My first show was to have been the closing show at Geary Temple featuring the Dead Kennedys, but it was canceled at the last minute, so it ended up being the above-mentioned show a few months later.

I was 13 and the Angry Samoans fit my mentality at the time perfectly. (And yes, this was a few years before the infamous “Homo-Sexual”, in case you're wondering.) Thank god for liberal all-ages policies at the time. I don't think there's anywhere in the US where a teenager could go alone, to a nightclub that serves alcohol, and to a show that lets out at 2AM. Such is the price we've paid for safety.

It was the culmination of something that had been building for a few years. I remember sensationalist news coverage about punk going back to when I was 11, maybe even a bit younger. Particularly the coverage of the Sex Pistols tour, which was covered literally like an approaching invasion. The media made it out to be something very bad, and naturally, I knew I wanted to be part of it. I'm not sure if PIL's infamous American Bandstand appearance was before or after my first show, but this was another landmark media event for me – it was probably the coolest thing I'd ever seen on TV.

In retrospect, maybe the media presentation of punk was a massive game of reverse psychology invented by clever marketers, but it worked on me.