I used to listen to hardcore in the 80s and went to a lot of shows in Boston and a few in the NY area too. One of the interesting aspects of the scenes is they were really local (which led to intense and sometimes violent rivalries) and highly dependent on word of mouth, fanzines, and pre-Web distribution channels such as college radio, clubs, and special record stores.
I always wondered what happened to the people. It’s cool to see that this music led to some really creative careers and different ways of thinking that they’ve carried through to the present. For myself, it sparked a DIY spirit and an idea that alternative paths can lead to worthwhile endeavors.
One thing that surprised me in this video is the fact that the music lives on and has sprouted new hardcore scenes, including overseas. I’ve gotten the sense in the past few years that guitar-oriented rock is fading as fans age, but it was refreshing to see young people still getting into the music and the spirit. It’s totally underground, but that’s OK, too ...
Maybe it's just observer bias, but it seems to me that the kids I used to hang out with when I'd go to hardcore shows in DC in the 80s and early 90s were some of the most creative and smartest kids I met. A lot of them went into software development (CS, CE, EE degrees) or some sort of visual arts career. There's something motivational about the music.
I still listen to old bad brains, cro-mags, youth of today, warzone, etc when I need to bang out some code (not really for when I have to design something, though). Overall, it's a really positive scene. I feel that a lot of people don't really get that, though.
Absolutely. People who aren't going to be interested anyway often don't look past the names. E.g., Hatebreed, one of the most relentlessly positive and inclusive bands out there. And Jamie Jasta is the very definition of DIY.
> It’s totally underground, but that’s OK, too ...
I want as many people to have access to the music as possible, but being underground is kind of a requirement for hardcore music. You don't want it to be an affectation or exclusionary, but hardcore has always been about not fitting in and being on the outside of quotidian society.
The Judge show in Austin at The Mohawk during Fun Fun Fun Fest 2013 was one of the best things I've ever seen. It was inside, so in a room that's about 20 feet by 25 feet, with a 2.5 foot stage. Completely packed with people. As soon as they started playing it immediately turned into one of those rare "mosh to survive" situations. If you're standing still you're probably not going to leave without getting seriously hurt.
The best part was how incredibly close to the records they sounded. It was obvious that they still loved what they were doing despite how long it had been since they were last around. Sometimes older bands that get back together just seem to be going through the motions. Judge definitely wasn't.
I think the first hardcore show I saw was an all ages show headlined by Converge when I was 16 or 17, right when they dropped their Jane Doe album. It was total insanity -- kids were hanging off the rafters in the venue and falling 10 feet into the pit, feet first stage diving so people were getting drop kicked, at one point the bouncers tried to stop kids from jumping on stage and formed a wall up front, which resulted in a gang of about ten kids tackling them and punching them in the middle of the set. The venue owners pulled the sound and had to call the cops to break up the brawl... needless to say there were no more hardcore shows at the venue, and the local scene quickly fizzled out due to the insanity.
Maybe it's because I'm old and not used to that sort of moshing, but that just doesn't sound enjoyable. Back in the day (get off my lawn!), the pit was a strange mix between violence and friendliness. If someone fell, they'd immediately get picked up. If someone was getting pummeled, they'd get carried out of the pit. Stage dives were fun for the diver and crowd.
Sorry to sound like an old man, but I just don't understand this latest version of moshing. Maybe I need to go to one of these shows and get in the pit to see if I'm missing something (blow off some steam).
If I'm honest with myself, part of what really attracted me to hardcore punk as a teenager was the risk of violence at shows. It's rare that anyone gets seriously injured, but there's almost always this sense of tension and looming chaos. I'm a couple of months away from being 30 now. I still go to shows on a regular basis and that's still part of the appeal.
It's exactly like you said, "a strange mix between violence and friendliness". I'm usually friends with nearly every single person in the room but much of what happens would constitute assault in any other context. People still pick each other up when they fall, even that person just punched them in the back of the head. I suspect you'd find very little has actually changed.
On a semi-tangential note: It's always so amusing trying to explain this sort of thing to someone who has never been a part of punk. Another commenter in this thread said that it's self regulating. And that's what so many people don't get. There are rules. Unspoken ones, but they are there. Everyone in the room knows when something is actually out of hand. It may look like total mayhem at times to the untrained eye but if you've been around long enough you see the same sort of organic patterns of behavior at every show. Sometimes I'm inclined to think you've never really connected with others until you've been to a punk show with a hundred other like minded people crammed into a tiny dim smelly space with terrible music playing as loud as the speakers will allow, all the while loving every moment.
Great comment. Thanks for taking the time to reply. It sounds like, although it may be a bit more violent then in my days, it's still the mix of violence and friendliness. This makes me happy. That's what will keep the HC scene going into the future.
My first concert was a band called The Chariot in some cramped bar and when the audience started moving it was like everyone was in sync because you couldn't move without pushing someone and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
i had the pleasure of playing CBGB before it closed, and ABC No Rio before i stopped playing out. i've opened or headlined for a few bands in the documentary as well.
i mostly just want to brag, it is very rare my interests intersect like this. so i'll try to add some value: there is something we can all learn about community from the hardcore scene. regardless of how large it grows or how transient members can be, it is self policing of it's values which remain unchanged for probably 40 years now. it remains original and pure in a way that HN couldn't dream of.
i played in "The Banner" and "Pellinore". neither is a staple of the New York Hardcore scene, but I'd like to think anyone involved in the NJ/NY scene from 2004-2012 is probably familiar. both are on Spotify, if you care to listen. :)
this is obviously kind of new school with respect to the documentary, but they feature some newer bands so I thought it was fair game. :)
the odds of seeing a thread like this on HN seem slim, and the odds someone here is familiar with one of my bands even slimmer.
i stopped playing with them in 2009 when i landed a gig in the startup world that was too hard to pass up, so unfortunately i wasn't actually at the show in the video. but it still means a lot to me to see it posted here. :)
Anyone interested in both NYHC and HN would be into this if they haven't seen it (I'm sure it's been posted here before): the history of the old Kickstarter office, which is across the street from ABC No Rio, and is also the location of the Rancid "Time Bomb" video.
With so much politicization on the internet today, I was skeptical while I watched this, thinking there would be an ulterior message, but it's actually really good. I enjoyed watching it a lot. I also am not sure if this should be on HN, but it was enjoyable enough that I'm cool with it.
What stood out for me was I didn't notice a single woman out of the hundreds of people shown in this video. And with a few exceptions they were all white.
I very much want to know the attitudes of all those white men toward women and non-whites.
There are in fact plenty of hardcore bands from past and present with non-white/female/lgbt members. Bad Brains, Limpwrist, The Comes... Of course there are some openly anti-female/non-white/lgbt bands, but they're by no means the norm. My experience in punk and hardcore was defined by the open and accepting nature of the people in the scene. Our local venue's official motto was "NO RACIST, SEXIST, OR HOMOPHOBIC SHIT TOLERATED" (Lucy's Record shop in Nashville)
you have to remember how hardcore started. it's almost a working class movement. in NYC in the 80s, this was mostly composed of white males. there are a few notable exceptions, like HR from Bad Brains (one of the first legendary hardcore front men, who is Jamaican).
the scene has definitely become more diverse. non-whites and females are more well represented in hardcore than they are in the software industry.
that all said, racism and sexism have basically always been unacceptable in the hardcore community, and blatant racist or sexist behavior at a show would, for better or worse, probably result in having the shit kicked out of you. not that i condone violence, but there are few places in the world where discrimination is so actively discouraged.
there are racist subdivisions and bands, but they are basically considered the Westboro Baptist Church of hardcore.
I guess it's kinda like the tech industry, in that way, eh?
But, you're right. Hard core and punk were boys clubs, historically speaking. It took whole separate scenes (riot grrrl, among others) to push those boundaries out to include more diversity. There are now reasonably large feminist hard core and punk scenes, as well as lots of off-shoots. I just caught Sleater-Kinney live a few days ago; they're, I guess they might be called, second generation feminist punks, and they had a huge sold out crowd.
Punk and hard core were also occasionally ambiguous about LGBTQ folks, even though several quite important bands had gay members (Husker Du, The Dicks, Big Boys, etc.) or were vocally supportive of gay rights. Bad Brains, featured in this video, and among the best loved hard core bands in history, had a well-known falling out with MDC over some hateful comments H.R. (singer of Bad Brains) made about Randy "Biscuit" Turner from Big Boys. "Queercore" is now a thing that has a name, and being gay isn't a thing to keep secret in the modern punk and hard core world. I don't know if H.R. is still a homophobic asshole. Some people grow out of that stuff.
I think we can reasonably say that working and middle class white dudes aren't renowned for being inclusive, but some try harder than others. And, of course, one could also argue that part of the reason there are few women or people of color is because this particular art form was born of a very specific experience...and that experience is that of a bunch of young, angry, working and middle class white dudes. Early hip hop scene films feature predominantly young, angry, poor, black dudes, probably for similar reasons.
That said, there are racist/sexist/homophobic hard core bands. There are hard core bands that actively promote white supremacy, various bigoted "Christian" values, etc. The bands featured in this video aren't really among them, however. Even the "skinhead" bands in the film, like Agnostic Front and the Cro-Mags, are of the "non-racist" breed...maybe even anti-racist. I'm not deeply familiar with any of them, so I wouldn't want to make too many sweeping pronouncements about how they feel about racism/sexism/homophobia (except the Bad Brains thing, because that story includes one of my favorite bands/artists as the target of their homophobia, so I'm familiar with that story).
If you want to know how 'all of those white men' think, you will have to interview every single one of them, because they are not all the same. In general though, most punk subcultures (like hardcore) are full of idealistic, passionate, left-leaning individuals who get really goddamn angry at any kind of oppression. I'd say that with very few exceptions, those white men care about women and non-whites more than most other people you'll ever meet.
Such a complicated question. I think about the (very non-racist) ska skinheads I met in Europe, or Ian MacKaye's song "Guilty of Being White", which had a more nuanced back story than I understood when I first heard of it.
I always wondered what happened to the people. It’s cool to see that this music led to some really creative careers and different ways of thinking that they’ve carried through to the present. For myself, it sparked a DIY spirit and an idea that alternative paths can lead to worthwhile endeavors.
One thing that surprised me in this video is the fact that the music lives on and has sprouted new hardcore scenes, including overseas. I’ve gotten the sense in the past few years that guitar-oriented rock is fading as fans age, but it was refreshing to see young people still getting into the music and the spirit. It’s totally underground, but that’s OK, too ...