Punk Rock Energized My Life Exactly 25 Years Ago Today

“Where do you go now when you’re only 15?”

— Rancid, “Radio,” off the 1994 album Let’s Go

In the spring of 1995 — March 9 to be exact — I experienced my very first punk show. It was Rancid with the Lunachicks at the Metro in Chicago. I was 15. And in that crowd of about 1,000, I felt like I belonged. I had found my tribe. It was a moment that would transport me on a decades-long excursion, one that finds my punk rock heart still beating now and forever.