my own name. This young determination I had wasn’t exclusive to music. When I got interested in books or magazines, I was imagining my own publications in exercise books at my kitchen table. When I got into movies, I immediately wanted to get my hands on my Uncle’s camcorder. This pattern continued, and never really subsided, even into my 30s. 

Little did I know that these childhood habits of tape recording, writing, designing, and stapling together pages of whatever piqued my interest was actually perfect practice for what punk rock would give me the platform to create in my teenage years. 

Once my parents appeased my nagging pleas for a cheap electric guitar around the age of 9, there was no looking back for me. After I learned how to play power chords, I promptly quit guitar lessons to form my first band called Area 51 with some of my grade 5 classmates. The band soon ballooned to include every friend who could physically hold an instrument. While the inclusive nature was admirable, it was a logistical nightmare. After all, 5 guitars proved to be a few too many for songs that only had 3 chords. Area 51 quickly fizzled out, but not before we played our first and final gig for our drummer’s mom and two kids from the neighbourhood.

Promotional poster for Peace-A-Chord 2000. From the Peace-A-Chord Collection in the MUN Digital Archives. 

When I was 10, I overheard that a friend of my older sister had a band that was set to play the Peace-A-Chord Festival in Bannerman Park. The rumour was that they had some cover songs in their set from Green Day’s Nimrod album, which was a cassette that rarely left my tape deck at the time. At my annoying insistence, my Dad took me down to the park on a Saturday afternoon for a few hours, and I’m not quite sure if he ever realized to what extent my young mind was irreparably blown. In the 2 short hours I was there, I saw punk, metal, someone with an acoustic guitar, and a rap group. I was mesmerized by the idea of local young people making their own original music. I may not remember any of the band names, but I did leave with one certainty about what I had just witnessed: I wanted to do that. I just needed to figure out how to do that. 

As me and my friends inched closer to Junior High, we went to see the local metal band Bucket Truck open for Sum 41 at the Delta Ballroom in 2002. At shows like these, as well as hanging around Fred's Records and Urban Sound Exchange in downtown St. John's, we started getting handed flyers and handbills for other all-ages shows happening around the city that featured all local lineups. 

While being a kid at Peace-A-Chord made me realize I wanted to be a part of the music scene, it was these all ages shows that showed me that playing music in this community didn't have to be a pipe dream. An Introduction to the All Ages Punk Scene

The first all ages punk shows I attended were pretty intimidating. The age range of these shows started with my 12 and 13 year old peers, and spanned all the way to people in their 20s. These shows were completely organized by young people for young people, and that was very eye-opening for me. Venues like the Riverdale Tennis Club would get so packed beyond capacity that we would huddle around the steamy windows and watch the bands from outside. The chaotic energy of the bands and the large mosh pits of people stomping and dancing in circles were a lot to take in at first. Once we realized that the room was mostly full of likeminded kids who would pick you up if you fell down, we got more comfortable in our surroundings.

The scene at the time featured an ever-changing roster of bands making very diverse music. We were introduced to local hardcore bands like The Killing, and more melodic punk rock bands like Under Authority. We found ourselves frequently seeing bands like Three Chord Revolution and Dopamine, and they would be our first introduction to punk rock coming from Mount Pearl. These bands from the Pearl started releasing CDs and promoting shows under the banner of Cold Turkey Records. Seeing these young folks running their own small record label and putting out physical albums was hugely inspiring to me. The self-titled Dopamine CD released in 2003 was one of the first contemporary local punk albums that was played steadily in my bedroom for months after I bought a copy at a Riverdale show.

Nerve Attack live at Riverdale in 2003.

As me and my friends got deeper into our punk rock obsession, we started working our way backwards in the catalogue of punk rock history. We were increasingly getting into old school punk and hardcore that came out well before we were born. During these showcases of local bands at various venues throughout the city, we started seeing bands like TxMxFxI and Nerve Attack who were playing music directly inspired by the old punk that we had been drooling over. Both TxMxFxI and Nerve Attack featured members from Mount Pearl, and they were only a few years older than us. I had no idea when I bought the first Nerve Attack tape when I was 13 that the people in the band would still be really good friends of mine two decades later. 

While trading mixtapes and CDs to discover new music was still commonplace at the time, file sharing programs of the early 2000s like SoulSeek became fundamental sources for us. We would connect with other people in the music scene on message boards and trade SoulSeek usernames. Once you’d add another user, you could access their shared folders, and if you were lucky, you'd hit a goldmine of mp3s of the most obscure punk bands that you hadn't yet heard. “Distro” tables were also commonplace at punk shows where local folks would distribute, sell and trade their own curation of tapes, CDs and records of independent bands and labels from around the world. Distroing is something I got particularly interested and was a role I kept up into my 20s.

Nerve Attack's first cassette on Scum Tribe Records in 2003

When I was 14, I answered an ad on the local punk message board from someone in Mount Pearl who had drums, a guitar, an amp and a mic, and was looking start a punk band. It was Rob Forward, and while we didn’t really know each other, I first recognized him at a Riverdale show because we were both awkwardly wearing the same Sex Pistols t-shirt and had padlocked chains around our necks. We clicked, and soon me and my townie friends started catching rides to Mount Pearl and to Rob’s basement in Powers Pond where we formed our first band: The Sleazoids. The band was made up of me and Rob, and my St. John’s friends Mike Feehan and Jacob Canning. During our year as a band, we jammed exclusively in Rob’s Mount Pearl basement, and the city became a regular hangout for us.

Being infatuated with old punk from before our time, as well the history of the local scene, we naturally dug up old local punk bands from the 1970s such as Da Slyme. The name The Sleazoids was an homage to Da Slyme and their song, “Piss Eyed Sleazoid”. While we didn’t realize it at the time, it is pretty comical that we were in our mid-teens, hanging out in Mount Pearl, and naming our band after a song that was written about being drunk at MUN in the late 1970s.

The Sleazoids live the Brother O'Hehir Arena in 2005

By the time we were were ready to play a gig, Kyle Griffin and Steve Renouf of Nerve Attack and some of their crew of friends had been promoting shows and releasing albums by local bands under the name Scum Tribe Records. They were closer to our age than a lot of the people in the broader punk scene, and they were playing in our favourite bands. Besides Nerve Attack, Scum Tribe was also releasing tapes by another Mount Pearl band, The Ridiculice, and St. John’s bands like Skullface & Others. These shows specifically introduced us to a wider spectrum of the "do it yourself" culture around punk rock. Along with the music, people were designing and hand screen printing shirts and patches, making zines and art, and there was an increasing focus on ideas and politics.

Like many local punks before them, Scum Tribe was based in Mount Pearl, but booked their shows in St. John's. The Scum Tribe posters and album artwork all had a common aesthetic featuring scratchy, hand-drawn logos, as well as cut and paste collage art. We were absolutely ecstatic when our band name made it on one of those posters.

The Sleazoids first performance at a Scum Tribe Records show at The Hub in 2004. Poster courtesy of Matt Morgan.

We played our first Scum Tribe show with The Sleazoids in 2004 and our last in 2005. Somewhere in between, we all had branched out and started other bands and projects. Me and Rob briefly played in the David Butler Band, as well as Profession: ill with Kyle Griffin and Kady Meaney, a band in which I was the only member not from Mount Pearl.

I spent a lot of my time as a teenager split between hanging out in downtown St. John's and beating the streets and walking trails in Mount Pearl, where many of my friends and bandmates lived. It is important to mention that not all of our time was spent being constructive. After all, we were teenagers. There was a lot of mischief and many stories that are best left unpublished on a blog, but are still a vital part of growing up. At the time, our little pocket of the music community didn't necessarily feel like we were doing anything extraordinary. It felt like we had a shared vision of the music we wanted to hear and the shows we wanted to see, and we were doing whatever we could to make it happen. In retrospect, it was much more impressive than we gave ourselves credit for. Before any of us were old enough to have our drivers license, we were already gaining experience in organizing and promoting gigs, recording our own music, hand-making our own albums, as well as designing and creating art and merchandise. As we got older, we continued to play in bands and put off shows, and many of us are still involved in the music community to some capacity today. Not to sound too cliché, but some of my longest-lasting friendships were formed during these years. Most my closest friends to this day came from this music scene, more so than from my years in high school.

Icebreaker live at Headquarters in 2009

When I was 19, I was fortunate enough to tour eastern Canada with my band called Icebreaker. Fittingly, the tour was organized by my first bandmate, Rob. We shared the tour with Rob’s band Weak Link. Looking back on it now, it is pretty much perfect that I capped off my teenage years touring across provinces with Rob just 5 years after starting our first band in his parent’s basement. 

Even into my 20s, my connection to Mount Pearl punk kept going. As the new decade of 2010s approached, we connected with the next wave of young Mount Pearl bands such as I Was A Skywalker, and their band members Kieran O’Connell, Derek Ashley, Glen May, Matt "Walt" Earle, and Elsa Simms (the Admiralty House Communications Museum manager herself!). We all played many shows together and became fast friends, and in many cases, we became bandmates. Both Kieran and Derek of Skywalker would eventually play in a band with me called George Nervous, which was my main musical project in my 20s. Outside of just playing music, myself and Kieran O'Connell shared an interest in starting some sort of local online magazine or blog. We spent a lot time together brainstorming and workshopping, and after Kieran introduced me to his friend Jesse Burns, who he also grew up with from Mount Pearl, the three of us started what would become Secret East. Lessons Learned

At the beginning of the Punk Rock Pearl project, I had long recognized the importance of Mount Pearl punk to the history of the alternative music scene of Newfoundland & Labrador as a whole. I knew it was a story that needed to be told, but it wasn't until I began to spend all these hours collecting stories, photos, sounds and memories that I truly appreciated the impact that this community had on me personally. The most important lesson I took away from the punk scene is clear: you don't need to wait for approval or permission from outside forces to make music, art or culture. A shared passion and spirit amongst a small group of like-minded people can almost always trump any obstacle that can get in your way.

I've been fortunate enough to spend many years writing music, playing in bands, organizing shows, touring, distributing, and releasing music, as well as helping to create projects like Secret East as a way to channel my need to create. Without the tools and mindset I learned from the local punk rock community, these things never would have felt attainable. Even today, without punk music made in Mount Pearl, would I even have an opportunity to publish my work on a museum's blog? Who knows, but I'm grateful that it has. The Punk Rock Pearl project has been extremely fun, and I'm excited to continue to build it. If you have any stories, memories, or memorabilia from the history of punk music in Mount Pearl, please don't hesitate to reach out and get involved. You can also follow the project on Instagram for more Mount Pearl punk memories.