A Generation of Hope
I got this 7″ at a GB show at a heavy metal club called “Obsessions” in North Jersey in 1990. It was one of those places local, high school, metal bands played with black lights everywhere. There was a guy walking through the crowd holding some 7″‘s. That’s how it was going down in clubs then. You’d walk around carrying your demo tape or 7″ in your hand and people would stop you and buy it. That’s how you’d learn a lot of stuff, gossip I guess.
I saw a couple of bigger hardcore bands at Obsessions, not sure who booked them. When GB played they had a barrier between the crowd and the stage. So lame. I saw Agnostic Front there too around 1993 but it was horrible. They were booked on this shitty, death metal tour with Cannibal Corpse.
The metal bands were so stupid. A long hair, hessian, dirtbag dude comes out and growls some intro like “I’m going to dissect your brains and abortion them for Satan and Evil 666!” and then grunts and groans over double bass pedal attack. Horrid shit for idiots. Metalheads did like AF, I guess. The sound on those laters records is surely crossover. There were nazi skins at this show too. Nazis love dumb metal. Racism and Metal-Dumb shit that goes together. I think one of the bands had a song called Lawnmower of Death. For real.
(I remember Agnostic Front just didn’t seem that into the whole thing. I saw them at City Gardens around 1991 and it was insane, so I expected a similar performance. I didn’t get it. I almost saw them in Allentown, PA in 92 but the show was cancelled due to a nazi skinhead riot. Vision riled them all up. I’ll tell that story later, there’s to much to get into. I saw them in 95 at the Wetlands, they were really good, I wiled out and got in a few pictures on their record that came out in 1998. I always mean to write an email to BJ Papas and see if I could buy prints of the pictures I’m in. I don’t know why, just to have them I guess. Permanent Collection. I have the CD somewhere with the pictures, but a couple of real prints would be excellent.)
I did punch a WP skinhead in the face at this show and didn’t get a boot party from 10 racists right after so that aspect of it was cool. I was starting to feel out some violent, adolescent tendencies at this point. Hardcore is such a strange outlet. High school kids and grown men in this violent mess of a mosh pit.
(No disrespect to anyone here, but this needs to be stated: I’m not talking about a punk circle pit where people skip and push each other or some grunge/metal/alternative hybrid where you hop up and down and push each other. I’m talking about the violent mess of style and aggression that was found only at hardcore shows in the North East United States in the late 80’s into the early 90’s. Nothing can compare to it. The fear and excitement in the crowd in the minutes before Sick of it All played in 1991 is something I will never forget. Widespread semi-controlled violence was about to kick off and everyone knew it. Some of the people in the crowd were more famous to me than the bands on the stage or pro-skaters in the magazines. Their fame was based on their abilities: moshing, stagediving and fighting. It’s Clobbering Time! )
Oh ok here’s the feeling, thanks for the internet!
You see the darkness in the crowd, that’s where its happening. Insanity.
Young boy, you’d die at this show. I’m not kidding. People were a lot bigger back then. I’m not talking about some skinny, straight edge, kids! There was a lot of 6’5″ footballer player sized skins with american flags tattooed on their heads. You couldn’t even look in the direction of certain NY people. Like you weren’t allowed to look at them, do you understand that hierarchy? We all wanted to be there and these ill, monster, motherfuckers ran it and no one could protect you if you fucked up…and people routinely fucked up.
Back to the record:
Seems a little silly to talk about this after watching that SOIA video but:
I Went home, put the 7″ on the turntable and went wild moshing up my bedroom. This opened my eyes up to the straight edge scene away from the North East US. Cool shit! Every song was solid posi-core, except for maybe Full On Straight. I don’t remember them being to good.
I wanted to put a video here, but no one has ever bothered to put it up on youtube.
Image from ADRATES a good dead hardcore blog with the last post in 2013.
(I was just looking at BJ Papas’ website, there’s a list of every band she’s photographed. There’s a million, but check this out. She took pictures of X-Clan and Youth Defense League. Talk about different sides of the coin…haha)
