Inside the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas

A punk rock museum might seem like an oxymoron, like a total abdication of what “punk rock” is supposed to mean and signify. The Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas makes perfect sense, though. Nobody venerates punk rock as much as old white guys, and nobody loves building monuments to their interests more than old white guys. I don’t say that as a criticism: I am an old white guy myself. An entire building devoted to the history and culture of something I’ve loved since middle school? You better believe I’m going there. 

That’s clearly the logic behind the Punk Rock Museum, which was opened by “Fat Mike” Burkett of NOFX and Fat Wreck Chords this past April. There are more than enough punk rock fans in the world to keep this place open for years, especially since it’s in Las Vegas, a city that exists exclusively for tourism. Even if you aren’t a punk fan it’s another unique experience you can have to fill out your trip to Sin City. The two-story museum offers a brisk but wide-ranging overview of the history of punk and several of the scenes that have defined it, with tours hosted by members of the bands enshrined within. And it does this while largely rejecting the pomposity and self-importance of similar pop culture museums, like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Whether your punk rock was the CBGB’s scene, 1970s England, hardcore, Sub-Pop grunge, SoCal pop-punk, or even Canadian punk (as one fellow writer on our tour was passionate about), the Punk Rock Museum will have something that will resonate with you, be it a flyer or poster from a favorite band, a beat-up old guitar, or even a musician you grew up listening to leading your tour.

The meaning of “punk”, of course, has been debated for decades. It can be a highly regionalized thing, with people preferring their own scene over any other, and there’s a solid chance your local heroes won’t be represented in this place. (I’m pretty sure I didn’t see anything about Atlanta hardcore legends Neon Christ.) There’s also an eternal schism between punk as a musical style and punk as a philosophy; some believe punk rock has to sound a certain way, while others (including myself) believe it’s not about the sound but how a band thinks and acts. You can do a note-perfect Buzzcocks impersonation but if you have a manager, an agent, a tour bus, and a road crew you’ve pretty solidly moved away from the DIY ethos that inspires punk and makes punk inspiring. Ultimately these are all very boring discussions to anybody who doesn’t care that deeply about this music or culture, and it’s all another reason why it’s so easy to write the whole thing off as a weird fixation for old white nerds. (Trust me: today’s kids do not care a whit about “selling out” or DIY ethics, and typically believe the most popular music is the best and most important.)

When it was first announced that a punk rock museum was being opened by Fat Mike, a lot of people I know assumed it would just be a marketing tool for his band and record label. And sure, there’s a decent amount of NOFX memorabilia to be found, and a lot of Fat Wreck Chord bands are represented in the exhibits. But nobody can deny how important his band and label have been to punk, and any punk rock museum that didn’t focus on them at some point would be deficient. He’s also not the sole decision maker; there’s a consortium of veteran punk musicians, promoters, and booking agents involved, known as the Punk Collective. What impressed me the most about the museum is that it didn’t just focus on that one type of punk rock. It’s a fairly well-balanced overview of the last 50 years, from major proto-punk bands like the Stooges up through current breakout band Turnstile. Less orthodox punk bands like DEVO are commemorated, brainy post-punk groups like Gang of Four and Wire are represented, and ‘80s college rock is recognized as an offshoot of punk. There isn’t much about ‘90s indie rock or the ‘00s DIY noise scene, which are both notable oversights, and that’s where the two primary visions of punk most clearly collide in the museum. The B-52’s and R.E.M. are just punk enough, apparently, while Pavement, the Elephant 6, and the ‘90s Chapel Hill scene are not. 

A lot of that comes down to personal preference, obviously. But by excluding later bands and scenes that maintained punk’s spirit but not necessarily its most obvious sound does a disservice to the culture of punk. It makes it seem like punk became stagnant once bands like Green Day and Blink-182 took pop-punk to arenas, with similarly massive bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy (who are represented in the museum’s second floor, which contains most of the 21st century exhibits) presented as the most important punk of the ‘00s. Yeah, it’s true in some ways that traditional punk has become the classic rock of today, but that’s ignoring how some of the most interesting and vital bands of the last 20 years are indebted to the spirit of punk, even if they don’t sound like it. The Punk Rock Museum does a good job of showing punk’s stylistic diversity during its first 15 years or so, but eventually hits a point where it defines it down to a fine point, and that’s when the history it tells starts to feel a little patchy.

Fortunately there are enough other reasons to go to the museum to keep it interesting throughout. If you book an official tour, your guide will be a member of one of the bands honored by the museum. My tour was led by members of Canadian bands Chixdiggit and The Vandals; they were funny, charming, personable, and had an irreverent attitude about the whole thing, candidly admitting when they didn’t know much about a band or didn’t particularly like one. They weren’t great museum guides in the traditional sense, but they were entertaining and embodied the casualness of punk, and the Canadian punk fan in our group was ecstatic to have two of his favorite musicians leading our tour. As our tour ended we passed one led by Keith “Monkey” Warren of the Adicts in full makeup and droog costume. A mockup of a punk kid’s basement living room from the ‘80s is a bit of entirely justified and welcome nostalgia; an old TV and VCR combo runs VHS tapes of punk videos and punk-inspired movies on a loop. Pennywise’s old garage practice space was moved to the museum, giving you a look into the modest working conditions for even the most successful punk bands. And the second floor has a room full of donated instruments from punk bands throughout the ages, each one available for guests to play. If you’ve ever wanted to hit that demo button on Wesley Willis’s keyboard and sing about whupping Batman’s ass, now’s your chance. There’s an on-site dive bar next to the gift shop, where you can order the special known as the Fletcher (a rum and Coke in an empty Pringles can), and you can even get married in a chapel on the second floor.

The Punk Rock Museum does a commendable job of paying tribute to a vital artistic movement that hasn’t always gotten the respect it deserves. Still, although it doesn’t feel hollow or insincere, it does feel incomplete. Even with band members as tour guides, it feels somewhat disconnected from the punk and DIY culture that still thrives today throughout the world. Vegas might have the Punk Rock Museum, but every town and scene in America has its own punk rock museums anywhere a group of kids get together to do weird, cool things in a basement, or at any DIY venue that hosts vanfuls of true believers doing it for fun and art instead of money. The Punk Rock Museum shines a bright, informative light on the past, but punk shouldn’t be about tradition and what’s come before. To really pay tribute to punk rock you should stay in touch with your local scene—even if that makes you the weird old guy in the back of the room.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He once played a show in a storage space in Lexington, Kentucky, to a couple dozen local punks with a pony keg. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.