By Mike Corrigan

When I was in ninth grade, punk hadn't been invented yet.
Scratch that. It had been invented; it just hadn't trickled down into my hometown (Spokane), into my suburb, into my brain. It was too late to save me. Too bad. Maybe if it had, I would've found something to do with all my teenage frustration and non-athletic skills other than throw eggs at cars and run from Johnny Law. Maybe I would've found constructive liberation in the power of three chords and a simple backbeat. Or maybe not.

In any case, I'm glad DEK has found punk rock salvation.

DEK (that's "deek," not "deck") is a Seattle punk band comprised of four high school friends: Mark Vraney (guitar/vox), Bret Chernoff (guitar/vox), Nick Myette (bass/vox) and Thani Suchoknand (drums). They play it old-school (a la early-'80s hardcore) with a ferocity, abandon and unsullied joy that could only come from a group of teens playing for the sheer fun of it. Their sound, style and attitude spring from the source-Buzzcocks, the Damned, TSOL - punk rock that existed because it needed to exist, long before the form was corrupted by the lure of Bud endorsements and seven-figure recording contracts. Catch them on their first trip to Spokane when they play the Spike's Underground this Saturday night widh the Sadie Hawkins Rejects (also from Seattle), Scatterbox and the Shoebombers.

This thing called DEK ("Don't Even Know") first started coming together in the summer of 2002, when the members were still too young to drive (Chernoff was just 13). Back then, just getting through one song without having everything fall apart was a struggle. Yet they had all felt the power at their fingertips.

"I was in sixth grade," says Chernoff. "And a couple of my friends got guitars and let me play them. I thought it was really fun, so I bugged my dad and got one for Christmas. After the break, I came back and me and this other kid started trying out some chords. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was like everything I thought a guitar was all of a sudden sort of just changed. I looked at it differently. You know, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Then I actually started learning it. And then it got hard."

DEK is loud and fast, but there's nothing too heavy or even remotely ponderous here. The band's debut album, Boner (Finger Records), contains 17 original blasts of pure teen angst made refreshingly fun with liberal doses of humor tossed in (hinted at in titles like "Captain Pickle," "Monsters Crash the Party" and "Killer Gorilla"). They've opened shows in Seattle and Los Angeles for some of their heroes - Social Distortion and TSOL among them - yet take nothing for granted and are grateful for the opportunities that have come their way.

Truth be told, members of DEK have received more support from their elders than have many of their peers. Mark Vraney's dad, Mike, is the band's manager.

"He's definitely a huge part of the band," Chernoff says. "A few bands over here hate us because we have Mike - somebody who wants to help us."

The elder Vraney is also president of Something Weird Vldeo and at one time managed both the Dead Kennedys and TSOL When DEK first started practicing, he made them a deal: If the guys got serious about their music and kept their grades up in school, he would do for them what all great managers do - that is, handle all the messy business gunk and leave the music-making to them. The other kids' parents signed on as well and, to date, the deal remains intach. Vraney, for instance, managed all A's last term (except for that one B in wood shop). Chernoff says that doing well in school is just a given; that it's locked in his head.

"Yeah, once we saw that this band thing was going pretty good, we were like, well, we should probably keep the parents happy, getting good grades. As a plus, we could maybe get into a good college."

DEK breaks another stiflingly predicable modern punk mold by dressing the way they like.

Onstage, they glam it up with vinyl pants, fur coats, animal prints and Halloween costumes. In "Back From the Dead," the band rails against what they see as the strangely conservative attitudes of mainstream punk, ending with the hilarious but insightful couplet:

"You're not cool till you wear a : chicken stut / Now that's how things should be."

Chernoff explains: "When we first started, we Iooked around and everybody else had black and red skulls and everything-you know, the hardcore look. That to us is conforming. It's like a uniform. When punk rock first started, it was a rebellion against conformity."

Couldn't say it any better myself. So why not shut my gob and leave it to the kids?

"To me, punk is about having fun and enjoying being a kid," says Chernoff. "Even when you're an adult. I mean, you have to pay bills and stuff, but you can still have fun and do your own thing without caring about what other people think."