Jamie Keever/Karen Kelsall Lagola photos

Everybody's Scene

A book launch party in two parts: afternoon show with Malcolm Tent. 3 p.m., Nov. 27. Channel 1, 220 State St. Free. 203-789-0309, channel1online.com. Evening show with Powersurge, Lost Generation, CIA, Crippled Youth and DJ Chris Leach. 8 p.m., Nov. 27. Café Nine, 250 State St. $5. 203-789-8281, cafenine.com, anthraxclubbook.com.

Expect lots of graying or grown-in mohawks at Café Nine this Friday night — all due to the fact that there's going to be a book release party for Everybody's Scene, a rollicking tale of the Anthrax club, a legendary '80s Connecticut punk hangout. Which, in turn, grew a whole indie scene similar to the ones in New York and L.A.

Wear your Vatican Commandos T-shirt.

Put new laces in your Doc Martens.

Cherish your rebellious past.

"The Anthrax Club was just a skateboard ride away for me," says author Chris Daily, whose glorious time spent at the club inspired him to write its history. "I began going in 1985. When the Sheridan brothers, Brian and Shaun, started the Anthrax in 1982, it was just the basement of an art gallery in Stamford. But by 1986, the place had attracted so many punk rockers, they had to find a bigger location. Eventually they settled into a spot in Norwalk; that's when the scene really exploded."

Daily's self-published book colloquially captures those heady days in Norwalk when the likes of Moby (who wrote the forward) finally found the community they'd been searching for in the grim days of Reagan and, worse, Phil Collins. Daily says the DIY spirit he's employing to get the book to the punk masses comes quite naturally.

"When I was 15, I started putting out a punk-rock magazine called Smorgasbord," Daily says. "It evolved into a record label. I released 7-inch records, including a compilation called X Marks the Spot with bands like 7 Seconds and Positive Vibe. There was no industry to support our kind of punk back then. It was very DIY. I think that spirit enabled me to write the book and get it out there." Smorgasbord Records went on to help launch Connecticut's own Hatebreed to a national audience.

Everybody's Scene is filled with great pictures from the Anthrax's halcyon days, and also with Daily's ingenuous prose. An example: "There were no plans for a big sign. No bright lights. No fanfare. Never actually publicized or printed anywhere. The address was a mystery only to be solved by those cool enough to crack the code."

Daily's backstory, about gathering so many scattered punk voices together, is just as moving.

"I thought our punk community was lost," he says. "But the Internet showed me otherwise. When I started the book, I sent out a mass e-mailing to people I knew from those days. Soon I started getting 10 replies a day from people who told me how much the club meant to them and, in detail, why. I wrote to Moby, who e-mailed me back saying, 'What a great place!' He actually offered his apartment in Manhattan, where I tape-interviewed a lot of these people. Without the Net and the virtual community it's spawned, I couldn't have done this."

Daily is proud to point out that Café Nine will be filled with music from the club's proud punk past, featuring reunion sets by Powersurge, Lost Generation, CIA and Crippled Youth — the latter, mere 13-year-olds when they first took to the Anthrax stage in 1985.

Spinning between sets is DJ Chris Leach (an Anthrax regular who grew up in Greenwich) and Malcolm Tent (ex-Broken Talent and owner of Danbury's now-closed Trash American Style record store — often seen at the club with a tape recorder in hand, recording the bands).

"I'm really psyched," Daily says. "Partly because I already have 200 pre-orders for the book. But mostly because everybody remembers what an important place the Anthrax club was, symbolically. It instilled really good values in people about an independent way to live their lives. Clearly, that spirit continues."