Telling the Scene Police story

'THE SCENE POLICE STORY - A Story of Rebellion, Passion, and Financial Ruin' by Dennis P Merklinghaus will finally be published this Summer.

Forget polished success stories and nostalgic punk rock mythology. The Scene Police Story is the raw, chaotic, and brutally honest account of a DIY punk collective that ran on conviction, friendship, sleep deprivation, and terrible financial decisions.

What started as a reaction against scene elitism and moral posturing spiralled into an international underground operation: Record label, tour network, mailorder, political battleground, and full-time obsession. Over six relentless years, Scene Police released records nobody expected but ended up loving, booked tours that took bands across borders they probably shouldn’t have crossed, and built a worldwide community held together by trust, passion, stubbornness, and noise.

From sweaty squats and empty venues to landmark releases, endless touring, ideological clashes, broken vans, and mounting debt, this is a story about what happens when DIY ethics collide headfirst with reality. Featuring appearances and connections with bands such as Hot Water Music, Planes Mistaken for Stars, Tiger Lou, Strike Anywhere, Motörhead, and countless underground lifers across Europe, the UK, the US, and Japan, the book captures a moment in punk history where passion mattered more than sustainability.

This is not a guide on how to “make it.” This is a confession. A war story. A love letter to underground culture written with dirty hands and ringing ears.

After 40 releases and six years of relentless chaos, Scene Police collapsed under the weight of burnout, political infighting, heroic ambition, and debt. But what survived was something far more important: Music that mattered, lifelong friendships, connected scenes, and proof that punk rock could still mean something real.

The Scene Police Story is for anyone who ever slept on a venue floor, hauled boxes of records across borders, argued politics at 4 AM, lost money for the sake of art, or believed that community mattered more than profit.

Financial death? Absolutely.

Cultural impact? Undeniable.

Regrets? Ask again after the ringing stops.

This book has been thirty years in the making and is packed with full colour and unseen images throughout its 186 pages of hardcore label insight. 'The Scene Police Story' will be officially published worldwide on the 26^th June 2026.

Dennis-P. Merklinghaus, known to most as DPM, to some as Onkel, and occasionally as Da Boss, is a writer, DIY label operator, scene lifer, and professional contradiction. Raised as the son of a German air force pilot, he spent his childhood bouncing between Germany, the United States, and Turkey. The constant movement left him adaptable, restless, and permanently unsure where “home” was supposed to be.

Born into a strict household shaped by hierarchy, discipline, and emotional distance, Merklingboy found refuge in music, skateboarding, and underground culture. What started with the sounds of Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Abba quickly escalated into punk, hardcore, and metal after a life-changing collision with underground music in the mid-1980s. More than entertainment, hardcore punk became identity, resistance, and survival, a space for outsiders, misfits, and people who never quite fit anywhere else.

Too punk for the metal scene and too metal for the punk scene, he eventually found his place in the chaotic inclusivity of skatepunk culture, where music, skateboarding, politics, and friendship blurred into one interconnected world. That world would shape the rest of his life.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DPM founded Interpol Times and later co-founded Scene Police, a fiercely independent DIY punk label and collective that operated across Europe, the UK, the US, and beyond. Over six turbulent years, Scene Police released dozens of records, organised tours, built international networks, lost alarming amounts of money, and became both a beloved underground institution and a cautionary tale about passion outrunning practicality.

After the collapse of Scene Police under mounting debt and burnout, Dennis completed university and entered the corporate world as a trade journalist and later spokesperson for a major technology company, an irony he remains fully aware of. Extensive international travel, trade shows, and corporate communication paid the bills, but underground music, record stores, and punk shows remained his emotional home base wherever he went.

In 2023, following the end of a 20-year relationship and the beginning of life as a half-time father, Merklingboy began therapy and a long-overdue process of confronting anxiety, identity, addiction to accumulation, and the unresolved contradictions that had followed him for decades.

Those contradictions continue to define him: A fiercely independent person constantly searching for connection; a lifelong anti-authoritarian who found himself working inside global corporations; a romantic haunted by failed relationships; a collector trying to let go; a punk who never stopped believing in community.

More than 20 years after the original collapse of Scene Police, the label unexpectedly returned to life after a chance conversation and a new release reignited the old spark. What began as a small idea, maybe a fanzine, maybe helping a few younger bands, quickly spiralled back into the thing it had always been: A stubborn belief that underground culture still matters.

'The Scene Police Story: A Story of Rebellion, Passion, and Financial Ruin' is DPM’s first book, part memoir, part confession, part love letter to the DIY underground that shaped him and continues to define his life.

The book is available to pre-order now and we will be shipping copies in late June.

Dennis has now re-kindled the Scene Police flame and the label is up and running again releasing great music. https://www.scenepolice.com