About Punks on Paper
By John Rivera, from the original Punks on Paper website:
This archive was started as a way to show a visual history of the punk & hardcore music scenes of North Carolina. In the early 2000's I had plans to make a series of printed zines with the first primarily focused on the Triad Region from the late 90s to early 00's. After years and years of neglecting the project and a setback involving my old flyers being stolen, the physical idea was scrapped and thoughts of putting the idea online digitally instead with a focus on that area still in mind. I began sorting my personal archives and combing for more online and through friends. Very quickly as my resources for data grew, so did the ambition of the project.
A few months (and countless late nights lost in a vortex of past shows) into the new project Pandora's Box had officially swung open and I began burying myself in data, scans of images, website bookmarks, old website archives, archive.org website snapbacks from the way back machine. needless to say in that few month span before the website went live it has grown into a giant North Carolina free-for-all - keeping the central focus on hardcore / punk rock in North Carolina (with minor deviations made for other underground music)
I began hand-coding the website with my "I learned how to do all this stuff in the early 90s" dinosaur skills, expanded on my limited knowledge of mySQL/php and database driven websites, spending a couple weeks getting the backend of the database setup and functioning properly with the help of a few friends and trusty google to aid me with minor problems I had. Finally the website was ready to go live in july of 2014 with 2220 shows listed and 765 flyers. Thanks to an insane amount of time dedicated and amazing contributions regularly coming in as of March 2017 we are currently at 5284 shows listed and 3258 flyers!
The Punks on Paper project lives on at UNC Greensboro and on Gateway:
John Rivera passed away on 5 August 2022. His wife, Caroline Weiss, and friend, Sarah Marson, wished to honor his legacy by continuing to make the Punks on Paper project available long term. In 2023, the collection was transferred to the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives in the UNC Greensboro University Libraries. The digital collection will be fully maintained in a safe space and is now available on Gateway, a collaborative local and regional history portal maintained by the library. The project will continue to accept new digital contributions and will also collect and make available physical materials.
We are incredibly honored to have been entrusted with John Rivera's project and will work dilligently to provide access and build the collection over the long haul. We are excited to begin the next phase of Punk on Paper.
Contacts:
- Stacey Krim,
Curator of Manuscripts & Cello Music (Assistant Professor), Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives - David Gwynn,
Digitization Coordinator (Associate Professor), Gateway, UNCG University Libraries - Contribute materials here
