I Just Can't Be Happy Today
Violence Is Funny, Fallout Boy, Skinheads, Hot Water Music and a Few Other Rambling Bits...
Sugar, We’re Going Down
I moved to Columbus, Ohio in the summer of 1996 after dropping out of college because I decided that I had better things to do (“punk stuff”) rather than stick around and finish a degree in political science with a focus on post-Marxist political theory. I had managed to talk my way into a $150 a month room in what was the waning days of the legendary Neil House - a massive three story, Victorian house that was a former dental fraternity house which played host a legendary roster of mid 90s bands including Karp, AFI, Elliott Smith, Dystopia, Deadguy, Frail, Karate, Hot Water Music, Third Sex, Seein Red, Torches to Rome, Rye Coalition, Promise Ring, Harriet the Spy, Undertow, Farside… the list goes on and on.
The day I moved in, The Make Up was scheduled to play but I hopped in a car with Alex Conley and Matt Miner from Three Studies For A Crucifixion to see Man Is The Bastard play in Cincinnati. Upon my return I could smell the pleasant odor of sweat soaked room while members of the band lay snuggled up in their matching pajamas on my floor and I felt like I was home, like I had found my purpose, or some other such naive nonsense.
That summer was a blast - road trips to see bands, a mountain of new friends coming through my door and sleeping on my floor, 1am trips to sneak into apartment pools, spending every spare dollar hunting for records at Used Kids, living on a steady diet of hummus - basically living the best life I as a 21 yr old vegan straight edge punk rocker could imagine.
My decision to bounce on the Make Up show in favor of Man Is The Bastard was illustrative of how I was thinking about the music I wanted to be a part of both in promotion as well as creation. One evening, Jen Angel (Rest In Peace) proposed we start a new house, with more of a punk/hardcore and less indie/emo focus to compliment what was going on at the Neil House at that point - she was working at a record store called Magnolia Thunderpussy, the owner of which was this guy Chuck who was rumored to have made a bunch of money in producing porn before moving to Ohio, opening his shop, and releasing a bunch of early Columbus punk and new wave records via New Age Records, my favorite of which being the first Human Suffrage 12”
Anyway, Chuck had this old house just off campus he owned that had been a punk house in the mid/late 80s (when Rollins complains about how filthy the house in Columbus is they are supposed to stay at in Get In The Van it was this house). It was run down, had holes in the dry wall big enough you could walk through them and was infested with cockroaches and mice but it was only $500 a month for a three story house with a basement we could do shows in and so the five of us (Jen, Scotty, Radick, Carl, and myself) all moved in. Scotty and I split the attic room while the other three got their own rooms, with Jen taking an extra room for her office, where she produced the zine Fucktooth and the annual Zine Yearbook. The math worked out to where my rent was only $75 a month, which was glorious and allowed me the time and money to do all sorts of punk stuff but this is not that tale, so let’s get to the important part…
So right after we moved into what is now the Legion of Doom, the annual Anti-Racist Action Convention happened and Jen was like “my friends from the band Hinkley have a new band, they're called Race Traitor, we should have them play during the convention.” so i was like sounds great - so the plan was to have them and one other band play (I feel it was this band Medium (I wish I could find the demo or the split EP online - that said, Jon Siren who was the future of my old band xINEPTx and is the current Front Line Assembly drummer played in that band) but maybe i'm wrong).
Jen was “hanging out” with Dan Sabater who was a NYC skinhead who was one of the founders of RASH NYC - so he and his crew were the first people to show up for the show and the show was pretty skinhead heavy it being the ARA convention and all. The first band plays, people are drinking beers and just being sorta chill. Race Traitor starts playing and the singer, Mani, immediately started verbally attacking and mocking the skinheads for being a bunch of fascists (which was weird), being a bunch of privileged white boys, etc. basically doing his whole schtick of being aggro and confrontational. Despite having housed more than a few beers Dan and company are pretty chill about it, with Dan taking the lead and calmly being like “What are you talking about?" trying to explain what the whole RASH (Red Anarchist Skinheads) is about - talking about how most of the crew are recent immigrants from Colombia, Dominican Republic, etc and talked about how his mom worked worked in what is basically a sweatshop/garment factory.
Despite all this Mani continued to chastise him, say he was full of shit and got super up in face and was poking him in the chest. Dan asked him to stop and was like "I’m being nice because you obviously don't know what you are doing,” prompting Mani to be basically like “Fuck you man!”
Then, in a classic skinhead fight starting move, this skinbyrd came out of nowhere and clocked Pete Wentz (who was playing bass at the time for Race Traitor) super hard and dropped him. Everyone was shocked because typically this move is done to start a fight, not end it in one punch, so no one really knew what to do and just froze for a moment as the sorta befuddled shock worked its way through the room before giving way to an explosive cacophony of screaming and yelling. Eventually we managed to calm everyone down, most of the skins left for another party, and slipped off to the attic, with my mattress on the floor to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of the mice dancing with the cockroaches.
A couple notes:
It has been proposed by some that it was this dude Jodie (Rest In Peace), not Pete that was playing bass at the time in Race Traitor. I’m 90% certain I’m correct in who got punched, mostly because I remember going to Pick Me Up Cafe after a show xINEPTx played w/ Charles Bronson, Scotty (xINEPTx singer) saw his friend Ed who was pals with and sitting with this crew Pete was part of, introductions were made and Mark McKoy goes “Nice to meet you, didn't you get knocked out in Thorn's basement?” and Pete was visibly irked by the comment.
In the mid 2010s I was at a bar in Oakland and my friend Pranjal was like, “Hey you remember that story about that guy from Fallout Boy getting knocked out? This is my friend Abby! She was the Skinbyrd!!” Words can’t describe how excited I was to run into her nearly 20yrs after the fact, she was a little sheepish about how stoked I was, especially as she was now into metal and had left the skinhead thing behind.
Eating The Filler
The first time we did a show for Hot Water Music it was at the Neil House in the basement - we had starting getting heat from the neighbors for how loud some of the shows were getting, prompting visits from the police who took notice of the amount of kids who were just hanging out so, for smaller shows, we moved things downstairs to keep the noise level down a bit. Hot Water Music only had a couple singles, maybe the Push For Coin tape so we did the show down there which was more than enough space because maybe twenty people showed up, two in particular being worth mentioning.
So these two redneck skater dudes rolled up to the shows, if memory serves they were recently transplanted to Ohio friends of Chuck and Chris from Florida. They rolled up to the show already drunk as hell, shirtless, wearing jean shorts, and ready to get wild. This was in sharp contrast to the stand in place, arms folded, twitching and nodding 90s style that was the fashion of the time, particularly in Columbus. They started pushing and shoving, calling everyone a bunch of pussies for not moshing, which was annoying but whatever.
After the show, we’re all hanging out on the porch and the skater dudes start laying into my friend Carl about how we’re not real punks, how we’re a bunch of f*gs, etc. Chuck from Hot Water Music is tries to intercede, tells them to calm down, and is like we’re all friends here, etc but then Carl decides to push these dudes and inquires “What is real punk?” One of the skater dudes goes “I’ll show you" runs up the stairs to the top floor and proceeded to throw himself ass over tit down two flights of stairs, plowing straight Carl at the bottom, stood up, flipped us all off, yelled “That’s fucking punk!” before running out to his car, flipping a U turn and tore off yelling “Fuuuuuucccckkk You!!!!”
Over the course of the next year, Hot Water Music exploded in popularity - it was wild to see them go from playing to basically no one to hitting their stride and packing increasingly bigger and bigger rooms. While it was a no brainer to book them at the 1997 More Than Music Fest, it was still wild to see a band in a moment where you realize they are going to be pretty big.
We booked them again that fall, this time at the Legion of Doom where they, alongside Elliott, Beta Minus Mechanic and about 200 people filled a space that felt packed at 75. It was mental how many people were sardined in there. At the same time, our college bro neighbors were having a party and people from the show kept going over there to sneak beers from their keg, which to me is is like whatever but after the gig we learned what a problem this turned out to be for neighbors.
So, I’m in the kitchen, doing the post show ritual of cooking up a giant pot of spaghetti for the bands. Chuck decided he would make the sauce because he had some sorta secret recipe which I assume was just like 2000 bulbs of garlic or something. I hear this kerfuffle outside; people yelling, the neighbors calling us f*ggots and a smattering of that nervous laughter thing that happens before punches get thrown. I go outside to see what’s going on and arrive just in time to hear one of the neighbors call my partner at the time a “a blue haired whore” and in the same moment Chuck flies past me, jumping over the porch railing through the air and landing on top of one of the dudes, proceeding to beat his ass. At this point all of us get stuck in with the pinnacle comedy moment being when Scotty from xINEPTx yelled “How’d you like getting your ass beat by a bunch of f*gs?!” as the neighbors fled back to their house, faces bloodied, clothes ripped.
Unfortunately, this was not the last we would hear from them - I still remember the voice of terror in my friend Nick’s voice when called me when I was back at my parent’s house for the holidays because the neighbors had taken lighter fluid and written ‘kill f*gs’ on our sidewalk and then lit it. Or the weird morning when one of them threw a jar of mayonnaise through our front window and scrawled ‘lube’ on it. It was bizarre few months as they continued to harass kids coming to shows or yelling shit as us when were on the front porch that was only solved when they moved out of their house.
Hot Water Music broke up for a hot minute while on tour in Europe in 1998 only to reform a year or so later and do that tour with Leatherface in 1999. They kept playing bigger and bigger rooms, I moved across country to the Bay Area and I saw them play The Fillmore in San Francisco with the Bouncing Souls to about 1300 more people than that first time in the basement.
Honey I Shit The Hot Tub
I recently went up to DC to see Paint It Black, Dillinger Four, Public Acid, and Invertebrates. It still impresses and inspires me to see bands that existed for thirty years, play with bands where some of the members might not even be thirty. Music is something that should bring people together and I still firmly believe that creativity and self expression through loud, fast music should know no age limit. It is an important thing to keep in mind as you get older, to keep going, to allow yourself the time to do the things which will help to keep you sane.
I’ve been really slack on reviews, I know. I find myself with less and less time these days to listen to music. I’ve recently developed some issue with my right arm making photographing shows something between irritating and downright painful at times but, I’ll push on. Anyway here are a few things I’ve been really into lately.
I’m always down for more ARMOR - its nasty, stompy hardcore punk that leans hard into that the Swedish d-beat path of the earlier years of TOTALITÄR with a slap of good old fashioned 80s USHC stomp. This record compiles both of their EPs on 11PM Records in one convenient package.
Snappy, taut French melodic punk that makes me think of BIKINI mixed with some of the dark pop notes that THE OBSERVERS leaned into.
I’ve loved FAZE since the first time I happened to stumble upon them in Toronto during Not Dead Yet in 2018. Frenetic and frantic stuff that comes rampaging out of Montreal and just hammers you. Shredded vocals layered over steady rhythmic attack while buzzsaw guitars dance upon your skull.
GAG is always so good - just thick, oozing slabs of mid-paced punk that just beats you about the head with occasional bursts of energy before just downshifting into this thudding hammer. They do an APHEX TWIN cover which is sorta amazing.
LIFE ABUSE - Systematization LP
Monstrous and snarly hardcore from former/current members of DEVOID OF FAITH, MALE PATTERNS, EUCHARIST, etc that leans hard into a less epic but more straight forward take on the ABC DIABLO/G-ANX thing. Think the logical extension of Word As Law era NEUROSIS had they not gone all space rock but honed the viciousness into something a bit more punk.
Witnessing SEEIN RED in my living room in 1996 was an absolutely life changing experience. I mean these dudes were in their thirties and still playing fast as hell! Still pissed! Still political and unapologetic about it! And now look at them - nearly thirty years laters and still playing fast as fuck, still unapologetically political, still pissed, still an inspiration. Twenty-seven tracks of resistance music serving as an outcry against the rise of fascism across the globe. Essential - Punk Is Verzet!
Another magisterial band out of Richmond - members of a bunch of bands that rule but this one might be the hottest, most smoking jam I’ve blasted this year. Thunderous approach in the War All The Time-era; powerful roaring vocal punch with big guitar riffs and drums that are just a jackhammer onslaught. Great! Great! Great!
STRAW MAN ARMY - Earthworks LP
The tales are true! Absolutely brilliant stuff in the classic peace punk style - melodic, lyrical dense, anthemic, and just overall a well constructed and cohesive statement of a record which brings to mind OMEGA TRIBE or ALTERNATIVE or even early CHUMBAWAMBA without really sounding totally like any of them. Really great and important stuff.
YANKEE BASTARD - Fucking USA CS
Pummeling, thrashing, and relentless all go no slow hardcore from here in Richmond. Most of the songs are in Korean. Fuzzy and sloppy in all the right ways, I absolutely adore this and can’t wait to actually see them.
It’s interesting to hear parallel stories about some of the same people many friends had different experiences with back then.
I only heard HWM because I think Second Nature had interviewed them and needed photos so I shot them on Boston in the late 90’s where they plated upstairs at the Middle East (a small room for what they’d soon become) as well as a Chinatown restaurant show with Converge. Bless those old days of completely mixed bills.
Enjoyed this, thx!