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About

The purpose of this site is to preserve and make available for both researchers and fans the artifacts of the St. Louis punk scene.  Beyond simply providing a glimpse of the sounds and images of St. Louis punk, the flyers, records, tapes, shirts, videos and photos collected here also help to provide a picture of the parallel communities that punks created across the country.  Even in the smallest of scenes punks helped to found their own journals, television and radio shows, clubs, and touring circuits, independent of the rock and roll circuit, which ignored punk, and in turn punk returned the favor.  The St. Louis punk scene was just one of dozens that emerged as part of, but also independent from, the larger scenes on the east and west coasts, and what is featured here are the collected artifacts of a still vibrant scene now entering its third decade.

The foundation of this collection is the boxes of items that I have collected (or horded) since I tore my first Husker Du flyer off a light post on Euclid Avenue in 1984. Since then, without actually calling it collecting, I have held onto and squirreled away pieces of the scene which has been the center of my adult life. 

Scope

Rather than get bound up in labeling who was/is punk, for the purpose of this site I have taken the widest possible definition of punk in St. Louis.  We all played the same clubs and stages (often on the same night), used the same studios, sold our tapes at the same stores and badgered the same promoters for shows; it was and is a community that crosses musical boundaries.

Donations

The limited and ephemeral nature of many of these objects means that many become rarer every year.  What items do not disappear completely; often disappear into forgotten boxes among the private collections of fans.  For this archive to achieve a more complete picture of the scene I am looking for donations from fans.  I am not asking people to part with their collections, although I will happily take and conserve physical donations; I am instead anticipating digital donations.  If you have a collection, large or small, and are willing to let me borrow it for a short time, I will scan or convert everything to digital files for preservation in the archive.  When I return the collection I will provide you with a digital copy of your collection and give you credit on the website.

I hope you enjoy these pieces of the past and will return as I add more items and exhibits.  To inquire about the items I have listed or to donate to the archive, please contact me at kesslerg@hotmail.com