[transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]



On Friday, I went to check out opening night of the documentary American Hardcore: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986 by Steven Blush and Paul Rachman. Unsurprisingly, it made a serious impression on me, but it was for a number of reasons I wasn’t expecting.

For example, and to get right to the point, I’m still trying to get over the fact that Richard Melville “Moby” Hall was, at one point in history, the lead singer of noisy L.A. sludge rockers Flipper. According to Moby, Flipper’s late, great, perpetually strung-out yeller Will Shatter had been thrown in jail. Regardless,the show had to go on, and Moby just happened to know all of Flipper's lyrics.... What most people don’t know (or care to know, but is still intriguing) was that Richard Hall spent some time early on in a hardcore band called Vatican Commandoes. It wasn’t until 1989 that he decided to fully pursue electronic music, about eight years after The Commandoes had kicked him out.

To be fair to Hall, most of the viewers in attendance at the sold-out showing didn’t take into consideration that eight years is a long time. Most of the bands featured in this film were together for at most two or three years before disintegrating. The very fact that Greg Ginn kept Black Flag in existence for almost nine years was a miracle (granted, he was the only member in it for more than 5; they released their first 7” in 1978 and they brought Henry Rollins out of DC to sing for them in ’81). Since Flipper, Vatican Commandoes, and a number of other bands that Moby drifted into from his hovel in Darien, CT were history by 1986, the very fact that he was putting out rewarding techno albums by the end of the decade is nothing but a credit to him. He returned to punk on Animal Rights, even covering a Mission of Burma staple, but it didn't meet any old-school standards.

American Hardcore focuses almost squarely on the notable scenes in many major US (and some Canadian, for D.O.A's sake) cities. Most of the kids who grew up in outlying areas with no real opportunity to see bands like the Adolescents play in their heyday are, predictably overlooked unless they moved to one of these places. Like Moby, I grew up in Connecticut, outside of New Haven. By the time I was coming up in the 90's, the New Haven hardcore (in the more current, metallic style) scene centered on this dude Jamey Jasta and his band Hatebreed, as well as a few other key players. By the time I graduated from high school in 2001, Hatebreed was about to hit it big, but the craze about New Haven being “the next big thing” had passed over and countless local bands had thrown in the towel. Of course, since the so-called first/main wave of American Hardcore had ended about fifteen years earlier, the overarching scene itself had had more than enough time to water itself down to shit. Purists decry the form of music that Hatebreed, Sick of It All, Converge, Norma Jean, et al. play as more metal than hardcore, which is a founded complaint, though not any real insult. After watching this movie and a number of short films and pieces of found footage about the original Minor Threat and Black Flag shows, I cannot honestly say whether I would have survived the early 80’s punk scene. I’ve never been a violent person, and who knows whether I would have returned to many shows, given the obviously chaotic atmosphere. Who wouldn’t laugh, though, when a giddy fan takes swipes at a shirtless, scratched up Rollins, and Henry retaliates by striking this guy almost directly in the head with death blow after death blow? It was alternately funny and disturbing to see how frequently the level of sheer intensity would escalate into violence. It’s ironic, considering how the term “hardcore” punk came about because people like Ian MacKaye were trying to branch the movement off from shitheads like Sid Vicious and do something positive.

Another great irony in all of this, as far as my place in it is concerned (I’ll stop sounding so self-centered soon…alliteration!), is how due to the latter-day commercialization of punk, I was recently able to see the Adolescents play. The 2006 Adolescents featured three of the members who played on their goddamn-near perfect self-titled album in 1981, and one of their sons. I saw singer Tony Cadena at the merch table afterward, thanked him for the great show (he could still belt, even going on 44), and out of curiosity, asked him what was going on in this picture that Glen Friedman snapped of him in 1980. (Taken from Fuck You Heroes: Glen E. Friedman Photographs 1976-1991. Burning Flags Press, 1994.)



“We were in the middle of our set, and there were a bunch of random people skating all around us- we were performing in a skating park,” he told me, sounding more wistful as he went on, “I put my microphone down, just taking it all in for a second in between songs.”
“How old were you in that picture?” I asked, in a mindless jackass way.
“I was 17,” he replied with a smirk on his face.

This is what Cadena goes through all the time, and so do way too many of the characters who show up in American Hardcore. For a scene that threw a giant middle-finger in the face of the past and present, it has been mired in a shit storm of nostalgia. I can’t say I can blame the guys like Zander Schloss of the Circle Jerks who loudly declares to all the punks of today, “It’s Over!” These middle-aged sages all lived the pain, the blood, the love, the intensity, the boredom, the freedom, and the paranoia. Many of them don’t have much to be excited about anymore. Some got married, have kids, and/or are independently wealthy. Steve "Mugger" Corbin, the old Black Flag roadie that Rollins mentioned often in his tour journals, used the money he made from SST when Greg Ginn bought him out to invest, and now the former Nig-Heist frontman is sitting pretty. My favorite moment in any interview, however, comes when GWAR vet Dave Brockie admits, among the barrage of obligatory mall-punk bashing, that maybe he’s just old and bitter because these young guys are having all the fun. That took some humility.

Granted, there'll always be the Ian MacKayes, Vinnie Stigmas, and (I guess) Mobies who keep going in one form or another, whether it be a more subdued project like MacKaye’s The Evens (still playing $5 shows), a steady progression within Agnostic Front for Stigma, or being the guy responsible for Play. No one with that much going for them artistically or intellectually today is that content to sit around and dwell on the past for the edification of a bunch of young nerds who weren’t even one year old when Minor Threat called it quits (myself included). Unless, of course, you’re Mike Watt and you have not shut your mouth or slowed down any sort of activity in 35 years.

Watt's endless DIY, jamming econo ethic reminds me of another key point about the film’s focus. It didn’t seem at all interested in any of the bands that broke, or what any of the hardcore figureheads did artistically long after the big wave of hardcore crashed and Reagan’s second term began. Tommy Stinson (The Replacements) shows up very briefly, and I think that Husker Du were mentioned once or twice. Dead Kennedys nor Reagan Youth were mentioned once, despite numerous detailed accounts of the scenes in San Francisco and New York, and a sighting of Dave “Insurgent” Rubinstein’s name in memorium in the credits. This is both oddly appropriate and a shortcoming for the documentary. It's appropriate because no one was terribly interested in mainstream success during punk's heyday, so why should we be enthralled by what these figureheads have been pulling off since Reagan left office? I'd guess that anyone who's enough into this music (or has read this far into this entry...thanks, by the way) knows about Fugazi, Rollins Band, Soul Brains, etc. It's a shortcoming because there are plenty of artists essential to the lives and times that couldn't fit into the loose narrative. If it had included bits from or about everyone essential to the six kingpin years of American Hardcore, it would have run several hours longer. For these reasons, Blush and Rachman end up stifling a promising segment about women and gender roles within hardcore. The only female musician who appears prominently is fmr. Black Flag bassist (and Mike Watt spouse) Kira Roessler.
Even lead Bad Brain HR shows up for an in-depth interview, sitting on a pastoral green with what look like honeymooning couples wandering by behind him. His mere appearance got a notable reaction from the crowd. He seemed surprisingly put-together considering his history of schizophrenia and general buffoonery. But, wonderfully, four of the original Bad Brains show up and they all have great things to contribute.

As most of you have gathered by reading this, a documentary on a subject so fascinating in the scope of American culture for the past 30 years is impossible to review. These are just the things I was thinking about after seeing it and taking in everything that the filmmakers had to offer. It's beautifully edited, and the rare performance footage is all a real treat despite the dug-up-after-24-years quality. The music that these bands churned out across the country during this patently awkward phase of American history is every bit as important as the crap that made punk rock necessary. While the music may not be everyone's cup of tea or booze, the very fact that this all once transpired is interesting enough in itself to pull you into the mayhem and not drop you until you accept the fact that this is the past, but we still have the potential for so much more.