So, today it was announced that Pastepunk.com was shutting down. This might not be huge news outside of the “people who read punk website” set, but it is huge to me. When I first got stoked on punk rock, there were two sites I checked daily. PunkRocks was one, and Pastepunk was the other. Both of those site are now done, and it is a goddamn shame.
I have been reading Pastepunk for over a decade, even after it became heavy on strict hardcore and metal bands (despite my general ambivalence to the former, and general dislike of the latter). The reason is because I grew fond of the people doing it. I liked going back and reading the old columns. Jordan Baker always had good ones (my favourite was “Attention: Distributor Of Scene Points”), as did Tami Ryan. Punknews is great, but it doesn’t allow itself to have the personality that Pastepunk (or PunkRocks for that matter) had.
I started high school in 1999. As is the case with a lot of people, I really got into punk rock while in high school. I missed the mid-90’s punk stuff because I was too young to understand it (I was only nine or ten when records like Dookie, Smash, and Stranger Than Fiction came out and brought mainstream attention. Never mind the older stuff). After an awkward phase of radio alternative rock and nu-metal in the late 90s, I finally discovered punk. From then I was on a mission to find new things. Pastepunk was right up my alley.
Most punk sites and blogs want to be Punknews, which is fine. I want to be Pastepunk. My ultimate goal, if I could find a way to balance content and quality here, is to accomplish just half of what Pastepunk did. I want to provide to some young punk kid with what Jordan Baker and his contributors provided to me. I’ll probably never be that good, but it is my goal. While my tastes diverged from what they were covering, Pastepunk was hugely important in my growth as a music fan. It was where I fully formed my love for the forbidden beat.
Thanks a bunch Jordan. Broken Lamps And Hardcore Memories was fucking great.
Team Reasonable 