Not your grandma's 'Piknik'
9/3/07
One-day festival celebrates punk rock
by GARY J. KUNICH, Kenosha News
HICKORY CORNERS, Ill. - Dressed in Catholic schoolgirl plaid matching her close-shaved red hair, black fishnet stockings and combat boots, the woman with a beer bong funnel and tube draped around her neck stomped toward the front of the stage.
As the lead singer of Army of Cretins leaned back and screamed into his mike, a rush of bodies swarmed forward, slamming against each other. In seconds, the girl in plaid was clothes-lined by a guy diving from the stage.
This was no place for a Backstreet Boys reunion.
About 300 people, many setting up tents for the night, packed a farmer's field a pierced lip away from the Wisconsin state line near Antioch, Ill., for Kenosha's seventh annual Punk Piknik - and no, that's not misspelled.
The one-day punk rock festival moved far from the city limits last year after police broke up the 2005 event at the St. Therese grounds, leading to complaints of brutality on one side, and police on the other saying there were several fights and people refusing to disperse.
"It got out of hand on both ends, but some dumba---s should have left when the cops told them to leave," said Stephanie Baltes, 23, of Kenosha, as she walked toward this year's concert. "You're gonna find dumba---s everywhere. You can probably find some dumba---s in church. We're just here to have a good time."
With bands such as Republicans on Welfare, Pistofficer and Phrenology on the bill, the event exploded at noon with a fury of loud, thrashing guitars, sweaty slam-dancing fans and even a quiet Hare Krishna woman in an orange dress and scarf quietly reflecting on the day.
"No Backstreet; I think they would probably get tore up out here. You'd see a lot of beer bottles thrown," laughed Tony Rec, 21, of Racine, while he sported what he called the horror-punk look - an Elvis-like pompadour, sideburns, teardrop shades and a black and red, spiked leather Misfits vest.
The spikes, he said, were for the slam dancing. "That's so people don't get too close."
While Cretins lead singer Chris Beljaeff and his band - a bunch of self-described "fat, white guys" - played their set, his 3-year-old daughter Lily jumped up and down in the audience with her grandparents, Al and Lily Beljaeff.
"We're here as a family, and we're having a good time," said Al Beljaeff, while pointing to his son on stage. "I think it's great. It's a good outlet for my son from his corporation job. I'm not going to tell you what that job is because I have a corporation job, too.
"I think they need to have this in the city at the band shell. I mean, give these guys a break. Country Thunder was probably a lot worse than this."
In the middle of the sort-of controlled chaos and kids with mohawks spiked as high as some of the nearby corn stalks, a barefoot Lisa Loring, 40, kneeled serenely in the grass and listened to the music. She didn't exactly cut the classic punk rock picture.
"We come from all walks of life," she smiled. "I've been a punk for 25 years. I started out as a middle-class Catholic girl, and now I'm a hard-core Hare Krishna. My son and his friends are out here. I can keep an eye on them. I no longer live the lifestyle, but I understand it."
Completing the "punk-but-a-mom" image, Loring busied herself picking up empty beer cans and throwing them away in a nearby garbage can.
A place like this is not for the timid, and might look pretty rough to the uninitiated, with people such as David "Moon" Strassberg throwing himself into the crowd and tumbling out of the mix with a river of blood trickling from his knee.
The 43-year-old punk rocker with black mascara, an orange mohawk and tattoos of Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop intermingling with skulls and skeletons, said it's more helpful than harmful.
"Does it hurt?" he asked of his wounded knee. "Yeah, it hurts. But it hurts in a good way. I've been doing this for 25 years. I keep coming back 'cause it's real. It's the music. It's like our therapy. We don't have to go to therapists because the music is our therapy."
A few minutes later he was back in the pit, then taking a swig of Jaegermeister. And a few minutes after that he was asleep in the shade in a hammock after a friend patched up his bloody knee.
"Moon likes to have a little fun early, but we got him out of the way so he doesn't get hurt," said event organizer Frank Lenfesty. "It's all about unity, and we really do look out for one another out here so nobody gets hurt."
