It Starts With Anger

In 1991, fifteen-year-old James Spooner arrives in New York’s West Village, hopeful that he’s finally escaped the extremist racism of his Southern California desert town. Still, a question looms large over his cross-country move: What will New York City make of this tartan plaid-and-leather-clad, mixed race, Black kid with a mohawk? Will he find his people?

Thus begins Spooner’s insider’s account of the nineties downtown New York punk and early aughts pre-Giuliani nightlife scenes. In the city’s legendary rock clubs, squat basements, and DIY art spaces, he finds his way to creating zines, starting a record label, and promoting parties, while falling further in love with punk rock’s distorted guitars and politically progressive lyrics.

Happy to have left a world of Nazi skins behind, he must still navigate the casual racism and bigotry of a seemingly all-white echo chamber; a world stubbornly resistant to his Black/punk identity. Intent on carving a space for young, Black, politically radical punk rockers like himself, Spooner undertakes a whirlwind tour of the country, collecting the stories that will become his acclaimed documentary, Afro-Punk, and eventually lead to the wildly successful music festival of the same name.

But what begins as a way to chronicle the joys and heartaches of being Black and punk rock soon spirals into a multimillion-dollar corporate endeavor. Spooner is forced to ask himself: In setting out to galvanize an underground movement, has he in fact given rise to the least punk rock thing of all—a brand?