Growing up in Northeast Pennsylvania was a trip for someone into punk but completely at odds with the local Zeitgeist. On the job at the local chain record store, witnessing kids come in was a pageant on parade: the hometown goths, three months later transformed en masse into whitepower skinheads, then everyone worshipping at the spiritual altar of Ray Cappo for a bit—and eventually, yeah, Deadheads. It was all puzzling to wonder where one fit in the aesthetic and categoric realm of just listening to damn music, frustrated that the local take on it involved such lemminglike migration to group mentality in a genre that encouraged individualism.