‘A Hot Plate and a Pile of Old Demos’

Punk histories often omit the significance of objects and labor of music scenes in favor of an approach that tells the stories of “legendary” bands. These simplified narratives prove useful in creating a unified history of rock music that traces a line from the past to the present. However, for a subculture that often bristles at the narratives created by the Rock Writer and shuns the notion of “rock stars,” such an approach to writing histories has been an awkward fit for punk. This article shifts focus from genealogies of great bands to the importance of how the objects used by participants shaped the scene, specifically its use of cassette tapes, to take a bottom-up approach in telling the story of the late 1980s/early 1990s East Bay Punk scene of Northern California. Through archival research and interviews, the author theorizes an East Bay Punk ontology built on the tenets of collectivism, leftist activism, and a do-it-yourself ethic enabled by the ease of use and copiability of the compilation cassette tapes produced by members of the scene that serve as the author’s case studies. In doing so, this article explores how cassettes helped to construct and reinforce the value systems of East Bay Punk and how they perform the type of memory work and approach to history (re-)making that has allowed East Bay Punk participants to shape the way people remember the scene through these tapes.