Welcome to Before You Were Punk, an interview feature here on Punks in Vegas where we ask your favorite musicians and music biz aficionados one simple question: what made you the music fan you are today?
This installment comes from Blake Miller, drummer for Chicago post-hardcore band Gunner’s Daughter. Find out how a homemade Misfits/Minor Threat tape, and the soundtrack to the skateboard movie Thrashin’ opened his eyes to the world of punk.
It was the summer of 1986. I grew up on the south side of Chicago, and in the area I’m from, no one even knew of the punk or skate scene at the time. I used to wait for the weekends when my mom would visit her friend in Park Ridge, a northern suburb of Chicago. She had two sons, Phillip and Miles, who were my age. It was Miles who introduced me to the world of skateboarding and all it had to offer. He was there when I purchased my first pro skateboard. We both bought Alva decks. I skated away my summer weekends in Park Ridge with Miles and a group of friends up until we graduated from high school. It was like weekend summer camp for me. It seemed that everyone in his suburb skated and had half pipes or some sort of skate ramp in their back yards.
Phillip, Miles’ older brother by three years was into music and was in punk/new wave bands that we would go see play in the city and the surrounding suburbs. During that same summer of 1986, we were hanging inside one afternoon because of the rain. Phillip put in this cassette tape on his bedroom boom box that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. It was hitting me and felt powerful. Whoever this was that was yelling at me also spoke to me. I picked the tape case up off of his floor and just sat there in front of the boom box reading the homemade cover. When the first side ended, I flipped the tape over and listened to the second side all the way through. What I was hearing for the first time was Minor Treat and The Misfits. When the tape ended, I asked Phillip if I could have it, and that afternoon he dubbed me a copy. He also made me tape copies of Red Hot Chili Peppers s/t, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies thrown in for good measure. For some reason, he didn’t give me the song titles for the Misfits and Minor Threat tape, so I titled all the songs myself based on what I thought they were called. Years went by before I knew the correct song titles and discovered that he had given me the full Misfits Walk Among Us tape. Those tapes spent the rest of that summer glued to my ears in my Sony Walkman and boom box while in my room, in the car, skateboarding, stuck following mom shopping in the mall, etc.
During the same summer, we kept hearing about a skateboard movie coming to theaters called Thrashin’. That BMX movie Rad had already been released and seeing it made me want to see Thrashin’ even more. I remember the anticipation of my Park Ridge “skate crew.” We talked about it all summer and looked for any news of it in the new issues of Thrasher Magazine. One guy even painted the Thrashin’ logo on his quarter pipe. When we finally got to see it, it was a game changer for me. I got to see who the Red Hot Chili Peppers were for the first time in the movie. It also gave me my own personal punk rock anthem to this day, Circle Jerks’ “Wild in the Streets.” After we saw it, I borrowed my friend’s Circle Jerks tapes. I use the term “borrowed” loosely since he never got them back because I literally wore them out. You have to remember, skating and all this music was not so mainstream and easily attained at the time. Watching the scene in the movie where The Daggers are chasing Webster throughout the streets at night and “Wild in the Streets” is playing still gets the kid inside me fired up. I still want to grab my board and skate every time I see it and it brings back so many memories of the “times past” of my youth skateboarding.
All this music definitely later influenced me and made me start drumming. I’ve never been in a band that covered “Wild in the Streets,” and I’m ok with that, because I don’t want to mess with perfection of memories from my youth.
-You can download Gunner’s Daughter’s records Trust Us When We Tell You and New Skeletons for free from Death to False Hope Records. Gunner’s Daughter, and a lot of other really great bands are also featured on the 1859 Records Give Back comp, benefitting Chintimini Wildlife Center in Corvalis, OR.
Keep an eye on the Gunner’s Daughter Facebook page for news about a 4-band split they’re involved in that is coming out this spring.
No Comments