BLENDER

Burner, November 2001

Two aging punks have started a punk-rock aerobics class held in Boston-area nightclubs. The class, aptly, is called "Punk Rock Aerobics."

The class encourages attendees to throw themselves around to songs by the Sex Pistols and the Stooges. But pint glasses are filled with water, cigarettes are temporarily stashed, and people lying on the floor are totally conscious.

Since August, Hilken Mancini, 31, of the Boston band Fuzzy, and Maura Jasper, 35, a visual artist, have led growing numbers of tattooed clubgoers through a one-hour regimen of Pete Townshend air-guitar windmills, quad-building pogoing, and muscle-toning lat pumps using cinderblock bricks as weights.

"I used to go to the Y, and people stared at me like I was a freak," Mancini explains. "I'd much rather dance around to a Dinosaur Jr. song than to some techno shit."

To that end, while Mancini uses the music of Blondie as a cool-down, Dinosaur Jr.'s "Freak Scene" comes at the class's sweaty climax.

"They'll probably equate the song with the pain they felt after the aerobics class," groans Dinosaur Jr. honcho J. Mascis. Still, the veteran guitar hero is amused by the track's new use. "I'll have to consider the aerobic possibilities of my other songs." NINA WILLDORF