In the early ’80s, playing in a punk band was the ultimate act of adolescent defiance, a stiff middle finger flicked in the direction of school, parents, jocks, and the straight-and-narrow. Often, a price was exacted–even just looking like a punk rocker could invite a beating in the high school parking lot from marauding Ted Nugent fans.
Roll over Johnny Rotten, times have changed. Now a punk band such as Glen Ellyn’s Spitalfield is not only accepted by parents, peers and school administrators, it’s even returning to Glenbard South High School–the alma mater of singer-guitarist Mark Rose and drummer J.D. Romero–on Saturday to play a benefit for the school.
“The school was always cool about the band,” says Rose, 21, who formed Spitalfield with Romero and two other classmates when he was a sophomore at Glenbard South. “We passed out flyers for our shows in the hallways, and the teachers never looked down on us and the students supported us. They even went so far as to let us perform at the school on a couple occasions.”
Spitalfield joins a long, winning tradition of Chicago suburban punk bands–such as Screeching Weasel, the Smoking Popes, Apocalypse Hoboken–that grew up playing all-ages shows in their parents’ basements, back-yard barbecues, VFW halls and anyplace else that would have them. By the mid-’90s, punk had became part of mainstream music’s language. Now multimillion-selling artists such as Blink-182, Good Charlotte and Avril Lavigne have taken punk signifiers such as velocity, brevity and attitude and turned them into MTV bon-bons, eagerly gobbled up by suburban teens and pre-teens. The “anti” stigma of much punk rock has faded, for better or worse.
“There’s still that defining line between those punk rock kids who represent what punk rock was in the ’70s and ’80s, the kids who openly despise anything corporate, anything organized, anything school-function related, kids who would ditch class to smoke in the bathroom,” Rose says. “But you can count them on one hand. Especially after the commercialization of bands like Blink-182, Rancid and Simple Plan, there are a lot of kids who wear chain wallets and band T-shirts to school, and listen to punk. That doesn’t make them punk-rock kids, but it did make a band like ours a lot more accessible to more people in high school.”
Rose discovered punk through a classmate’s older brother while still in middle school. By the time he was in his teens, Rose and Spitalfield were playing shows with other punk bands in Glen Ellyn and the surrounding suburbs. Before they were out of high school, the four schoolmates were getting booked at the Fireside Bowl, the all-ages mecca on Fullerton Avenue, and later played Metro. Spitalfield put out records on local indie label Sinister, before signing last year to Chicago-based Victory Records, one of the nation’s most prestigious and commercially successful punk labels.
Spitalfield’s Victory debut, “Remember Right Now,” gives pop-punk formula a more nuanced spin, with atmospheric guitar parts and subtle string orchestrations augmenting melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place on a No Doubt album. “I listen to John Mayer, I’m not gonna lie,” Rose says with a laugh. He also attributes the band’s genre-tweaking variety to guitarist Dan Lowder, a Naperville native: “He listens to a lot of music that we don’t. He can’t tie himself to one genre: Radiohead, extreme hardcore, Morrissey. When he comes up with guitar parts, he’ll do something that at first we almost despise, but we find that middle ground and we come up with our sound.”
After playing 275 shows in North America since “Remember Right Now” was released last summer, pushing album sales to 25,000, Spitalfield insisted on headlining one more gig. The school district ordered their alma mater, Glenbard South, to cut $70,000 last winter, endangering a number of extracurricular activities, including both gymnastics teams. The booster club raised $48,000 by last spring to keep several programs afloat, and approached Spitalfield about cutting further into the deficit for the new school year.
“The band is being very generous,” says Cori Romano, president of the booster organization. “They have a big following here, and we hope to raise $6,000 from the show.”
Romano laughs when it’s suggested that punk bands once weren’t welcome in school corridors, and now they’re being embraced with open arms and wallets. “The administration has been very open-minded about this,” she says.
Rose plans to hold up his end of the deal: “If it weren’t for those shows at the school when we were students there, I don’t know if we would’ve even kept going as a band. They put a lot of faith in us, so we’re happy to help.”
Spitalfield
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Glenbard South High School, 23W200 Butterfield Rd., Glen Ellyn
Price: $10-$12; 630-942-6789
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Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 11 p.m. Sundays on WTTW-Ch. 11 and 10 p.m. Tuesdays on WXRT-FM 93.1.
