browsing all posts in "hardcore"
riot fest, days 4-5
Saturday was The Big Day of Riot Fest, 11 bands on the bill, doors at 1430. Let’s not talk about what time I arrived at the sidewalk. I’d hurt my shoulder at the Danzig show the night before, and I hadn’t gotten much sleep, and it was difficult to talk myself into leaving the house, but leave the house I did. And I’m so glad.
(more…)
i hate summer
Sometimes I spend an entire Saturday writing blog posts, and then I schedule them to be published every few days and feel really on top of my shit, and then I don’t even think about this blog for a month. All my news gets really stale, and then I write an epic post in one go instead of breaking it up and spreading out my amazing content. This is that post! Sort of. In September, I did some more traveling, got some more tattoos, and went to six shows. Short writeups of those shows (Koffin Kats, DOA, Okkervil River, Dave Hause, The House That Gloria Vanderbilt, and Fucked Up) to follow.
koffin kats @ reggie’s, 2011-09-08
it feels good to say what i want
Hello, friends! Been a while, and I’m sure you’ve all been wondering what the hell I’ve been doing with myself. Answer: reading (pretty sure I’ve read 30 books in 30 days), traveling (I have been at the airport once a week for the last month), and not a whole hell of a lot else. I have a bunch of book reviews half-written that should theoretically be going up very soon, but for now, here is a concert report for the last month, some tattoo ramblings, something about traveling, and a little about cats. Warning: long.
(more…)
blah blah blah blah blah
I went to see Verbal Abuse and Dayglo Abortions over the weekend, and the last time I tried to write a concert report, it turned into this other thing instead, so now I am trying again. We’re also going to pretend this is a book review.
The afternoon of the show, I finished reading “Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions,” by Chris Walter. I’m a sucker for stories about tour shenanigans, and there were many in this book, so I mostly enjoyed it. The one currently sticking out is the time the guitarist, Cretin, got hit in the face with someone’s headstock, and it damn near ripped his nose off. The obvious answer here was to pack the wound with cocaine, cover it with duct tape, and finish the show. Amazing. (There’s a picture, even.) It was also really cool to get a feel for the early Canadian punk scene — the old clubs and crowds and bands that just aren’t around anymore. That was very, very good stuff, and Walter (as much as I complain about his use of epithets) can be a very evocative writer when he’s writing what he knows. So a lot of the book was very well done, and I’m glad I read it.
It is, however, one of those books that has this kind of tee-hee Boys Will Be Boys approach to violence. You know: “Now, kids, violence is really bad, and I would never ever condone it, but I’m going to spend the next three pages describing the blood dripping from this guy’s head wound in graphic, loving detail. So you know it’s bad. Very, very bad.” There were many, many passages devoted to the blood spilled at Dayglos shows. And I let that fuck with me a little bit, frankly; I figured there was a non-zero chance that the show was going to be a horrifically violent mess from which I’d be lucky to escape alive. I rationalized my concern a bit, too: As with any deliberately offensive band, there’s always some small element that takes them seriously, and there’s the usual gender balance at a hardcore show to think about. So, yeah, I was worried. I actually said to a friend before I left, “well, worst-case scenario is that I get cut. I think that’s acceptable.” I was trying to be positive and upbeat.
Thus fortified, I set off to the Cobra Lounge.
…where everyone was very friendly, I got hugged many times by strangers, had a fantastic time singing and dancing and shouting, and still somehow emerged a bruised and bloody mess.
(more…)
with the history of the world
There’s a quote from a book that I remember, but I didn’t remember remembering until I saw a tattoo of it recently on tumblr:
The quote is from “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky. It reads:
Standing on the edges of life offers a unique perspective, but there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.
I like that quote for personal reasons; I spent a large chunk of my life waiting. I’ve always wanted to do $whatever. I’ll do it when…
When what? I don’t know that I’ve had a ton of Eureka moments in my life, but that was one of them. When what? Now I do what I want.
(more…)
will wash away
tsol @ reggie’s, 2011-05-14
When I try to talk about the TSOL show I went to last week, I usually resort to repeating stories I’ve read in books. Early LA hardcore, I love it to distraction, but I wasn’t there. I don’t have first-hand knowledge; I have legends, anecdotes that have been passed down and which show up in old zines and new oral histories. I’ll say I went to see TSOL, and the person I’m talking to gets this look on their face, like they know that band but they don’t know why. To catch them up on the band, and on the show, I tell them this story:
In the early 80s, in LA/OC, TSOL was drawing bigger crowds than Black Flag. There was this one show, early in 83*, somewhere in Hollywood**. Like all other LA hardcore shows of the time, it was oversold, maybe 3000 kids there, maybe only 2000.*** Regardless, the cops showed up in riot gear, because that’s what cops did in 1983. TSOL’s frontman, Jack Grisham, said, “hey, everyone sit down, the cops won’t fuck with us if we’re all sitting down.”
…and they all sat down.
(more…)
review: american hardcore
title: American Hardcore: A Tribal History
author: Steven Blush
other shit: 2010, Feral House. 2nd edition. 354 pages + discography
soundtrack: 24 hours of hardcore, compiled by the author
rating: 1.5/5 safety pins
There are good things about this book. The discography in the back is nice. I always appreciate a juicy bit of gossip or a good story, and this book has a few of both.
And man, check out that cover! The colorized photo, enhanced so the blood is extra red. Plus the tagline, proclaiming that this book is “The definitive work on one of rock’s most important eras.” In the foreword, it says that the first edition of this book “set the record straight on American Hardcore Punk music.” These claims — that the book is definitive, that it sets the record straight — are repeated on the back cover.
I do enjoy a good definitive history. A nice, straight record.
and we don’t give a shit about your blue balls
The front door of Dischord House in 1982. Screencap from Another State of Mind.
I was going to review American Hardcore: A Tribal History, and I still might. The author, Steven Blush, came through town on a speaking/book-reading/whatever publicity tour last year (this is the second edition, recently published, so he was making the rounds). At the end of his talk, another woman in the audience — it was pretty evenly split between men and women — asked him about the role of women in hardcore. He said that he’d been accused of misogyny after the first edition came out, but he was just telling it the way it was. There weren’t any women in hardcore. There just weren’t. He was very sorry about this fact, and seemed honestly confused about this charge of misogyny. After all, he was just telling the truth.
“The truth is,” he writes, on page 37, “few gorgeous women participated in Hardcore — many of them were nasty, ugly trolls.”
(more…)
are you going through something?
Weekly Show Roundup: Gord Downie, Henry Rollins, OFF! (… I guess it was Former Black Flag Frontman Week here in Chicago.)
we keep on repeating the past
Hey, an album review! Let’s all pretend I am going to keep doing this.
First Four EPs
OFF!
14 December 2010, Vice
