Born in the early 1980's from a mixture of 70's swagger and 80's punk attitude, the Ginker was truly an American archetype forged in the fiery suburbs of Jersey. With latchkey freedom and Jersey safety, the metal and burnout culture of the teenage years provided ample latitude for these young men and women to become the preeminent icons of defiance and hard rock culture.
Most hailed from working class families newly arrived in the burbs from Bayonne, The Bronx, Jersey City, and beyond. Families looking for their edge of the American dream found it in the quiet jogging trails and soccer fields that existed throughout the various exits off of the Turnpike. With their sons and daughters provided with some relative safety and a measure of distance from their working parents who made the work commutes back to the cities they left, these families were creating the very breeding ground for teen rebellion; boredom and time.
As these kids grew to young adults with the haze of the 1970's drug culture still clinging to the air, they found arcades, all-night diners and schoolyards to be perfect places for secluded pot smoking, beer swilling, and acting out their newly created metal fantasies. For some, growing their hair long and donning leather and denim was an act of fashion rebellion, for others, it was the equivalent of Batman finding his suit hanging and ready; finally something that fit and fulfilled them.
After finding themselves on the outsides of most circles, the Metal kid eventually became what most limenal dwellers became, mainstream. In the middle 80's with the popularization of MTV and video culture, some Metal music filtered into the airwaves and with bands like Metallica and Judas Priest regularly selling out concert halls, kids with long hair and leather vests were suddenly everywhere.
And as hard as they fought for some respect, watered down acts created in corporate boardrooms selling metal light to teenage girls began to overtake the harder acts. Still more damage was done in the early 90's with the advent of grunge.
These actions only pushed the true metal diehards further to the outside. And for years they remained there...like a hulking beast, awaiting a return to feed...
With the production of the Ginker's documentary, we set about to tell the metal story unvarnished and spoken to us as an oral history of a recently departed past. We found some metal lovers still actively courting fate with their unchanged lifestyle. Others, rehabilitated and living the normal life. We even managed to find a new generation of metalheads at times more dark and more rebellious than their counterparts, some 25 years removed.
With our filming close to complete, we will track our progress here, covering festivals, production information, and other bits of metal mayhem.
Stay tuned.
