Reagan Youth

Reagan Youth got their start in 1980 while its founding members were in high school. Soon after their formation, the band started playing punk clubs around Manhattan; they even managed to enlist one of their high school professors as a roadie. Local tours quickly turned into national tours, and Reagan Youth found themselves sharing bills with the likes of the Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, and most of the other major punk bands of that time. Their music reflected their name -- ironic, bratty, and opinionated. The group released a few singles and a couple of albums during their existence which ended, appropriately enough, with the exit of Ronald Reagan from the White House. Surviving founding member Paul Cripple (aka Paul Bakija) assembled a new lineup of Reagan Youth in 2006, but the band's story came to an end when he died in 2024 after a long bout with cancer.