Punk’s Not Dead – It’s Just Got Stories
My Punk Rock Journey
It all kicked off when I was 12 and Peaches by The Stranglers slapped me round the ears from a jukebox. By 1978, I was hooked — first LP? Germfree Adolescents by X-Ray Spex. At 14, while other kids were playing Subbuteo, I was sneaking into gigs to see Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Clash, and The Damned — usually from behind someone’s very sweaty back.
Student life meant cheap beer and cheaper tickets, and I saw every UK82 band that could hold a guitar the right way up — The Exploited, Discharge, GBH — you name it. In my twenties, I expanded my bad habits to post-punk, getting into Killing Joke, New Model Army, and Spear of Destiny (because shouting about the end of the world never goes out of style).
The late ’80s and early ’90s? A slight lull — let’s call it “creative recovery.” Then US bands Nirvana, Green Day, and Rancid kicked the door back open. Late ’90s and early 2000s, I even dabbled with nu-metal. Slipknot, System of a Down, Korn — more chains, less subtlety.
These days, I’m still blasting the old-school stuff and loving the new noise from the likes of The Interrupters, Amyl and the Sniffers, and Lambrini Girls. Thanks to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I’m now more likely to be propping up the crash barrier than flinging myself across the mosh pit — but I’ll be damned if I’m giving up my place in the chaos.
Still punk. Still chasing the noise. Still in the pit.
Why Dave the Punk?
The name Dave the Punk was actually bestowed on me by DJ Caz from Spinning Tiger Radio when she first introduced my segment, Dave’s Discs. At the time, it just sounded right — and it stuck. So when I was thinking about what to call this site, I kept coming back to it. It felt honest. I guess I’ve always been Dave the Punk, whether I was flipping records, riding centuries, or just refusing to act my age. The name fits, so I’m wearing it loud and proud.
Tales from the Pit and Beyond
Punkerludes: Some stories never made it to the encore, but they still deserve a shout. These are the punk-soaked sidebars and not-so-punk reflections — blood, sweat, stage-diving mishaps, missing posters, chronic fatigue, freaky muffins, retirement, pandemics, and the stubborn noise of being human. Call them gig memories, battle reports, or just what happens when life hits hard enough to leave a dent. They’re loud, scuffed, sometimes cheeky, and still ringing in my ears.
Grab a pint, have a read — and if it all gets a bit too real, just blame the feedback.
I Was in a Band, You Know
Actually, I was in two. The first was a teenage post-punk experiment called Esprit de Corpse, formed in the early ’80s and fuelled by angst, echo pedals, and cheap cassette recordings.
Fast forward a few decades (and a ruptured knee), and out stumbled Unspeakable!: a one-man instrumental noise machine born of boredom, stubbornness, and a G-DEC practice amp. No vocals, just riffs, weird atmospherics, and a possibly unhealthy obsession with Killing Joke. It was never meant to go anywhere… and somehow ended up everywhere.
Dave The Punk 