It's me, the Punk Princess of Wormtown, Nicole Peters, saving a spot so when you look for "Wormtown" and "Punk" you don't get links to That Other Place.
Instead, I want you to find this much better place, which can describe the goings on of Wormtown better than I ever could!
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As for who I am, I'm a humble punk kid, but my mother and father are punk rock royalty, and if there is anything I can do to preserve the scene that raised me, I will. In 1978, there was a terrible blizzard in Massachusetts, my older brother was born, and my father produced a little LP. Here it is. See those two flanking the 78?
Yeah, that's my mom and dad respectively, right in the middle.
I've asked my dad about it a few times, since the basement, where I played on a computer he built, was where practice was held.
'You can just make your own label,' my dad marveled. 'You don't need to be anyone important, you don't need to pay a lot of money.' And so, the words I heard in the womb, the resounding "KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!" would be immortalized on a... Well, a huge mountain of records in crates we couldn't give away, but that now go for a pretty penny on the second hand market as a piece of punk rock history. Because of the record, Wormtown's birth is considered to be in 1978.
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My parents were there for Wormtown's 25th birthday, and I intend to ring in...
WORMTOWN '28!
That's right! I'm gonna work hard and practice with my mom's current band, Musclecah, and other musicians until I can scream just like her and maybe sing Wormtown a few old songs in a few years, when it will be the 50th anniversary.
I figure I did this just in time for the whole "Wootown" makeover, the sweet, gritty flavor this bag of worms has always had. I live here now, I've lived here all my life, and I even got my first degree in design back in the aughts, right here in Wormtown.
My dad gave me a box of tapes from their practice dating back to the beginning, and I've been converting them to files for everyone.
If you'd like to know more about Wormtown, here's a few links to start with!
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Why is it called Wormtown? What is Wormtown Punk?
I had a bunch of links but it seems this podcast will cover it, which is linked to on LB Worm's eternal Punk Blog.
Here's a link to Radio Worcester, if you're podcast-inclined. Otherwise, the summary of the podcast is better than any other sources I'd been able to find, since it's directly from the mouth of the Mayor and his Scribe. In short, it is a self-effacing name made to be a joke on Beantown. There is a pride in the imperfection, the way one might take pride in being called a punk kid. Punk is about innovation, it's about change, and, in that way, Brian Goslow considers it to be noble, that we are associated with worms, because it implies growth-- like how you want worms in a garden.
The name wasn't copyrighted because it was the name to describe a late 70s punk scene, and they weren't the kinds of people to be limited by labels. If they wanted any of that, they wouldn't have been Punk. Pretty much all of the classics had the talent to go mainstream, but they didn't. I've seen websites talk about piercings and green hair, basically a 90s idea of punk, but, from what I know, punk is that, yes, but also much, much more. Punk is a stack of leather jackets, it's jeans instead of polyester, it's converse sneakers instead of platforms, it's real and sincere, no matter what form it takes. I do not feel that the brewery that took the name is very punk rock. I think if they nodded, even slightly, to their supposed inspiration, rather than hide from the angry punk rockers who created the scene, none of the wonderful people who made Wormtown would take issue.
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