THE SCREAMERS WROTE A SONG… “IT’S A VIOLENT WORLD AND YOU BETTER GET USED TO IT.” BAND MEMBER TOMATA PICKED UP HIS FAVE MAG, VIOLENT WORLD, AT GOWER GULCH, EARLY SPRING, 1977. THIS IS ONE OF THE EARLIEST PHOTOS OF THE SCREAMERS. PEOPLE LOVE THIS PHOTO MORE THAN ANY OTHER. TOMATA WOULD BE PLEASED. – PHOTOGRAPHER JENNY LENS
PHOTOGRAPH: JENNY LENS
Let’s start with four letters. The word ‘Punk’ has a long and tortuous history that goes back to Shakespeare and that takes in such meanings as rotten wood, Chinese incense, a harlot, a strumpet, and a prostitute. Around the turn of the 20th century, it entered underworld slang as the young man who allows himself to be taken by an older, more experienced prison inmate. In Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Alexander Berkman quotes the following exchange: “Ever read Billy Shakespeare? Know the place, ‘He’s neither man nor woman; he’s punk,’ Well, Billy knew. A punk’s a boy that’ll…”
“There was an elephant in the room: three out of the five of us were gay, we all knew we were, and yet not one of us breathed a word about it.Not one single word”