What MacDonald really can’t stand is his own pain. But as he roams further afield, he runs into punk, which will give that anguish an outlet. At first, the overwrought 13-year-old resists. “Once I’d seen Davey after his jump from the roof, I’d seen ugly enough. I didn’t need to go looking for more.” Until, that is, he witnesses a local black-clad punk-rock fan set upon by Southie toughs, and finds himself thrilled by the punk’s defiance. He follows the music fan into a record store and leaves with a copy of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks. When he plays the record that night, life changes. “Then, in an instant of crashing guitar and a bloodcurdling voice that I could barely understand, the world of Old Colony Project began to crumble around me. Once and for all. It was terrifying and beautiful.” He listens to Johnny Rotten’s snarl and recognizes the sound. “It was as if the voice was my own, and I’d rediscovered it in the rubble around me.”
From this point on, it’s inevitable that MacDonald would find the local scene. He stumbles into a Thayer Street loft party and meets kindred spirits, including scenesters Rita Ratt and Springa. Soon, he’s tuning into college radio and hanging out at record stores. For about half the book, MacDonald’s story chronicles the Boston scene of the early ’80s. He sneaks into Cantones and the Underground and hears Mission of Burma, Unnatural Axe, and LaPeste. He discovers that he can hide in the ceiling of both the Bradford and the Channel and wait there for bigger acts — the Clash, the Buzzcocks — before descending.
For MacDonald, the music becomes more than catharsis. Bands continue his education once he leaves school, teaching him about poetry, art, politics — and himself. “I was amazed . . . that white people from places like Old Colony would be so preoccupied in their songs and interviews with fighting racism,” he writes. “Reading of these kids talking about class made me realize for the first time that I had grown up poor.”
But the family madness would not let up. Older brother Frank, all muscle and Izod shirts, becomes a bouncer at the Rat, and the siblings agree not to recognize (and embarrass) each other in front of their respective friends. But when older sister Kathy falls from a roof during a fight over drugs, the past becomes impossible to ignore. As she lies in a hospital bed, battling pneumonia, the zest for his new life leaves MacDonald. After more tragedy — more deaths — the author’s punk adventure is over. He’s launched into the world, however, and Easter Rising follows him to Ireland, where he brings his family history full circle.
“I do believe that whole exposure to the music scene and punk was really important, really life saving,” says MacDonald when we talk by phone. “It gave me a place to not have to be anything in particular, not have to be all the things you were supposed to be growing up in Southie.”
