Every Friday (or whenever we get around to it) the punk rock geniuses here at Dying Scene unleash a tasty little nugget of punk rock trivia in an effort to blow our readers’ minds. Also, we like to make ourselves feel smart. Today’s fun factoid is one you might not have expected.
Post-Danzig era Misfits singer Michale Graves is a self-proclaimed “conservative punk,” and in the early 2000’s he co-founded conservativepunk.org, a news/forum-based organization that allowed punks to discuss their right-of-center political views (they didn’t have anywhere else to do it). The website’s founding was considered to be a counterpoint to Punk Voter, a left-leaning site founded earlier by NOFX’s Fat Mike.
Graves and his website retained a fairly small readership until a (pretty funny) Daily Show interview aired in 2004. You can watch Ed Helms’ interview with Graves here. The clip also contains a partial interview with Brendan Kelly of The Lawrence Arms.
In early 2010 co-founder Nick Rizzuto (not to be confused with mobster Nic Rizzuto) stopped paying the site’s hosting fees, and the organization went defunct, forcing its, let’s say, twenty(?) red-state punkers to look for support elsewhere.