The Blank Generation-Providence Version

How many once-upon-a-time-scenesters have promised themselves that they were going to finally sit down and get it right—and do up an insider’s chronicle of the once hallowed but long dead, crusty, adrenalin-filled, dream-breaking, deliciously sick, perpetually twisted, hilariously stupid, anecdote-stacked, paradise lost burgeoning years of punk rock in whatever burg they were ensconced during that time period? Everybuddy, right? Certainly every fired drummer, retired bass player, collegiate dj, record store clerk, badboy boyfriend, put upon girlfriend, wanna-be manager, inveterate groupie, rock scene drug dealer, local yokel rock scribe, clubtime photographer, rabid dog fanchild, special-friend-of-the-band, every-night-clubster, bankrolled-the-single buddy, punk fashionista, punk graphic artist, punk idealist, and punk philosopher who managed to retain most of their brain cells and can hold a pen by the right end or two-finger tap out a keyboard.

Well, the first official memorist of the Providence punk cosmos is 

Diane Beauvais Dyal, with her self-published Punk Rock Chick in Providence. Her all-too-brief tome, while slightly amateurish, is heartfelt and sincere, and a seemingly honest and slightly raw backwards glance at a truly fertile period for local rock in Providence and Rhode Island. It’s highly personalized of course, and Dyal makes the mistake of spending a bit too much time delving into her attempts at a career in graphic design, ultimately causing the book to be more of a personal memoir than a truly penetrating look at the fascinatingly lost world.
Dyal ‘s focus is mainly on the legendary DC Tenz (called the 747z) and the not forgotten Rash of Stabbings (Rash of Murders), and their two respective leaders Tommy (Timmy) and Carlotta (Carmella). Sucked into the scene by the charismatic Tommy Tenz, she paints a portrait of him as an archetypal rock and roller that is viciously amusing—he spends most of a large settlement on drugs, continually pawns and buys back his instruments, attempts to shoot up Southern Comfort, leaves her off the guest list, kicks her out of the band van, manipulates her into paying the rent, pisses in the trash barrel, never gives her an iota of credit for her promotional abilities or design work, never holds a job, and is downright awful at sex. All so true, all so comically absurd, all so common to anyone who’s been there in Anytown, USA.

As forthright as Dyal’s retelling is, one only wishes that she went beyond guilelessness and set her authorial sights on a more expanded landscape. The book never tries for a minute to explain the thrill, the pull, the magic of any of the music, and it never delves into any of the too-many-to count peripheral ( but highly memorable) characters of that particular rock mini-universe, nor does it depict the various bands ongoing fissions of rivalry, friendship, style or substance. Still, it’s her version, and she is dancing with herself, and maybe I’m just grumbling because I, a fellow scenester, didn’t make the cut even though my own hazy-dazy yet still intact memory links myself and the author together for at least one memorable close encounter of the third kind. But that's another story...