Dyvel--I think you'll love it. Quite a bit of NYHC action, though little mention of the Jersey scene. I think it's scheduled to play NY & LA for at least 2 weeks starting late next month.
I know I'll love the movie, it is my teenage years come to the silver screen That was the problem I had with the book, the slagging of the Jersey scene. NJ had an active scene all over the state. There were plenty of bands and plenty of places to see shows but the author of the book, Steven Blush, couldn't get past his own NYC snobbery to see that. Without the kids from Jersey coming in to NYC, CBGB's would have been pretty empty on Sunday afternoons.
From viewing the trailer I noticed they interview Vic Bondi from Articles of Faith, a Chicago band. No, but Peter North and Nina Hartley are.
Yeah... ok. Good band, but Chicago was one of the best places for hardcore in the early- to mid-80s. So many bands... such a huge scene... and it didn't even start to suck until the very late 80s. I had some of the best times of my life then. Holy crap. I just went to the American Hardcore site. When the "Pay to Cum" music stopped, I did a total doubletake. The kid on the left, in the track jacket looks like the spitting image of me in 1986-1987. Weird. Of course, I don't know those other two guys in the pic. Holy crap, it's freakin' me out. Edit: Looked through the pics. That's some guy from Wasted Youth. I need to look into this further. Oh... and a random one of 30 pics loads after the intro... so you might not see it right away if you look.
Man... that freaked me out. He's Chett, the guitar player... he was 17 at the time... I was 15 in this pic at the beginning of the school year. I was a hell of a lot angrier after a couple months, so I'm sure the smile was gone. Hmm... well... I was too young. Man, that guy looks just like I did in 86-87... then I shaved off a lot of hair... so..... still, you can see it, can't ya? I need to find a different pic... but I think I must have shunned cameras back then. Except one... some guy came up to a bunch of us punks and skins in a place called Aetna Plaza... he said he was taking a pic of us for a book of photographs of Chicago. In retrospect, I think he just wanted to take a picture of a bunch of freaks... If anyone sees that pic though... let me know. I bet if I found another pic of him he'd look nothing like me though.
I didn't get a chance to see this when it was in theaters. But I just ordered the DVD, which comes out tomorrow.
Me too. When you think about it, the amount of honestly great music to come from NYC during the 70s and 80s is actually pretty paltry, especially once you get past the first wave of CBGB bands. Furthermore, some of the best bands (Ramones, New York Dolls) came from the unfashionable outer boroughs. Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Patty Smith, ********** Galore, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, most of the No Wave scene, and 99% of the hardcore bands would have been consigned to the dustbins of history had they not come from New York. To put it in perspective, around the same time, Cleveland gave us Rocket from the Tombs, the Pagans, the Dead Boys, and Pere Ubu.
OK so I am just watching American Hardcore here at work. It's interesting but not blowing me away or anything. It seems like it was made for the people who were there the first time, not 5 years too late like myself.
I liked the book and listend to alot of these bands as a kid (especially the Minutemen and The Replacements) but I was always dissapointed that Husker Du didnt make it into the book; to me their record 'Zen Arcade' in 1984 was the sort of high water mark for Hardcore, that record still gives me goosebumps today. Maybe for some reason it's not considered "Hardcore" but to me the're a helluvalot more hardcore than The Replacements ever were.
So I finally caught this movie on cable late last night, and it was quite good. I mostly appreciated the lack of narration and the reliance on almost entirely first hand accounts of the various regional scenes. Of course this is also the main flaw, as by definition they were limited to who they had access to and the perspectives / memories (hah!) of those folks. But having heavyweights like Ian MacKaye, H.R., Rollins, Ginn, etc. was great. Ultimately, though, I think the movie kind of bummed me out. Ian MacKaye's comments about how violence became so central to the scene was dead on, and for me I remember those gigs as being amazing experiences, but rather joyless. I saw lots of local gigs in San Jose and I saw the DK's in SF and other gigs at the Fab Mab, the Stone, the I Beam, etc. And I think I saw Black Flag at the Stone -- I definitely went to a number of Black Flag gigs, but riots of varying degrees broke out almost every effing time before they even took the stage. But when I compare those gigs to seeing X or the English Beat or even listening to the Specials, I remember getting the same energetic high, with an equally political bent -- but with a heavy dose of fun. And that's the difference: American Hardcore was about intensely personal expression, societal rebellion and aggressive non-conformity. It seems driven much more fundamentally from personal pain, which comes across very clearly in the movie. And it's an easy migration that I can fully understand from personal pain to inflicting pain. Anyway -- Ian MacKaye's story about punching some dude who attacked his brother and then saying "That's it. I'm done." really hit home, because I remember a similar moment very, very vividly. Just my two cents. Oh, and Blink 182, et al, still suck.
Interesting post, but I disagree re: how hardcore involved aggressive nonconformity. If anything, hardcore promoted aggressive conformity, at least after the first year or two. It's interesting to hear Rollins, etc. recount the negative reactions to their early experiments in non-hardcore music.
There was another clip from someone recalling how a kid climbed onstage and begged on his knees: "Pleeeeeease...play something fast..." So, yeah -- there was certainly a high degree of conformity within the scene. I can easily hear people I know saying every single one of those songs in the film sounded exactly the same, they all looked the same, etc. But as the film protagonists said: They were trying, aggressively trying, to reject the conformity they saw in the 80s. The heavily produced rock, the Izod shirts, the Reagan moment. I'd give them credit for that.
Part of me really wants to see this. The other part of me got really depressed when a DC Hardcore photo exhibit came out this year, and there was a picture of yours truly (among others) out in front of the Wilson Center between shows. I used to get passionate about things. Not so much anymore.
The real irony, which a lot of people realized early on, was that they had simply created their own conformity; the whole scene got co-opted almost instantly.
I'd like to add (since the thread got resurrected) that the movie had WAAAAAAY too much Bad Brains and too much Black Flag. Sort of the way "A Different State of Mind" had WAAAAAAAY too much Social D.