Re-re-introducing...

Part II… 

While my friends and I nervously waited amongst a crowd of skinheads for the show to start, an older skater we knew from the suburbs said in a dead serious Southern twang “just you wait until Sick of it All plays.  They are hardcore, man, HARDcore.” That was my first hardcore show - Sheer Terror, Biohazard, and Sick of it All. The following week I picked up Just Look Around, my buddy who attended the show with me picked up Blood, Sweat and No Tears.  A friend of a friend introduced us to a concept called straight edge and loaned us a copy of Minor Threat Complete Discography, which made the rounds between each of our respective stereos.  When I heard “Out of Step” it was another game changer; a watershed moment. "Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t fuck."  Never had such words, which would have been easily labeled as lame, immature, or “pussy” by my peers, been spoken with such conviction, confidence and fuck you attitude.  Instantly, I recognized it as me. Amongst the drink-every-weekend-down-at-the-lake-and-score-chicks rednecks at my school, I felt like a shy loser who didn’t fit in.  I quickly became a loudmouth, asshole loser with an X on his hand who didn’t fit in. I’m fond of saying that Minor Threat and Henry Rollins’ spoken word got me through high school. We also learned of a band call Insted.  You could buy them at the mall.  The album was What We Believe.   I gave 7 Seconds another shot.  I special ordered Youth of Today from the Record Bar.  Luckily the Where the Wild Things Are comp was in-stock. We listened to NOFX, Operation Ivy, Bad Religion, Ramones, Green Day.  For years, the bad kids, the punks, the skaters, the metal heads, the degenerics were whispering about a local band called Act of Faith.  They, in fact, led a whole scene of jerks like us.  When that door cracked open, my friends and I broke it down and dove in headfirst.  Shows, zines, 7”s, local bands, touring bands, new friends, new ideas, and fuck the suburban bullshit around us.  On the Out the Shizzy tour, Kevin Seconds with long hair called us stupid for moshing.  I remember peering down at the boxes of my cassettes and CDs.  The heavy metal titles seemed old and obsolete.  Those bands didn’t speak to me anymore.  Anthrax and Iron Maiden were now guilty pleasures. Slayer got a pass.  The handful of punk and hardcore records I owned were few in number but mighty.  I knew I was entering a new world and had a lot of cool music to get my hands on. Bands I missed out on until years later because I started with the wrong release:  Black Flag (heard In My Head first), Cro-Mags (heard Best Wishes first), Gorilla Biscuits (heard “Sittin’ Round at Home” first).  My friends and I started a band, duh. Our guitar player’s older brother had a metal band called Flesh Pool.  Early in my senior year, we went to see SOIA on the Scratch the Surface tour.  A band called Strife opened and they blew me away.  I bought their tape; it was blue. This purchase is important, because it signaled to me that there might be, yeah there are hundreds of records out there that can’t be found at the mall.  There were labels other than Dischord, Epitaph, or In-Effect.  I scoured the thank you list of One Truth for the names of other bands. A good starting point.  Later during my senior year, my band opened for SOIA.  Part scenester, part fan-boy, I got to the venue several hours early so I could talk to them. One day I visited the house of a couple of local hardcore heroes, they were listening to Manliftingbanner from Europe. “Europe!?  They have hardcore there too?” This would prove significant, as I would later venture across the pond several times for work and always got my bearings in a new country by sniffing out the local hardcore scene.  We wore choker-beads and headbands.  We listened to hardcore that was often slow and plodded along.  It wasn’t all shouting either, sometimes there were talking parts. Krisnha-core. We saw shows in living rooms and basements.  We subsisted on Fantastic Foods hummus and falafel mixes.  One summer, I saw 10 Yard Fight at the I-Defy house in Atlanta.  They were so fast, simple, and bullshit-free.  They sounded like the hardcore bands I originally cut my teeth on. Enter youth crew revival, In My Eyes, Fast Break; then thrash core, Tear it Up, What Happens Next.  A studio engineer my old band was working with once asked the guitar player and I who caught the “fast bug” first.  I’m guessing we always had it.  And for whatever reason, I always had the music bug, or it’s in my blood or enter your own metaphor here.  My parents aren’t especially musical; got no older siblings to say “hey, listen to this.”  From the get-go I’ve just dug a cool beat, a driving rhythm carrying an aggressive rock n roll attitude…and a good mosh part…