Days of Punk | BOOK GALLERY
PUNK ROCK PRESS

Michael Grecco was an 18-year-old guileless college student from suburban New York when he first discovered punk music. He followed the throbbing sound of a local Boston band named ‘La Peste’ to the basement below his favorite late night food spot. The underground club was known as ‘the Rat’ – Boston’s answer to New York City‘s legendary punk venue, CBGBs.

‘That was my introduction to punk,’ he says, recalling how the smell of cigarettes and sweat did little to mask the odor of the Rat’s beer and vomit soaked carpet. Nonetheless, Grecco was captivated.

‘I found I suddenly joined a club where everybody belonged. I could finally be myself, or at least find out who I really was,’ he says.

From that day forward, Grecco went out every night, trolling the bowels of Boston from one basement to the next, always with a camera in hand. He shot The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, Billy Idol, The Cramps, The Talking Heads, Joan Jett and The Dead Kennedys.

Now, some 43 years later, Grecco’s work can be seen in all their safety pinned glory in a special collector’s edition of his book: Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978 to 1991. His candid portraits of these legendary iconoclasts and all their rude awakenings come as close as the music itself in capturing the raw, raucous energy of that era.

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