�Try and tell us our future's at stake
You know we're gonna slamdance on your grave
Cos we don't give a shit about tomorrow�

It's funny how certain songs can be so evocative and provocative. The minute I hear the opening John Jughead guitar lick at the start of 'Hey Suburbia,' the 26th and final track on the excellent 1988-recorded Screeching Weasel album 'Boogadaboogadaboogada,' the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I'm instantly transported back�

�to the summer of 1990, when I was 20 years old. During that summer, and the previous one, I had been jumping on trains up-and-down the British Isles to attend punk's picnics, which were basically an excuse for a load of punks from here there nowhere somewhere everywhere to lie about in parks and get drunk and play music to each other until getting moved on by the police for frightening the locals.

But the best events like this I attended during 1989 and 1990 were on Cramond Island, a small spit of land just outside Edinburgh. History about the place is sketchy, but suffice to say it's a small island you can reach by a slim slimy concrete walkway when the sea is at low tide�and you have to wait until the tide goes back out hours later if you get caught out there by accident.

Or by design. I went through there from Falkirk with my friends Elwyn, Wee Dick and Andrew (different people on different years), and we made our way onto the island alongside rambunctious punks, some of whom carried generators and instruments onto the no-electricity island so that they could play free (or pay-as-much-as-you-can-afford) gigs at night in the WWII concrete bunkers looking out to sea for the fire-lit booze-fueled island-locked denizens.

I can't really explain the atmosphere to you, you had to be there�but it was absolutely incredible. All these anarcho-peace-meateater-vegan-PC-non-PC-drunk-punks parading around cheerfully shoving shared bottles of homemade booze in your face, drunk punk girls frolicking in the waves in tight-clinging tee-shirts, seals on rocks, discussions about the punk scene all over the world courtesy of 'Maximumrocknroll' magazine out of San Francisco, making homemade silly flamethrowers out of deodorant cans, dancing drunk by firelight on cliff faces 50 feet straight down to instant death�and then dancing in frenzied sweating ear-ringing huddled groups to bands like Rub The Buddha and Oi Polloi in a dank smoky graffiti-walled concrete bunker with notes bouncing off the insane-acoustic walls to float off across the sea towards the unsuspecting posh quiet area of Cramond.

I had loved 'Boogadaboogadaboogada' since I had gotten it in late 1989 (getting the band's logo tattooed onto my right bicep from the album cover) and that album, along with others by people like The Crucifucks and Descendents and Snuff and Macabre and Carcass and Napalm Death and Spazztic Blurr and Macc Lads and Mr T Experience and Dead Kennedys and a million myriad deranged beautiful angry young loud snotty others got played to death on Cramond Island those nights on a ghetto blaster carried by me as I grinned wide and drunk and wild in a 'Taxi Driver' tee-shirt. And hearing 'Hey Suburbia' will always symbolize to me those long-gone nights of anarchic youthful stupidity and happiness and the purity of holding total freedom in the palm of my hand on a small rocky chunk of land with people who liked the same music as I did and thought the same I did and there were no rules and regulations and no bullshit. Youthful na�ve way of looking at things, of course, but I was young and dumb and in love with life�

�and that's just the way it was. And always will be.

Graham Rae is a Scottish scribbler from the cheery charming picture-postcard-perfect post-industrial up-and-coming internationally renowned tourist destination of Falkirk, now resident in the US. He has been writing for as long as he can remember (started at any early age, carving graffiti into womb walls) and am halfway through my first novel (well, third, but the other mishmash misfires don�t count),� Weekend Warriors.� He has been writing about film for various electronic and print publications for 18 years now, and you can see a sporadically entertaining eclectic selection of his ramble/rantings at www.filmthreat.com.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.