Success Quote by Greg Ginn

Two years is an eternity in a scene that runs on urgency, and Greg Ginn frames that wait like a quiet dare: if the gate won’t open, build your own door. The line isn’t triumphalist; it’s pragmatic, almost flat with the kind of stubbornness that defines DIY punk at its most functional. “Our first real gig” carries a loaded distinction: not just playing anywhere, but being recognized as legitimate by a venue, a crowd, an ecosystem that decides who counts.

The subtext is about power. Booking “a lot of our own gigs” reads like necessity, but it’s also a rejection of cultural middlemen. In the late-70s/early-80s hardcore pipeline, permission was scarce and taste was policed by clubs, promoters, and older rock hierarchies. Self-promotion wasn’t branding; it was infrastructure. You learn quickly that scenes don’t magically exist - they’re assembled by people willing to haul amps, print flyers, negotiate with hostile owners, and risk empty rooms.

Ginn’s repeated “trying” matters. It’s the language of a band fighting to transmit something that doesn’t travel well through polite channels. “Our actual music” implies misunderstanding or dilution: the fear that the message gets lost unless you control the conditions of delivery. And “make a connection” is the payoff punk always promised - not fame, but contact. A gig becomes less a performance than a proof of life: the moment your noise finds its matching nerve endings in other people.