By: Benjamin He
In the ’70s, high school students often spent nights at band performances, enforced by few rules. In 1977, the first generation of New York City’s punk and alternative bands had moved on to larger venues and the international touring circuit. Despite this, however, the streets of Manhattan were filled with underage patrons. Underage, but very hyped.
Some of them were dropouts and runaways. Some were from the suburbs. Practically all of them were under 18.
Over the course of the next four years, they had created their own rock scenes. They played all sorts of music in places such as CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, Hurrah, and TR3. These were special moments in the city’s history that changed the lives of those living there. However, most of their stores remain mostly unknown.
Among the performers was Eric Hoffert, who, after finishing his homework from Bronx Science every weekday, practiced his guitar for hours. On weekends, he spent time with his band, the Speedies.
Arthur Brennan, a 16-year-old from the town of Groton, Connecticut, often hitchhiked 20 miles to the only newsstand that sold magazines that covered new music. He eventually renamed himself Darvon Staggard and ran away to New York to join a band.
There was also Kate Schellenbach, a ninth grader at Stuyvesant, who heard that some of her age group were playing at the most famous music clubs in the world, just blocks from where she lived.
“I remember going into the girls’ bathroom,” she said cheerfully, speaking via video chat, “and this girl, Nancy Hall, who was the coolest, was sitting on the sink.” Nancy Hall had told Kate that she should go see a band called the “Student Teachers” playing at CBGB later in the week.
“If I hadn’t seen the Student Teachers that fateful night, I might never have been a drummer,” said Schellenbach. She eventually helped found the Beastie Boys in 1981 and kept going to form Luscious Jackson. “It made me think, ‘Oh, maybe this is something I can do,’” she added. “These people were still in high school — it seemed attainable.”
This was the first generation to grow up along with punk music. The most important and well-known groups were the Speedies, a band made up of overachieving teens, The Student Teachers, who hyped crowds with art pop, The Blessed, possibly the first, sloppiest, and most fashionable band to come into play, and the Colors, who played bubble-gum music like the Speedies and were mentored by Blondie’s drummer, Clem Burke.
“We didn’t know any better,” said Nicholas Petti, who, in 1977 at age 13 began to call himself Nick Berlin.
The Blessed were the band that Arthur Brennan ran away to join. When private detectives finally managed to locate him and arrived to retrieve him, he was glad to leave his other identity, Darvon Staggard.
“After the first night, it’s really not that much fun sleeping at the all-night Blimpies on 6th Avenue,” Brennan, now a public-school teacher in Los Angeles. “But it was such a sense of relief to meet people who were like you. In your own hometown, you’d be considered a loser-slash-weirdo. We were kids learning how to act in a crazy, artsy adult world.”
All of this begs the question, however, how did the scene not get shut down somewhere? As it turns out, none of the well-traveled downtown venues— CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, TR3, or Studio 10 — checked IDs on the regular according to the musicians. The venues uptown, such as Hurrah or Trax, were about as good with underage security as the downtown ones were, only loosely enforcing age-based alcohol restrictions.
In 1980, the punk scene was both evolving and dissolving as the members of the movement moved on to other things. Some of the members continued to the local hardcore movement while others proceeded to head off to college or get jobs.
Schellenbach looked back at her memories of the “magical time” in New York City: “It spawned so many cool things — art, authors, hip-hop. A magical time in New York City!”
Source:
The Stories of Teen Punks That Ruled New York In the Late ’70s – The New York Times.pdf