Music Questionnaire Everyone Must Answer

[martin]

Oh! And forgot to mention FEAR - but guess they'd be more in that LA punk / proto-hardcore vein too?

That footage of them on SNL is great

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

some other things I'd recommend highly

Minor Threat - everything is good, even the later records when they got back together. my favorite is the Filler EP.
Faith - Subject to Change, also the Faith/Void split. Void was a cool weird band.
Embrace S/T - the first "emo" record along w/Rites of Spring. basically Ian Mackaye + Faith. huge fan. not into Fugazi at all tho.
White Cross - EP + LP both fantastic, but LP better. Awesome + underrated band
Koro S/T EP
Deep Wound S/T EP - J Mascis on drums, Lou Barlow on guitar. Ultrafast teenage thrash.
Siege - Drop Dead. The original powerviolence record. Amazing. The equivalent of those proto-house records you hear from 8 years before house existed.
State - No Illusions EP
Necros - Conquest For Death
Die Kreuzen S/T LP
Husker Du - Land Speed Record for hardcore. Super fast and raw for 1981. Not the Husker Du you know.
Fang - Landshark! "The Money Will Roll Right In", "Skinheads Smoke Dope", etc
Poison Idea - Pick Your King
Feederz - Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss
Really Red - New Strings For Old Puppets EP
D.R.I. - first 2 EPs. maybe Dealing With It. Avoid everything after that.
N.O.T.A. - Moscow EP
7 Seconds - The Crew
Bad Religion - How Could Hell Be Any Worse? Side 1 perfect, side 2 OK. Everything else sucks. Also kinda to blame for decades of pop-punk but what're you gonna do.

American d-beat
Crucifix - Annihilation. Also one of the only real U.S. anarchopunk bands, pre-crust. Maybe my fave U.S. hxc LP.
Diatribe - Aftermath EP
Iconoclast - 1983 + 1984 demos, both awesome
Battalion of Saints - Second Coming

hardcore not hardcore
Big Boys - everything. Along w/The Dicks + Dave Dictor from MDC, the holy trinity of gay Texas punk weirdos (honorable mention to Butthole Surfers)
No Trend - Teenage Love 7"

 

[martin]

That part of the Boston scene had irritating tough guy vibes (i.e. Wolfpack), sometimes shitty politics, etc.

I never understood the 'crew' thing. There's some story about skins from Boston or DC going to NY, with Xs on their foreheads, and starting fights with any 'X'-free NY locals. Just territorial/regional rivalry, or did they really hate alcohol and beer-drinkers that much?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

sure I left a few things out but that's p much my cream of the crop for U.S. hxc 79-84 or 85, after which it becomes a different thing

Fear ya in that punk/hardcore grey area. "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones" is maybe the greatest punk diss track ever.

 

[martin]

sure I left a few things out but that's p much my cream of the crop for U.S. hxc 79-84 or 85, after which it becomes a different thing.

Cool, will check these out. You're the third Dissensus user I know of who's brought up that Deep Wound EP

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

did they really hate alcohol and beer-drinkers that much?

it's all much mythologized at this point but my understanding is something like:

Ian Mackaye + his friends were too young to drink legally, and v into this high on life kinda thing, listening to fast/hard music - before punk it was hard rock - skateboard, whatever. the original punk scene otoh was p druggy, full of decadent art weirdos etc. also the 70s, cocaine, disco, etc. SxE was kinda reaction, how teenagers will rebel against whatever's the old thing in this case drugs. also original hardcore was pretty violent in a number of ways. first you could actually get beat up for looking like a punk (seems quaint now). also some scenes were pretty violent, especially L.A. which people mythologized. Henry Rollins first bend, SOA, like every song is about fighting or gang fighting or something. NY scene had a fair number of rough + tumble street kids back when LES etc was no joke. Boston is more like frat jocks. The lefty main guy from MRR, Tim Yohannon, famously hated that part of Boston scene. I think the Boston/NY thing was an outgrowth of dumb teen machismo, gang mentality and the traditional Boston v. NY rivalry.

tldr - teen aggro

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

SxE in general is super American, even its foreign iterations, v Puritan. Went to SXE vegan metalcore scene of the 90s (Earth Crisis and beyond)

unsurprisingly its most extreme descendant, hardline, got heavy into not just veganism but anti-abortion, v militant

look up Vegan Reich, and Raid from Tennessee, for some serious craziness. The main Vegan Reich guy later converted to Islam a la Cappo to Krishna.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I Against I is pretty great, isn't it?

it's not terrible - "House of Suffering" is a nostalgic fave - but it's not great either. all their LPs have plenty of filler. it's just not in the same galaxy as their important stuff.

 

[martin]

SxE in general is super American, even its foreign iterations, v Puritan.

Yeah, it always seemed (to me) a lot more of a US thing - UKHC was boozier and crustier. Can't imagine calls to boycott the bar going down well at a Deviated Instinct gig.

Then again, might have been worth risking a 'Boston beatdown' to get away from the stench of rotting jeans and gluebags.

look up Vegan Reich, and Raid from Tennessee, for some serious craziness. The main Vegan Reich guy later converted to Islam a la Cappo to Krishna.

Ha ha, they became Vegan Jihad, no? Class. Never heard them, but checked out their lyrics online. Was mostly shocked to find out it wasn't some joke band and that they actually meant it...

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

UKHC was boozier and crustier

there is a strand of US-influenced UKHC but it's not until later. The Stupids, Ripchord, Heresy, contemporaries of the crust pioneers as you probably know.

as a kid I was hugely into Amebix, Axegrinder, Deviated Instinct, etc as well as Doom, ENT - the two sides of crust, crust proper and crustcore, if you will.

don't think SxE really hit the UK/Europe til the late 80s/early 90s? could be wrong. the guys from Larm were I believe, p sure their later band Seein' Red was.

I do know vegan SxE metallic hxc was HUGE in Europe in the 90s. Huge here too tbf. Has mostly not aged well. Exception is Integrity, v much not straight edge tho.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

for the record, my personal fave intl 80s hxc scene wavers between Finland + Italy. Sweden is great, Japan as always a world unto itself, but those 2, unmistakable.

Finland - v prominent bass (a true rarity in 80s hxc), tons of reverb, some has goth/deathrock flavor, but also some of the most fucked up early noisecore things

Italians - clean guitar tones, almost a weird ultra fast jazzy thing, tortured vocals, militant politics. astounding to think the same country produced things like Wretched, Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, Shotgun Solution, etc at literally the exact same time as the peak of Italo disco.

btw Martin I hear you're also a big Oi fan. curious to hear some of your opinions thereof? Esp as there's been a big Oi revival the last few years, spearheaded by the French.

 

[CORP$EY]

i owned 'damage' by black flag back in the days when i wanted to be a punk and i never really liked it that much so its interesting/vindicating to see fans of this stuff saying that album's not as good as earlier stuff

i sometimes wish i liked black flag more so i could get their logo tattooed on me - a mate of mine has it and it looks good

don't listen to any of that stuff anymore although quite recently i had a little binge of buzzcocks et al (i know that's not the same scene at all btw lol)

i also like dead kennedy's 'let's lynch the landlord'

 

[martin]

Well, in true MRR Scene Report style, I’ll start off by announcing that London's become culturally poorer this year following the dissolution of 16 GUNS, one of the best Oi! groups to ever slither out of the Thames. Spent my 40th birthday nursing a burst eardrum while watching them play in Camden, surrounded by about 10 ageing skins, though they sadly split up soon after. They never committed anything to vinyl except ‘Private 999’ on one of the Mortarhate comps, but their demos should be treasured by skins and punks everywhere – no horrible metal influence or guitar solos, just pure yob rock. Despite having a bad reputation, a friend approached them for a track for a homeless benefit comp he was arranging, and reports that they couldn’t have been more helpful.

16 Guns are responsible for some of the best lyrics in Oi! history, having gifted us with gems like: “I don’t care what colour you are / I’ll run you over in my car” (Psycho); “Always trying to spoil my life / the bald-headed bastard and his fucking wife / ‘Don’t do this and don’t do that / and don’t you dare kick my cat’” (Sod The Neighbours); and “Smother your baby in his cot / What’s he done to you? Not a lot” (Child Batterer). I shall never forget them.

More later!

 

[CORP$EY]

Favourite music memory?

There are many. In the case of one, I can't remember what specific music was playing, I just remember the sight of hundreds of people leaning over a balconey (and over the handrails of the stairs to the balconey) as a drum n bass DJ at Rock City in Nottingham dropped ??? and all the people's arms went mental at once. I am pretty sure this happened on the first night I ever took pills. Thinking about this my mind jumps forward to Exit Festival in Serbia in 2007, standing on top of a hill and seeing tens of thousands of people going absolutely mental to techno as the sun rose over the ex-military fort. Remembering, too, an old hippy couple stood in front of me watching Love at Glastonbury, and sharing this smile which really touched me to the core. (And Love were great.)

Not so much a single memory but a group - being introduced to UK garage by some friends at university, having got into dubstep that year. I'd heard about five garage tunes ever and so being played all these amazing tunes at once while pingered up was truly jaw dropping. Every tune they dropped was a 'what the FUCK is this?!' moment.

 

[CORP$EY]

What music have you gone off after loving at some point?

Soooo much. A small sampling would include

Backpacker/underground rap - not all of it, but a lot of it. The majority of the questionable CDs I own from being a teenager belong to this group.

American punk music - NOFX, Rancid, Less Than Jake... I was young and I liked taking ownership of being a scuzzbag. Now I'm old and it just seems embarrassing. Also the ethos of futurism which I've taken from getting into dance music condemns Rancid if only because they're just a rip off of the Clash.

Indie - specifically Coldplay, whose second album I (to my own surprise) fell in love with and was deeply emotionally affected by back when hormones were coursing through my veins and I was first coming to grips with a lifetime of alienated misery... The thing here is I don't think I ever DID go off that album, I just became embarrassed by it, too embarrassed to ignore its drippiness. I felt really vindicated when I saw K Punk praising 'Clocks' on his blog once.

NME rock - just don't even listen to it anymore - The Strokes, The Libertines, The Vines, etc.

Drum N Bass - I was suuuper into drum n bass for years and now I can't stand most of it, all I can hear is the snare going tsh-tsch-tsch... I think you really have to be into going to DNB nights and taking five pills in a night to 'get' this music. That's what it took

Dubstep: I think this is a similar case to Drum N Bass - I was going to nights every other week when I was into it and its a whole other thing when you can feel it juddering your body and tickling your nose.

 

[martin]

I was starting to wade through Padraig's HC tips and came across this, out of the blue - apparently contemporaries /comrades of Negative Approach and nothing to do with THAT L7, though this is way more art-punk/proto-Riot Grrl than hardcore and really catchy (to me, anyway). Discogs only lists this - did they do anymore?

Evocative 80s guitar sound on the third/final track, too - is it even possible to create those tones anymore? Was it a particular FX box or did everyone just get sick to death of the sound of it by '87?

 

[john eden]

It took me a while to get into Shiftwork - it's pretty polarising (speaking of which, wait til you get to 'Levitate' ) and am pretty sure I thought it was way too mellow/commercial when I first heard it.

I love it now, thought it took quite a lot of listens before it clicked - reminds me of summer '95 and me and my mate going on trips to Edinburgh and Glasgow on our National Express Youth Discount passes, and this was a Walkman fave for travelling back monged. Picks: whole thing, but esp. Idiot Joy Showland (which they used to play twice as fast live), Pitsville Direkt, War Against Intelligence, Book of Lies, Shiftwork, The Mixer.

Had some classic MES diss lines too: "You think your haircut is distinguished / When it's a blot on the English landscape". And slagging off Carl Lewis and Good Morning TV. "The working class has been shafted...so what the fuck are you sneering at?"

I'll give Shfit-Work another go, someone else said it was good too.

"Levitate" is interesting because whilst you don't think of The Fall as being a commercial band, it is very uncommercial by their usual standards. I think this might be the only Fall my partner has heard which is probably why she doesn't like them. Hearing me play "This Nations Saving Grace" was confusing for her.

 

[john eden]

Vegan Reich - Byron Coley tried to convince me that they were on a wind up.

Last time I checked their Islamic stuff it was hard to see much humour in it and there was a hell of a lot of it, so I remain sceptical.

Mind you I have no sense of fun at all, so it could be that.

 

[matt b]

don't think SxE really hit the UK/Europe til the late 80s/early 90s? could be wrong. the guys from Larm were I believe, p sure their later band Seein' Red was.

I do know vegan SxE metallic hxc was HUGE in Europe in the 90s. Huge here too tbf. Has mostly not aged well. Exception is Integrity, v much not straight edge tho.

By the time I got into H/C properly (1988) SxE was a thing, although more Minor Threat / Bad Religion inspired (and seemingly linked to skateboarding/ BMX) a bit later it was very Revelation focused (YoT, GBs etc) and more American (Jock?) sportswear. It seemed to die off as a specific thing until Earth Crisis etc a bit later.

UK and Europe had pretty separate scenes until mid-1990s and the Vegan Reich end of SxE was pretty tiny in the UK as far as I can remember and they did seem to split away almost entirely from the rest of the scene and go to the massive SxE festivals in Belgium at places like Vort n Vis (https://90svortnvis.wordpress.com/)

 

[matt b]

Vegan Reich - Byron Coley tried to convince me that they were on a wind up.

Those who identify as Vegan SxE HxC kids are the most boring po-faced twats imaginable. They meant it