I always like reading stuff about underground music subcultures that happened not so long ago but seem as though they happened in another century and in an entirely different universe. A lot of what’s in Jeffrey Wengrofsky’s autobiographical collection of vignettes, The Wolfboy of Rego Park, which looks like some cheap pamphlet you find randomly on a charity shop bookshelf, occurred when I was a baby or a kid; and then read about as if it was ancient history, but was only a few years removed from me.
I guess the fact that I’m from an upper-middle class suburb that’s roughly fifteen to thirty minutes outside of Detroit – I’m a Midwest bumpkin (albeit one from a comfortable Russian Jewish background) – also made events that occurred in some borough of New York, where people shout in those “Whatsa mattah” accents, seem that much more exotic. I mean, the Detroit underground music scene, which arguably dates back to the late 1960s, has its own bands, clubs, labels, zines, and myths that parallel many of the things that happened to Wengrofsky in New York. But, ya know, I can just drive to the old, abandoned buildings where legendary clubs like Blondie’s used to be; whereas, to get to where Wengrofsky used to thrash around, I’d have to drive twelve whole hours!
Now, you’re probably thinking, okay, fine, yeah, but who’s Jeffrey Wengrofsky, and why should I care? Well, Wengrofsky is (was?) a typical protest-y punk rocker from the 80s, seeing a who’s-who of those copycat hardcore punk bands while yelling about what the government was doing, or something. Hey, we all need a hobby! I read Bill Zebub’s memoir, Fanzine Editor, Radio Host, and Movie Maker, and Zebub came of age around the same time as Wengrofsky; and though Zebub was into metal, rather than punk, was into Dungeons & Dragons rather than politics, and is from New Jersey, rather than New York, one thing is for sure in both cases; they went to schools where the kids were unconscionable assholes, and the politically correct barriers against assholishness hardly existed at the time.
As a result, they found escapism in underground music and the subcultural activities surrounding it.
I don’t think Jeff, who will most definitely read this review, will have any problem with me making a one-to-one comparison between his hobby of shouting at Ronald Reagan, hanging out at protests, and writing articles in left-wing punk zines to Zebub’s hobby of playing role-playing games, DJ’ing metal at a local college radio station, and, well, also writing zines; not left-wing ones, mind you. Nor will I think he’ll care that I think his whole notion of “If you were an outsider, you listened to hardcore punk” is kind of silly in retrospect; it’s not as though the jocks in your school were huge fans of VENOM, BATHORY, POSSESSED, or MERCYFUL FATE!
The bottom line is that it was a different world all around. OR WAS IT??!!
Wengrofsky got knocked out by skinheads at a hardcore punk show at CBGB’s in New York in 1985. I broke my wrist idiotically catching a stage diver at a GWAR show at Harpo’s in the shittiest part of Detroit in 2001; and there were skinheads there! His parents yelled at him for going to a dump in New York’s Skid Row and hanging out with lowlifes who we Jews are encouraged to stay the hell away from! I was yelled at by my parents for going to a dump in downtown Detroit and hanging out with lowlifes who we Jews are encouraged to stay the hell away from!
There’s also a good chance that we saw many of the same bands, only I saw them when they were older, fatter, and balder. In fact, a couple months ago, I saw FEAR and D.O.A., who I’m sure Wengrofsky saw back in their heyday, and, believe it or not, they’re now older, fatter, and balder! Not only that, but in the 80s, D.O.A. was singing “Fucked Up Ronnie”, and in 2024, they’re singing “Fucked Up Donnie!” I’m not kidding! Google it!
As they say, the more things change, the older, fatter, and balder you get, even if you still hate Republicans.
But, back to Wengrofsky and his book of vignettes; they’re entertaining and fun and take him from birth to basically now-ish and talk about life growing up with those shitty, antiquated, assholish kids who bully you in person, rather than online, to jobs that suck – HEY, another thing both Wengrofsky and Bill Zebub wrote about in their memoirs! – to creepy interactions with a character named Donny the Punk (who I’ll talk about two paragraphs hence), and scary encounters with the Black Israelites on a New York subway.
Actually, I encountered the Black Israelites myself in Los Angeles doing a demonstration outside of a metro station. I found their anti-white tirades pretty amusing, but I’m guessing it’s not so much so when you’re alone in a subway car with one of these gentlemen.
And as far as Donny the Punk goes, I had read about him first in the Jim Goad Answer Me! zine, where Donny was essentially a political prisoner from a Vietnam protest, got raped a bunch of times in prison (I’m taking such a pithy, cold tone for a reason here), and who, according to Wengrofsky’s recollection, founded “the first LGBTQ+ student club in American history”, was in the navy, in prison, and in MENSA (why not WOMENSA, HAHAHAHA!!!), where he wrote a history of homosexuality (oh, that’s why), and practiced Buddhism (because of course he did).
He also embraced NAMBLA, attempted to do things with children, and thankfully, suffered some brutal retribution because of it. I felt a mixture of horror and, well, satisfaction when reading:
“After that, I didn’t see Donny for a few years. When we next ran into one another, in the backyard of ABCNORIO around 1992, he was long-since healed, but his face was a bit crooked. We were cordial, but I was no longer interested in his friendship. Donny died from complications associated with AIDS in 1996.”
Edwin Oslan
Revenge of Riff Raff
18th November, 2024
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