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 Matthew Spence, bass player for Holyoke MA’s The Stereo State. Find out about his Green Day goose bumps and how they put him on the path to where he is today.
As far as I’m concerned, I was born in 1994. I was 12 years old at the time and the only non-white student in my Roman Catholic 7th grade class. As care-free as any middle school kid may seem to the adult world I have never felt so fucking disconnected and alienated in my life. There are factors that I can attribute to feeling so out of step, but at the time it was nothing I could imagine let alone put my finger on. Honestly I was never a completely miserable kid but no one in my world at the time could have ever understood how I felt.
One day things drastically changed. I heard something that would inevitably change the entire course of my life from that day forward. It was a tight and crunchy palm muted guitar being played by itself but accompanied by a voice that was somewhat snotty and nasally. There was a sense of desperation and insecurity in every syllable. The voice was speaking directly to me. The words could have come out of my own mouth, but they belonged to someone else. The voice asked me: “Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once?” I know it seems silly now, but I was completely floored by this. I had goose bumps up and down both arms and I felt this sense of urgency that I never knew existed. When I finally got my hands on this cassette I not only literally wore it out but I feel like I could recite all the liner notes. From that day on I was hooked on that feeling and I became nothing short of a junkie searching out music to make me feel like that again.
The connection that was made with me and punk/hardcore was something I could never have fathomed. There were thousands of other people out there that felt just as fucked up about themselves and this world as I did. Before the internet was in every household I was able to discover these bands by going to shows, buying compilations, trading records, and hearing the incredible soundtracks to any BMX films I could get my hands on. Finding out about Rancid, NOFX, Offspring, Lagwagon, Jawbreaker, Descendents, Blink 182, Bodyjar…I literally can’t put into words what this meant to me. Shortly after this my brother Brandon Spence and Gabe Griffin (who both play in The Stereo State) started their first band, and essentially I joined that band a few years later. This reached new depths of how completely submersed I was into this music. Now that we are doing The Stereo State the most rewarding and humbling thing to hear is when our music has impacted someone’s life.
1994 was more than half my life ago at this point. I listen to and truly love music of almost every genre but I owe everything to punk rock; it changed and saved my life in so many ways. I am one of those melodramatic fools. Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it.
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