STORM IN THE CAPITOL

HARDCORE ROOTS TO REPEATER

Making their own scene in DC, ripping up the punk rulebook and starting again… Dave Grohl, The Cramps, skinheads and Henry Rollins all make an appearance

THERE was violence in the early ’80s Washington punk scene, for sure, but it was a defensive thing. We were protecting ourselves from outside forces. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it was true – people attacked punks then. We had seceded culturally from the nation, we were not a part of straight America, so we had actually put the target on our backs.

It’s hard to really compare Washington now to the way it was back then. It’s certainly evolved. There are many Washingtons, but the true Washington was really black Washington, Chocolate City. The other dominant one was the federal culture, what the government funded or paid respect to: Hollywood, broadcast television, major labels, Broadway. I’m a fifth-generation Washingtonian, but there was an externalisation, to some degree, growing up here. Going to public schools I was a minority, as a white kid. It wasn’t a problem, just the way it was, but as I got older I realised it was totally not what most people experience. Most kids I knew, all they talked about was moving to New York, but I wasn’t going anywhere.

So I had no idea what the fuck we were gonna do. I met Henry Rollins when I was 11, and we had a crew of kids that went skating. We formed our own team, but with no sponsors, we’d go to skating contests where these kids from the suburbs said, “Who are you guys?” And we’d be like, “We’re Team Sahara.” It was just a gang – but that taught us a lot about how to create our own environments, how to redefine the world around us.

“WE PLAY WHERE AND WHEN WE WANT. WE DECIDE”
IAN MacKAYE

When punk rock appeared, the media were really derisive about it. At first I just took a