Punkboot Promotions are two ageing punks

Martin & Angelina

 

We knew each other in the 80s in the days when you could take your own beer to gigs at the youth club. Martin sang in a band called PMT from Bolton, Angelina a fan of the band and regular gig-goer into the second wave of punk and skinhead. Martin into first and second wave of punk.

We lost contact with each other in the late 80s, went our separate ways, kids, mortgages, jobs etc and bumped into each other again at Rebellion in 2014.

 

In 2015 we were at a festival in Peterborough and had a discussion about running a merchandise day during Rebellion weekend. We wanted somewhere for the bands not playing at Rebellion to set up a stall and sell their merch to the Rebellion crowd. Like an indoor boot sale for punks, but without having to pay a lot of money out for a merch stall. The name Punkboot was born. This ran for a couple of years before we moved on to concentrate our efforts elsewhere after the manager at the venue accused punks visiting the merch day of stealing spirits from the upstairs bar. We looked at other venues for the stalls but none were suitable.  One said we could share a room quietly with church-goers and the other was up three flights of stairs.  So we called it a day and moved onto other things.

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We turned our efforts to two main promotion projects, we built this website to give bands a space to sell their merchandise, and we began hosting small pub gigs.  We then  became Punkboot Promotions. Soon enough we were being asked to re-ignite Bolton Punx Picnic, an event we both used to frequent. We then made this happen in 2016 with 14 bands across two DIY stages and self released a CD to accompany the Punx Picnic entitled ‘Punk Ain’t No Picnic’ including a booklet featuring the bands that played and a short write-up of each one. The Punx Picnic became an annual event and is now a two-day event at an award winning music venue in Blackpool after moving out of Bolton altogether. We tried to find another suitable venue in Bolton but it didn’t happen. We moved from one venue in Bolton after too many complaints about the venue and after moving to another, we left that too due to lack of event capacity which almost landed us in trouble with the fire brigade and the local council because we’d sold ‘too many tickets’ (you couldn’t make it up). So Blackpool became our new home.

 

The CD releases continue and we set up base camp in a very DIY workshop and invested our own money into duplication and printing equipment so we could keep our CD production in-house.  We run Punboot Promotions as a hobby around our own jobs.

 

We love our new home, it has everything we need and more. We also realised when we moved to a new venue that we can also take the Punx Picnic to other venues around the country as we see fit to help other music venues. We have been approached for the last few years to host an event during Rebellion weekend. This is our Spirit of DIY fringe festival normally 3-4 days. A very in-your-face pub gig with no stage or sound engineer but a very raw old-style vibe going on. It’s a free gig with a mix of punk and Oi bands finished by midnight so gig-goers can attend the late night fringe events after ours is done. Both our events see folk enjoying a fantastic weekend of bands old and new and support is good for the venue giving Punk and Oi a home. We have ideas and plans in place to develop our events further in the near future.

 

We have a love for all things Punk, whether that be the music, new bands, merchandise, art, nostalgia or the ethic shown by people in their punk way of life. Many people say “but Punk is Dead” Well what do they know? Every week up and down the country bands are rehearsing, gigging, and releasing albums. Some gigs are a full house, sometimes not, but they’re still there, there’s no shortage of live punk rock, it’s easy to find, and we love it.

 

You’ll sometimes find Punkboot Promotions at these gigs searching out new talent for our events or just having a night out. We put the effort into selecting bands, we don’t just look at what other promoters are doing and copy, we think carefully about our mix of bands. Seeing a band live helps us determine if they will work for our crowd. We don’t flood the punk calendar with our gigs, but when we do events, we put our Punk heart and souls into them and we do our best to mix it up. We love seeing people at our gigs that are not necessarily into punk but attend because they want to see something new and experience the weekend. This is excellent for the bands wishing to reach new audiences. Also, not all of our bands have the shouty punk rock vibe, some are very different but certainly have that punk attitude. The majority of our events sell-out which is sentiment to the calibre of bands performing. Many new bands we’ve introduced have been offered slots at the larger festivals

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From our gigs to our own DIY label. We have CD releases entitled Spirit of DIY, and our goal is always to have new punk sitting alongside established punk for every release. We want to be able to say that we helped bands in a very tiny way to success which we have seen over the years. We promise to help, but we never promise the world.  Our Spirit of DIY releases are normally annually in the form of a CD but in 2021 we released our first vinyl LP. The sale of these DIY releases helps put cash in the band’s pocket.

 

This website is key to helping bands get their music and merchandise out to a punk audience. We have developed this over the last few years. We help sell band’s LPs, CDs and clothing etc alongside our own designs and music releases.  We believe promotion is key to success as a band, and Punkboot Promotions are happy to be part of the promotion.

We don’t do drama, but we do try and keep everything in the Spirit of DIY