A Decided Return to Form, a New Adventure, or a Proustian (?), Punk Rock Remembrance?

It's hard to believe that I will be moving back to the Midwest soon. I snagged a teaching job in Ironwood, Michigan, a town that I visited often in the late 90s because it was an hour from my hometown. I generally went there to buy records at a corporate record store (Was it a Sam Goody?). I was living in my small hometown after a poor trial run at college, and did not get back to central Wisconsin until Fall 1999. 

I had heard there was a punk venue, and I found it on one of these forays into Upper Michigan. It was called The Rat Cellar. They sold a few records and had shows in the basement. For a few years, I hung out with the local punk kids and watched many local and national touring bands in that dank basement.  

There were a few highlights from those shows besides the friends I made. Sadly, I did not keep in touch with any of them. However, I did see one of the little kids who attended those shows more than a decade later in a Wisconsin Rapids basement. Connections can be strange when you are in your twenties. I had a nice discussion with Justin Sane about the early days of Anti-Flag and his record collection. I generally still find myself getting music suggestions from most people I meet. I met Dan and Noah, two people who would become better friends when I moved back to Stevens Point, although it took me some time to remember that I had already met them. Sometimes it feels like everyone is connected in the punk scene. The highlight of discussions and music was seeing d.b.s. from Vancouver, Canada, who were still in their pop punk stage and had not yet transitioned to a more 90s emo style. I chatted with the singer, Jesse Dixon, about records, Philosophy, and books. If I recall correctly, he was a big Tom Waits and Russian literature fan. One regret I had is that I missed seeing the Teen Idols. 

Once I moved back to Stevens Point, I did not return to The Rat Cellar, which has subsequently slipped into punk lore for most of us. I'm not sure when it closed, but I know it was sometime shortly after I attended. I still wonder what happened to all the cool people I met there. Oddly, a year later I saw Anti-Flag play at Warped Tour to thousands of people, even though I had seen them play to about twenty in that cellar. 

When I wax nostalgic, those years and my attendance at punk shows loom large in my memories. I helped bands load in because I loved doing that at the time. I drank Mickey's Big Mouths with various local punks. A few of us traveled to Black River Falls for Punk Camp. I plan on writing about that show in more detail in the future, but it culminated in meeting Beautiful Bert, a Wisconsin Punk luminary, who called me a "college pretty boy" because of my Bad Religion T-Shirt and solicited my help in finding beer, occasionally yelling "10-96." 

My return to Ironwood is likely not going to be much the same. Those halcyon punk salad days are long gone, but I look forward to exploring the area and teaching a new group of students. I will undoubtedly tell them stories about my blue hair and the days I saw bands in basements in their town. I also hope to track down more punk shows in basements in Wisconsin, even as I grow longer in the tooth. I sometimes felt old at those shows in my 20s.