While not my favorite season of the year, Spring certainly has its moments. For most people, the arrival of spring means rising temperatures, melting snow, and blooming flowers. Don’t get me wrong: Those things are great, but, for me, spring means the start of baseball season. It’s the time of year when anything is possible for your team, and you hope they can put it all together to make a run at the World Series. So, when I heard about a book called Fenway Punk by Chris Wrenn, I had to give it a read.
Fenway Punk is equal parts coming-of-age memoir, sports history, and music biography.
I live smack dab in the middle of the Venn Diagram of people who should thoroughly enjoy this book. It scratches so many of my itches that I finished it in a day on vacation, and I’ve thought about it nearly every day since. Wrenn does a great job of taking the reader along with him in a way that is enjoyable for sports fans and non-sports fans alike. I grew up in the heyday of the modern day Red Sox / Yankees rivalry, so the timeline of the plot was immediately familiar territory for me. However, his writing gave me a whole new perspective of just how intense that rivalry truly was.
That rivalry serves as the backdrop to a truly fascinating story: how Chris Wrenn and his friends hustled their way into funding one of the most successful Americac hardcore and punk record labels. A inspirational tale about the DIY and punk rock anti-authoritarian lifestyle, Wrenn had a dream and brought it to live. His entrepreneurial spirit shines through on each page, and you just can’t help but root for him.
Wrenn forged his path using stickers and t-shirts.
While he was well connected in the local Boston music scene, all the marketing and networking in the world won’t help if you don’t have the capital. That’s where the baseball rivalry comes in. A common phrase heard in and around Boston’s Fenway Park when the Yankees are in town (and honestly, even when they aren’t), is “Yankees Suck!” Wrenn and crew took that phrase and started printing up bumper stickers. They then sold the merch outside the ballpark before and after each Sox home game. That evolved into selling T-shirts and other memorabilia, eventually expanding their offerings to include shirts about players and the city of Boston itself.
Wrenn made enough money to get the label off the ground, which then gave Boston bands like American Nightmare their first taste of larger exposure and success. I grew up in the Michigan punk and ska scene at about the same time Chris and his crew sold t-shirts outside Fenway. So, the portions of the book that touched on how the music scene in Boston felt like family resonated with me. His journey is especially inspirational to me because he accomplished the goals. Reading the inside story of how a DIY scene kid went from having a big idea to starting multiple successful music-adjacent businesses gives me hope that my dreams might come true one day as well.
I did not expect the human aspect of Wrenn’s story to shine through like it did.
Instead of focusing solely on himself, he shines a light on his entire crew and their (mis)adventures in the world. From run-ins with gangs and turf wars with rival sales crews to the police and the Fenway security patrols trying to shut down everyone’s operations, Fenway Punk often read like the scenes from Stand By Me, Sleepers, and A Bronx Tale. While reading about characters like Worm and The Bouncer, I immediately started fantasy casting a television series.
Even if you aren’t a fan of baseball or punk music, I still want to encourage people to read Fenway Punk. Nearly everyone can related to Wrenn’s coming-of-age story and inspirational tale of entrepreneurship at the heart of the book. Who wouldn’t like a good yarn about the young kid who makes good? Fenway Punk should appeal to fans of sports, music, history, and simply reading something engaging. If enjoy writers like Chuck Klosterman, Michael Lewis, and Ben Mezrich, it’s time to put Fenway Punk on your “To Be Read” pile.
Pick up an autographed copy of Fenway Punk on the Bridge Nine Records Website!