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Club Chronic

Punk music · punk community · a vivifying overlap

Freaks to the front.

Bring your stims and glims. Bring your pain and suffering. Bring the agony and the ecstasy of existence. Bring your authentic self or selves. Shed your masks or wear them boldly.

The scene is the thing, not the sound

Punk documentaries are all secretly the same documentary, and it is not about music. Community comes together to build inclusive spaces. Community rebounds after losing spaces. Community fights off skinheads with bats and pipes to keep spaces safe. Community learns how to DIY together. Thirty years of the East Bay, and the thing everybody in it keeps saying is that they came looking for somewhere to be, and when there was nowhere they built one on Gilman Street and ran it themselves.

That is the whole method and it is why a disability organisation has a punk club in it. A scene that has to build its own door ends up thinking very clearly about who the door is for. The social model of disability says the same thing in duller words: the barrier is not in you, it is in the stairs, and the stairs were built by somebody who could have built a ramp. Punk worked that out on the ground, about venues, decades before most of us met the theory. Our own essay on this is where the playlist got its name.

Lorne, in This Is What Trans Punk Looks Like, puts it better than any of our paragraphs: “To be a queer person is inherently a very punk thing. I think to be a punk person is also inherently a queer thing. There’s a lot of really vivifying overlap there between those two things for me.” Vivifying overlap is the phrase this room is built on. It is the same shape as neuroqueer: not two identities that happen to be in the same person, but each one making the other more itself.

And it is not a fable. The Linda Lindas were eleven and thirteen in a public library when they played Racist, Sexist Boy, and the reason that song exists is that a boy said a thing to Mila and, in her words, “we were really angry, and we decided to write a song about it.” Their tagline is we rebuild what you destroy. Punk’s inclusiveness was never automatic and never finished — it has been fought for from the inside, repeatedly, by the people the scene kept leaving out. That is the part worth inheriting.

The door policy

On the stage

Our signature playlist, on both services. Neither of these says how long it runs, because it is a list we keep adding to and today’s total would be wrong next week — the same reason the nature cams two doors down carry no runtime. They run until you stop them.

The list takes suggestions. Chronic, neurodivergent, depressed, queer, punk: if a song is any of those, send it through the Stimpunks contact page or in our community. It goes on as a link to wherever it already lives, because nothing musical is hosted here, and it is checked first to see that it plays.

On YouTube

Chronic Neurodivergent Depressed Queer Punk

Kept by Stimpunks Foundation · open it there →

Starts somewhere random in the list and plays on in order from there. That is not shuffle: the player has no such button, and this room would rather say what it does than borrow a word for what it cannot. Runs until you stop it.

On Spotify

Chronic Neurodivergent Depressed Queer Punk

Kept by Ryan Boren · open it there →

The most complete version. Spotify will want you signed in for full tracks; without that it plays previews.

On Apple Music

Chronic Neurodivergent Depressed Queer Punk

Kept by Ryan Boren · open it there →

Apple's own embed, which lives on a different host from the page: the page refuses every frame and the embed host allows them. Signed out it plays ninety-second previews rather than whole tracks — measured, not assumed. Signing in is what Apple offers for the rest.

On Qobuz

Chronic Neurodivergent Depressed Queer Punk

Kept by Ryan Boren

Qobuz publishes no embed. Framed, the playlist renders a catalogue page with a Listen on Qobuz button on it and not one thing on it that plays — so this is a door rather than a screen, because a link dressed as a window promises the one action it cannot do. Qobuz is a subscription service. Nothing reaches it until you follow the link.

Open it on Qobuz →Off site · nothing on this page plays it

Pinned by the door

Everywhere we keep the music that keeps us going. Layers of it, going back years, the way a wall by a venue door actually looks.

KINDNESSIS PUNK

A patch: Kindness Is Punk. In a box on the distro table by the door, free to take.

From our Rules of Punk: in a world that values neuronormativity, kindness is punk.

Signed on to the CB, take one and it goes on the battle jacket in your Profile, sewn on with every other patch on the street, whatever its shape.

The rack along the back wall

This selection is not ours. The six racks, their order and their themes come from It Take a Joyful Sound on Star Stuff, our sibling site, which is an essay about punky reggae, Rock Against Racism and why a pure tone has almost no identity. Every note below was written for this room rather than lifted from that page, because two of our own sites reciting the same paragraphs makes an argument you can only follow by having read the other one. Go and read it; it is the better thing and this is the jukebox version.

Rack One

The party gets its name

Two outsider musics were told they were at the same party, and then behaved as though it were true. Every accepting scene starts with somebody naming it.

The records in Rack One

  • The naming

    Punky Reggae Party

    Bob Marley & The Wailers · 1977 · 5:52

    Marley heard white kids in torn clothes covering a Jamaican record and, instead of taking offence, took the hint. The song is a guest list for a party that did not exist until it was read out.

  • The workings

    Punky Reggae Party — Perry sessions

    Bob Marley & Lee Perry · 1977 · 8:50

    The Black Ark version, with the alliance still in pieces on the desk. Worth it for hearing a thing being assembled rather than delivered.

  • Music as jurisdiction

    Reggae Music

    Jimmy Cliff · 2012 · 3:55

    Cliff treating the music itself as the ground you are allowed to stand on.

  • Rights, with conditions attached

    Know Your Rights

    The Clash · 1982 · 3:41

    You have rights. Here is the small print. Still the most useful three minutes ever recorded about a door policy.

  • The two musics, joined

    Revolution Rock

    The Clash · 1979 · 5:33

    Reggae and punk on one record, by the band who put them on one stage.

Rack Two

Everything brought to the front

The gesture itself. Whatever you were told to tuck away, moved to the outside where it can be seen — which is what a stim, a glim and a visible cane all are.

The records in Rack Two

  • The founding shout

    Oh Bondage! Up Yours!

    X-Ray Spex · 1977 · 3:30

    Poly Styrene, braces on her teeth, refusing to be anybody's ornament. The founding shout of everything-to-the-front.

  • Turn and face it

    Changes

    David Bowie · 1971 · 3:45

    In here because turning to face the strange is the whole method, and because this room is full of people who were told to turn back.

  • Compliance training, from inside

    Neurodivergent

    Rabbit Junk · 2020 · 3:41

    Compliance training described from the inside, by somebody it was done to.

  • Non-compliance

    Standing in the Way of Control

    Gossip · 2006 · 3:41

    The refusal, set to a beat you cannot sit still through, which is the correct format for it.

  • Against the mould

    Spare Me From the Mold

    Gossip · 2009 · 2:28

    Two and a half minutes on being the wrong shape for the container.

  • Nothing about us

    Nothing About Us Without Us

    Tommy Concrete · 11:29

    The movement's oldest demand, eleven minutes long, by a disabled musician who means it about himself. The motto is the self-advocacy movement's and not ours.

Rack Three

The door is the argument

DIY is not an aesthetic. It is a claim about who is allowed to make the thing, and it gets tested at the entrance.

The records in Rack Three

  • We'll get in anyway

    Punk Rawk Show

    MxPx · 1996 · 2:33

    Nowhere to play and a show happening anyway. DIY is not a style, it is a claim about who gets to make the thing.

  • Do it yourself

    DIY

    Dream Nails · 2017 · 1:39

    The instruction, in ninety-nine seconds.

  • Space, taken

    Take Up Space

    Dream Nails · 2:35

    Taking up room is the part nobody grants you.

  • Riot Grrrl

    Rebel Girl

    Bikini Kill · 1993 · 2:37

    The song that told a generation of girls the stage was already theirs.

  • A library, May 2021

    Racist, Sexist Boy

    The Linda Lindas · live at Los Angeles Public Library, 2021 · 2:06

    Recorded in a public library, which is the least punk venue imaginable and therefore completely punk. They were eleven and thirteen, and they were really angry, and they decided to write a song about it.

  • Owing nobody a performance

    No Obligation

    The Linda Lindas · 2024 · 2:17

    You do not owe anybody a performance of being fine. This room's door policy, sung.

Rack Four

The body in the room

The sensory reality, which nobody puts on the flyer. Loud rooms are not free, and these are written from inside the overload rather than about it.

The records in Rack Four

  • Overload

    Overwhelmed

    Royal & the Serpent · 2020 · 3:26

    Sensory overwhelm described from inside it rather than observed from outside.

  • Just relax, they said

    Overwhelmed (Ryan Mack Remix)

    Ryan Mack · 1:45

    The same overwhelm at dance tempo. For when the first one is too close.

  • Unpredictable, and harmless

    Wildcard

    Slothrust · 2025 · 3:36

    Unpredictable and harmless, which is most of us most of the time.

  • Unmet need

    Doom 84

    Screaming Females · 2012 · 7:38

    Seven and a half minutes of an unmet need not going anywhere.

  • The file, read aloud

    Diagnoses

    Kae Tempest · 2025 · 2:53

    The file, read back to the person it was written about.

  • Bent, not broken

    Roots

    Grumpster · 2019 · 4:27

    Bent rather than broken, and not looking for anybody's approval about it.

Rack Five

Care is punk

The unglamorous half. Care, rest and holding the door open are not the soft version of this; they are the whole of it.

The records in Rack Five

  • Esmx's theme song

    Self Care Is Punk

    pink suits · 2:54

    Esmx's theme song. Rest and mutual aid are not the soft version of the politics, they are the politics.

  • Interdependence

    I Need Someone To Lean On

    Noun · 2:39

    Interdependence, stated plainly enough that nobody can mistake it for weakness.

  • If there was ever a time

    If There Was Ever a Time

    Armstrongs · 2:42

    If there was ever a time, and there was, and it is this one.

  • Breathe

    Breathe, You Are Alive / Metsäkukkia

    Gaelynn Lea · Paste Studios, 2017 · 10:03

    Gaelynn Lea, a violin, and ten minutes. The quietest thing in the club and not the softest.

  • Find your people

    All Hail Open Doors

    Swamburger & Scarlet Monk · 5:24

    Open doors, hailed. What this whole room is about, put as a chorus.

  • Love, translated into action

    Evening Prayer aka Justice

    Ezra Furman · 2019 · 2:56

    Love translated into something you actually do, which is the only translation that counts.

Rack Six

Keep on livin'

Survival, which is the floor and not the ceiling.

The records in Rack Six

  • The mission song

    Keep On Livin'

    Le Tigre · 2001 · 3:08

    The mission song. Written about both kinds of surviving, and it means the unglamorous kind too.

  • Standing anyway

    I Stand On The Line

    Kae Tempest · 2025 · 3:39

    Standing on the line anyway, which is most days.

  • The norm is a construction

    Statue in the Square

    Kae Tempest · 2025 · 2:54

    The norm is a thing somebody built and put in a square. It can come down.

  • For the outcasts

    Imaginary Numbers

    Feral the Earthworm · 1:34

    For everybody the system could not make its sums work with.

  • Say you're sorry

    Shave the Pride

    Le Butcherettes · 2015 · 2:35

    An apology demanded rather than offered.

  • A good day for it

    It's a good day (to fight the system)

    Shungudzo · 3:43

    It is, as it happens.

  • One more

    One More

    Jimmy Cliff · 2012 · 3:25

    One more, and then home. Cliff closes the night the way he opened it.

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

MAX GLITTER buys you nothing in here, and that is on purpose rather than unfinished. See the door policy.

Job marker — a safety pin

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: Read the door policy

Before the code: This club names one thing it will never do, because it can put somebody on the floor. One word, and it is a kind of light.

Hint 1

It is on the door policy rather than in the music.

Hint 2

It is the one obvious effect a punk club has, and the one this club refuses.

Last hint

Nothing plays until you press play, and nothing in here does the other thing.

Give me the answer

The answer is Strobe. A room whose argument is come in as you are cannot have a light in it that causes seizures. The club has no ambient layer at any dial setting, and it says so on its own door policy so that nobody finishes the room later by adding one.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: SAFETYPIN

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →