On Saturday, July 11th at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, the first episode of a new documentary series will premiere. With the killer title Who the F*** Wants to Play in Rapid City SD?
The series is the brainchild of Jack Batchelder, who watched the tail end of the 1980s-1990s local punk scene as a kid and later played drums for local heavy metal-drudge punk band Corundum. He started working on the documentary series in 2016 before tabling it for a while, but now, the first episode is set to screen alongside the latest and final Rapid City Punk Rock Family Reunion July 9th-11th.
The reunion side of the festivities features three separate nightly concerts at The Park 707 and informal get togethers at local bar Aby's. The documentary side of the weekend looks back at a time when it was all about hand-drawn flyers, music zines and college radio.
In the case of Rapid City, the radio station doing the punk scene fanning was KTEQ, the campus broadcaster for the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The western South Dakota city also turned out to be a perfect geographic stopping point for bands touring the U.S. and as its reputation for putting on solid gigs grew, so did the name-brand thrash bands coming through.
"I'm not a professional filmmaker or documentarian," Batchelder told Black Hills Art Beat. "I'm just someone who has been inspired by the community and DIY ethic of the Rapid City punk scene and believes these things deserve to be documented."
The first episode of Who the F*** offers a general overview of the topic and will be made available at some point online. Batchelder says future episodes will focus on KTEQ as well as specific bands, promoters, venues and more.
The Rapid City Punk Rock Family Reunion previously held events in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2022. Fittingly, this final one takes place on the 40th anniversary year of a January, 1986 benefit concert for a Stevens High School student with cancer, an event that is generally acknowledged to have kickstarted the local punk music scene.
[Screening event page]
Previously on FilmStew:
Punk Rock Rages On in Danny Garcia's 50th Anniversary Celebration
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