Saturday, August 22, 2009

Posted by xjustinx |
For those that know me, I tend to be a pretty nice guy, but I often hear that some people think I'm an asshole. It's probably the sarcastic cynic in me that some people just never get past. This also heavily extends to my humor. Cynical, sarcastic things make me laugh the most, and that's probably why I love reading Metal Inquisition so much. One of my favorite contributors to that site is Sergeant D, and today we are blessed with a guest writeup from him. - Justin

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5 Things I Miss About 90s Hardcore
I haven't listened to much 90s hardcore in a long time because nearly all of it is tuneless, amateurish garbage played by self-important assbags in clothes that don't fit. With the exception of, well, most of the bands on this blog, it is better if we just pretend it never happened. For every sick band like Turmoil, Day of Suffering, Abnegation, or Wrench, there were a hundred Extinctions and New Day Risings, to say nothing of the seemingly endless glut of atrocious, generic "power violence" bands in the late 90s. Rather than dwell on the negative, it's probably best to just put on our rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and remember the good things about those years. Like any other old asshole, I could go on forever, but because I value your time I will just share the five things I miss most (you are probably reading this at work and have to be in a meeting soon).

1. Stages full of scenesters
Whenever a bigger band would come to town, you weren't shit if you weren't watching them from the side of the stage- conspicuously positioned so everybody could see you, of course, so everybody knew you were hella tight bros with the band. Mike Ski from Brother's Keeper was a big fan of this technique, which was ironic since they had that song "Namedropper" or whatever. I feel like he must have really low self-esteem because he overcompensated a lot back then. It makes me a little vicariously embarrassed when I look back on it, but it's hard to be too judgmental. I mean, if I was from Erie and had a girl voice I would probably have an inferiority complex too, so I can't blame him. It's just hard to watch someone who seems like a pretty nice dude embarrass himself so frequently and publicly. For example, the atrocious cover art he did for the BK records or, well, their music.

Anyhow, aside from Mike Lastowski, one of the most common and annoying members of the Stage Scenester Crew TM was the Photographer Girl. There was at least one in every city, usually they were either the Alpha Mosh Hott of the local scene or the Plain Jane Who Is Really Talented/Cool/Sincere/Authentic. Either way, they got in the way at every show, pushing their way to the front of the stage where you were trying to mosh with your bros so they could stick a camera in the face of some asshole in whatever flash-in-the-pan band she wanted to feature in her zine this month and pat herself on the back for "documenting the scene." I always imagine these girls digging through boxes of old crap and finding like a huge stack of fucking Knapsack or Campfire photos and being like "I would have been better off just buying film and immediately throwing it in the trash without ever using it. Same result but I could have saved myself a lot of time and I would be a lot less ashamed of myself."

Kurt Catalyst: The last person on the planet who still thinks putting out jaw-droppingly average vegan straightedge hardcore records will save the world. Also, he is 100 years old.

2. Backpacks, JNCOs, sweater vests, and other fashion disasters
Sometimes you don't realize how absurd something is until you try to articulate it. For example, a while ago I was trying to explain 90s hardcore fashion to this 23 year-old hipster girl I was dating and the ridiculousness of it all hit me harder than the xbreakdownsx on the Green Rage 7". She listens to electro and Animal Collective so it was a bit hard for her to grasp: "I don't get it," she said, "Why did you guys wear Tommy Hilfiger? I thought you were like punk or whatever. My dad wears that stuff." I did not have a good answer for her, nor could I explain why Kurt Catalyst wore a backpack while onstage singing for Birthright (Catalyst records deserves a while thread of its own; that label's quality control practices are so atrocious it makes Back Ta Basics look like Rick Rubin's hit factory).

Before he was into pleather pants and eyeliner, 18 Visions singer Jame Shart (far left) wore JNCOs and Excessive Force shirts just like the rest of us.

It's hard to even know where to start when it comes to all the atrocious elements of 90s hardcore fashion, but let's begin with big pants. There aren't a whole lot of things more ridiculous looking than some 140-pound 18-year old with acne and an XXL Andrew Thomas Company shirt wearing size 40 JNCOs and karate-moshing his balls off to Downset. Wait, I just thought of one: the same thing, but with the addition of a sweater vest, a Krsna bead choker, and an Andre Agassi-style headband. I can only imagine what our parents thought: "I can't believe I'm letting him leave the house like that, he looks like a complete fucking asshole and he's going to be so embarrassed about this in five years. Oh well, you can't tell kids shit, we just have to let him make his own mistakes." One day I will write a book entitled "Why People Should Not Be Allowed to Express Themselves Before The Age of 21" and pictures of 90s hardcore clothing will be chapter one. Chapter two will be exerpts from Eddie Refuge's zine paired with a photo of my enormous denim shorts with a Shelter patch on them.

If you have the Hellfest 2000 DVD you can see one of my favorite showcases of 90s fashion in the Brother's Keeper interview segment. I tried to find it on YouTube, and although people have ripped what seems like every single other second of the DVD, I could not find any of the BK parts (to my complete lack of surprise). I am sorry to pick on BK so much, but it's just so easy. If you went to the boardwalk and had one of those caricature artists draw a cartoon of entry-level 90s hardcore, it would probably come out looking exactly like Brother's Keeper. Anyway, in this interview the drummer is wearing giant jeans, a Nautica shirt, and to cap it off, this colossal assface has on a fucking Gilligan's Island-style bucket hat! The first time I saw it I nearly fell of my couch in amazement. But again, you have to cut them a certain amount of slack, they are from Erie and don't know any better. It's like if you had an exchange student from Latvia, you can't laugh at him too hard for having a bowl haircut and a "USA" sweatshirt.

3. Tour laminates
Some time in the late 90s, hardcore bands started to have Pro Gear And Attitude TM. Victory led the charge, of course, but the worst offenders were the bands on then-smalltime labels like Ferret and Trustkill who acted like they were Aerosmith. One of the silliest manifestations of this was how these bands would have their friend who worked at Kinko's make tour laminates which they would prominently display on their keychain to make sure you knew they were in the band. This makes a lot of sense if you are playing, say, Warped Tour where there are a zillion kids and you need to control access to backstage, but this was 1998 and these bands were playing to 50 people in DIY venues with piles of cat shit on the floor. For example, Harvest played a little punk rock flophouse called Speak In Tongues in Cleveland and were literally laughed off the stage after walking around like rockstars with their laminates.

Ironically the people in legitimately successful bands like Earth Crisis and Bloodlet never gave a fuck and were much more down-to-earth than their entry-level counterparts. If I had to guess, their thinking was something like, "My band is about as big as a hardcore band can possibly be, and I still have to tour 9 months out of the year just to afford sleeping on my parents' couch. Even if I wanted to act like a rockstar, years of this torturous existence have humbled me so much that I could never pull it off. Is Subway hiring?"


"Our next song is a cover, it's called 'Panty Raid' and it's by a band called Murphy's Law!"

4. Everybody being a secret creepvert
I will go into more detail about it below, but as we all remember the 90s were very uptight and it was definitely not OK to be into chicks like it is for alt kids today (see Brokencyde, Hollywood Undead, 3OH!3, etc). That doesn't change human nature, though: boys were still super horny boys, and the No Fun Club TM simply forced it all underground. The net result was that there were tons of undercover creeps and it was that much funnier when they were uncovered. A few examples (I don't want to blow up these girls' spots so I will do my best to anonymize them; my intent is to make fun of the dudes, not the ladies):
- Charlie King is disappointed
One drunken night in Pittsburgh, I mentioned a girl that we both knew to Charlie from Bloodlet. The conversation went like this:
Me: [Girl] is super cool. She's a good photographer, too.
Charlie: Yeah I guess... But she's shitty in the sack!

- Scott Vogel's hamfisted game
I used to live across the street from a girl who was dating Scott Vogel, who was then in Buried Alive. They played in our city and she of course went to the show. Scott seemed to think he was being super slick/discreet when he asked her to "have a talk with him in the van." They returned about 30 minutes later, hair all messed up and sweaty; we pretended not to know what happened since it was really uncomfortable.

- Mike Score: Panty thief??
I can't remember if it was All Out War or Unconquered, but one of them may have stolen some panties (I'm going to say it was Mike from AOW, but it's possible I'm wrong so don't accuse him of panty-stealing just yet). They stayed with this girl I used to date. She was the local Alpha Mosh Hott and Mike was sweating her pretty hard. After they left, we were cleaning up and she got a little pale, paused and said "Dude, I think he fucking stole my underwear!! WTF!" I cannot say for sure whether this is true or not, but I can tell you that I never saw her wear the pair of underwear in question again. Also, in a moment of extremely poor judgment, I got a Morbid Angel tattoo from the guitarist of AOW in her kitchen.

Did you go to the infamous Pittsburgh fest in 1996? If so, then you must remember Rent America literally crying about all the worms on the sidewalk because it had rained. It still makes my head spin to think about that day!

5. The No Fun Club
The No Fun Club really deserves a post of its own. Shit, it deserves a BOOK of its own. I have written a little about this before [http://metalinquisition.blogspot.com/2009/01/screamo-crunk-cultural-primer.html], but the No Fun Club TM was the essence of 90s hardcore, with the whole Ebullition scene being the most annoying example. I think I would rather chop off my dick with the pieces of a shattered Manumission 7" than listen to Spitboy again. The basic idea was, if you enjoyed something other than being on the front lines of the war for animal/earth/human liberation, it was grounds for being excommunicated from the scene. Or worse, someone might write a scathing letter about it and you would be tried in the pages of HeartattaCk!

A while ago I was listening to the Chokehold 7" after finding MP3s of it on some blog. I hadn't listened to it in probably 7 or 8 years, but I definitely loved it back in the day and I remembered every note. I was singing along and moshing it up at my desk at work when that one line came on about the Bible being a "sexist book of lies." I remember thinking that was like the coolest fucking shit ever when I was in high school, like "Yeah!! Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it, organized religion!!" But what the fuck is a 15 year-old doing worrying about these things?! I should have been chilling at the mall, hanging out at Orange Julius and chatting up skater girls who were coming out of Zumiez, not trying to save the world. And regardless of how sincere I was, what does a fucking high school kid know about anything??

For example, when I was 18 or so my friend called to tell me he was going to raid a mink farm and wanted me to go. I told him that I couldn't because my friend's band was in town and I wanted to say hi since I hadn't seen them in a couple of years. He called me a straightedge poser who only cared about music (he was hardline, you see) and hung up on me after swearing at me a little bit. (As an aside, in addition to being hardline he was also a big fan of Mucky Pup and for a while made his meager living selling Beanie Babies on eBay) He and his girlfriend "raided" the mink farm, which basically amounted to opening their cages, then getting pissed off because the stupid things just sat in their cages. He didn't think about the fact that they were raised in captivity and didn't know any different. He got arrested, convicted of a felony, and the mink ranchers quickly rounded up what few animals escaped and put them back in their cages. So much for the No Fun Club saving the world- and I had a great time hanging out with my friends at the show!

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What are YOUR favorite things about 90s hardcore that I didn't cover?
Did you ever have someone in a moderately successful 90s moshcore band steal your panties?
Have you seen Kurt Catalyst lately? Was he wearing a backpack?

-Sergeant D

74 comments:

Death Metal Dan said...

Hahaha. I just posted last night about how I finished the Burning Fight book and it kinda changed how I felt about those days. You're "No Fun Club" piece is exactly what I was talking about.

Hardcore was supposed to be a place for free thought, yet if your thoughts weren't in line with a basic set of rules, you were basically shit on. Kinda funny how that worked.

Dobek Ohashi said...

The best thing I read in 2009 so far hahaha

:)

When I hung out with Kurt in Belgium in earlier 2000s he had a self made laminated VEGAN SXE ID with his photo and all hanging off of his backpack. Classic.

Alternate 1995 said...

I was at CBs the night someone stabbed Mike. I wonder if it was for the reasons you mentioned. Either way, I saw some kid get yanked out of there so fast his sneakers nearly forgot to stay attached to his feet.

Personally, I still wish it was the 90s. Life was a lot simplier then. Being an adult sucks a serious amount of dick.

Anonymous said...

he had a self made laminated VEGAN SXE ID with his photo and all hanging off of his backpack

!!! Holy shit hahaha. Maybe he thought the Poland Hardline chapter would pull them over and ask to "see his papers"??

HUANSOAHN said...

fucking priceless!thanks for so much entertainment!

David Agranoff said...

I lost alot of respect for this site. This post sucks.

Anonymous said...

anti-PC metal dude complaining about 90s hardcore...and now he listens to korn...I'll take brother's keeper any day.

Anonymous said...

Uh oh, someone alerted the No Fun Club! ;)

All I can say about Kurt is that he's a fucking awesome dude with a very self-aware sense of humor.

RA said...

The No Fun Club should also include the mosh police, who would stare you down for attempting to lift your arm outside of your allotted 12" circle of personal space. Sorry if I bump into you while Los Crudos finally rages for ninety seconds after the fifteen minute lecture.

Anonymous said...

I used to talk to Kurt, actually, he was a totally cool guy and I definitely don't mean any offense with this post. I kid because I love! I don't know Mike Ski but he always seemed like a good dude too.

shrout said...

what is this "alpha mosh hott" he is speaking of? the link for that phrase doesnt mention anything about it when you click it.

Karl said...

haha as annoying as the ebullition scene was, the opposite end of the spectrum was an equally giant piece of of fucking shit, way more violent and absolutely gutless when it came to pushing the music beyond juvenile, idealistic anthems for social retards who couldnt get laid before they started drinking.

trying to act like the Male Cult end of the spectrum was "open", and non-exclusive reeks like of 300 smelly dicks packed into a legion hall.

bloodorflies said...

That was awesome. Everyone loves to claim that the scene was so excepting of everyone. total horseshit.

Robert said...

This is 100% perfect.

You have made this old man very nostalgic.

Matt from Denver said...

Awesome. Because of my age (I was born in 1970) I bridged the 80s and 90s hardcore scenes, having friends both in the original wave and those who wore the large pants and celebrated the HeartattaCk scene. I remember the No Fun Club very well; one dude I know here in Denver was a charter committee member, who besides being straight edge, vegan, animal rights, PC as fuck etc., had the added bonus of being gay too. His finest moment came when he protested a Shudder To Think show around 1994 because they had signed to Epic! Seriously, he was right outside, waving a sign that said "This is not a punk show" on one side and "This is a ROCK show" on the other. We figured he probably attracted more paying customers than he drove away.

Anonymous said...

one dude I know here in Denver was a charter committee member, who besides being straight edge, vegan, animal rights, PC as fuck etc., had the added bonus of being gay too

If only he was also a member of a racial or ethnic minority, disabled, and left-handed then he could have been the ultimate hand of trump cards!

MikeJake said...

Oh, and remember SHARPs (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice)? Only in the hardcore scene could something so colossally moronic exist.

shane said...

Perhaps the funniest thing I have ever read!
I had almost forgotten how perverted guys got from sexual repression.

... and I am still a member of the No Fun Club.

shane said...

Maybe someone ought to also mention Kurt Catalyst's hip hop project, Cause One.

(Kurt is a nice guy. I hope he doesn't mind all the attention this is generating. I think he is a hermit.)

Ben Edge said...

I remember going to a show, and all of a sudden this dude just started punching everyone in the pit. He was yelling, "You're dancing too hard!"

So slamming is bad, but hitting people is okay?

The show actually descended into a philosophical shouting match about slam dancing/moshing/whatever they were calling it that year.

The culprit ended up becoming one of my best friends, and he is still by his own admission a member of the No Fun Club (TM).

mel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MikeJake said...

Julia?

Anonymous said...

Nope, must be someone different- which makes it that much funnier!

AC said...

Hilarious. Thank you for posting this!

savage said...

Sarge!
that 90's hardcore piece is so amazing and totally right on. I remember all of that stuff!

i used to call Kurt "Cattle-tits" instead of Catalyst.

Also, about Brothers Keeper...they are no where near as funny as the Sumthin' Ta Prove demo tape. Next to Rob R Rock, that is the most hilarious/worst!

Anonymous said...

Oh Jesus, I forgot about Sumthin' Ta Prove, what a fucking abomination. Nearly as ridiculous as Timm Macintosh's Hard As Fuck side project... only not a joke :(

Rob R Rock is a really nice guy who can definitely take a joke so I can't hate on him too much.

Anonymous said...

Also, this!!

Sorry if I bump into you while Los Crudos finally rages for ninety seconds after the fifteen minute lecture

Unknown said...

I wish I can read this page but I got a paragraph in and my head started throbbing and my eyes started watering. White on black is super hard to read for a lot of people with sensitive eyes or people who get migraines. I was kind of pumped about this but then got super bummed and had to quit reading before I got to any of the good stuff.

Anonymous said...

wow funniest thing i have read in forever, some of the things we loved were so ridiculous, wonder if kurt cataylst has his wall of shame (a wall where he writes down the name of every sxe kid he knew that sold out)

Ben Edge said...

Megan,

Highlight the text, and cut and paste it into a Word file or an e-mail. Then you can have whatever color text doesn't make you go into an epileptic fit.

jss said...

god it was so much easier to get laid when girls wouldnt tell anyone you hooked up. You could easily walk into a room of multiple girls you had kissed or whatever and not worry about an awkward situation.

Kulavira said...

still a member of the No Fun Club and loving it!

Patrick W said...

Wow, Dave Agarnoff STILL has no sense of humor!

Anonymous said...

re: kurt catalyst:

http://www.myspace.com/causexone

you're welcome.

India said...

I never let the sXe thing bother me one bit, and to be honest I look up to the people who actually stay true to it, and arent just sXe to be in the "trend". I never was sXe (I tried for a year, didnt work), but I still hold respect for those who are.


I miss small shows :(. I listen to ALOT of genras, but there was nothing like going to some unheard of Hardcore bands show, just to relieve stress with the aggression of the crowd

Emil said...

Great article, lots of LOLs. Aside from the fashion most of this is still around, laminates and the NFC especially.

But jerseys are coming back too...


oh and I like Bro Keep and I even know 2 other people who do personally.

John™ said...

I have been sXe since 1990, simply because it was a great path for me given my family history with alcohol abuse. I [very much] hated the '1-up' disease that infected the straight edge scene. Kids, not content with just doing something for themselves, were constantly trying to out-do each other. If you were a vegetarian, they had to be vegan. If you were vegan they had it tattood in big-bold gothic letters across their chest, if you matched that one then they went for HARDLINER, raided dairy farms and ate plankton for dinner. It was stupid.

Patrick Hughes said...

I used to own a little record store and promote shows aimed at and performed by members of the NFC, and saw my share of 90's HC... The best pervert story someone told me was about having members of Snapcase crash at their place after a show... One of 'em threw a pr0no in the VHS while they chilled on the couch, and eventually got up, walked over to the TV, pulled out his ween and started spanking, and eventually goozed Snapcase baby batter all over the screen, while the rest just sat there watching like it was no big deal.

Also Larry from Pegboy beat off on my friend's floor when she wouldn't play humpies with him. He got all embarrassed and ran to get the 409 and made her swear she wouldn't ever tell anyone. But she did.

frailamerica said...

I miss entry prices being reduced with a can of food.

Keith said...

Don't forget the letterman jackets.

The best secret pervert story I have is about the time Jesus Lizard played Louisville, at this place called CD Grafittis that used to be a Lazer Tag laze (it was kind of awesome in concept, but really awkward in practice, to have shows there). At some point, David Yow's pantaloons came off, as they were wont to do, and a whole huge contingent of the hardcore scene walked in protest of his perverse and immoral actions.

However, these same guys - many of them my friends, so I kid with love, not malcontent -- used to play a game called "chicken leg," where'd they'd run around the parking lot with their balls hanging out their zipper while they pulled their dicks out as far as they could. At least David Yow sang to us while he did it.

savage said...

Im sure that Kurt "Cattle-tits", would keep said list of fallen posers very secure in said BACKPACK of his.

Sarge,
Sumthin' Ta Prove demo is all around the most hilarious thing ever. The lyrics are pure gold.

Wes, God of Anger said...

Oh man! I guess being this far removed from it, I forgot how fucking RETARDED we all were...I was never straight edge and got fucking annoyed with lectures at shows. Mike Ski sounded like the one of those bird things from "The Dark Crystal". Nice work, Sarge. Hope all the kids enjoyed the painful look in the mirror. I'm gonna go smoke a bowl and listen to Sleep...ah, adulthood.
p.s.How did militant christian hardcore get missed as well as One Life Crew? Comedy run amuck...

Anonymous said...

dude...probably more appropriate for Metal Inquisition than here, but there needs to be "secret pervert story" thread...it'll be like the revhq board circa 1998, but true!

Anonymous said...

wtf i still wear my jnco's from the 90's WHAT!

erock352 said...

patrick hughes...did you live in gainesville and run shaft records?

Anonymous said...

"The No Fun Club really deserves a post of its own. Shit, it deserves a BOOK of its own."

There is. It's called "Burning Fight."

Josh said...

Rad post. Real talk. Good but strange times.... Oh the joys of being a pissed off 16-18 year old....

Anonymous said...

I remember going to that fest at CMU in Pittsburgh back in the day, and those fruits crying over earthworms, Milhouse and a few other bands were supposed to play, (But DIDN'T), myself and our friends didn't take things to seriously with those morons, we made fun of the vegans selling food that looked like Shark Chum, made fun of some dude that didn't have a neck, and ended up rolling out to see Creation is Crucifixion at some other venue cause it seemed like a better waste of time. LARGE JNCO's and ALL. This was an awesome post.

mike said...

jumping jesus on a pogo stick that CMU show was brutal. the best part about it was the record flea market of sorts. Jihad was to play but never did. this post is a blast from the past. I to wish it was the 90es my life was alot easier then.

M.

XfirestormX said...

I definitely don't miss the word Womyn. But I still think basketball jerseys, Camo shorts, and toilet chain chokers are the bomb. Best pervert story I remember was someone in Shutdown stealing my friends underwear. But my friend was a he.

Anonymous said...

so funny to see dave agranoff is still a humourless dickwad. his ilk infected the syracuse scene for ages.

Patrick said...

This shit sucked so bad, and the people trying to bring it back should just go to church where they belong.

I do not miss it at all.

My only disappointment about the 90s is I never got a zine written about me by shrill annoying lesbians claiming I had touched them funny.

Oh well! It's never too late!

Guav said...

Sgt, Rob R Rock and his girlfriend lived with me at my mom's house for a summer ... 1991 I think. Just sayin.

ERIC SXE said...

That was some funny shit but then again I still wear baggy shorts/pants and XXL shirts. Fuck all the tight ass stretch jeans and size Small shirts that the hipster fuckers wear nowadays. I'm not 125 pounds and 5'10" anymore! LOL My backpack was for all the shit I bought off touring bands at shows.

You gotta admit that X watches STILL look fucking cool!!

I never could stand Brothers Keeper...that voice just stabbed me in my ears like an icepick!!! Fuck!!

thuglifebaldwin said...

shaft..........i bought a clikitat ikatowi cd there in 96 or so..........


anyways i guess most of the stuff i listened to then and now would probably be lumped in the "NFC"......torches to rome (or basically any mike kirsch project), groundwork, current, vine, giants chair, inept, ect..........was never into the meathead mosh NYHC bullshit like crown of thornz/skarhead/warzone/neglect/ect.........yea there were a slew of bands/zines who took offense at every fucking thing anyone did/said and it was annoying as fuck but id still say that era of music was 1000000 times better than the pathetic shit that passes for "punk" or "hardcore" or whatever today.....


3xl t shirts & huge jeans > neon print shirts, tight jeans & white sox/yankees fitted caps.......

Anonymous said...

hahaha...being one of maybe ten chicago hardcore girls, I can totally laugh at how stupid hardcore guys were/are. Great post! It brought back some fun memories.

Unknown said...

My Fav was in Jersey, not only did we sport JNCO's and huge polo shirts but cut the jncos half way up the leg and extended them out also vegan adidas running shoes...upside down backwards visors, messenger bags w/ pin on for the love of.. patches, Hare Krishnas The Hightstown Ballroom RIP, Stickman from Fury of V pushing over 11 y/o old kids in the pit all these things made the 90's hardcore zoo epicly awesome.

E-town concrete's rap project "martini" whyte boy best...song...ever

emomoshmetalking said...

I miss the victory message board... that shit was funny as fuck. I love all the old dudes that haven't done anything with their lives since they were teenagers and use those memories to escape reality and do reunion shows at bars for old hardcore bands.

Anonymous said...

awesome, hilarious post. i had many friends who were crucified to the X, and went to quite a few hardcore shows at VFWs and whatnot. Those days didn't last too long though - alcohol and drugs were just too much fun to be missed.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and I can remember the sXe kids trying to find the biggest, fattest black markers to put Xs on the backs of their hands with...they got these great big sign-making ones, except the markers weren't skin friendly and they all ended up with horrible skin rashes in the shape of Xs for a week: Hardcore!!

Mooneyz said...

I had to laugh when I saw your picture of James Hart in the E-Force t-shirt. Brought back some memories. That particular Shirt James helped design for the short west coast tour of Excessive Force that he and I went on with them as "roadies" I guess. Even back then which was right as 18 Visions (the full name was 18 Visions of the Apocalypse, but they shortened it) was forming and had just recorded their first demo, James always said he would rather play in a Rock band than a Hardcore band. He often joked that he was a rocker playing death metal in a hardcore band. I had a great time that summer with Excessive Force, hanging out with James and the guys from Lifeless and Clear in SLC (who were also part of the tour). Good times.

Ibn Mark said...

This post was funny…but I’ll take huge pants and choker necklaces over girl jeans and big hairdos any day. The ’90s weren’t that bad, and Mike Ski was definitely a legit dude. And all that crunkcore shit makes BK sound like musical geniuses.

Anonymous said...

Fucking great article man. Definitely will have to check this blog more often too.

Valis_77 said...

This was a great article, brought back a lot of memories of how weird shit was back then. Number 6 for me would be titled "Fest Drama" there was always some big to do at these things whether it's OLC dude punching some girl or Assuck refusing to play on a stage, girls charging for hugs, or louisville loser band members(can't remember their name) playing spin the bottle to get their creep on, or dudes from Sons of Abraham threatening Damien from Morning Again (and every south fl band)for breaking edge. Stupid shit, should've stuck with drinking and Motorhead when i was 14 then getting involved with that debacle that was the 90's hxc thing, although it had it's good moments too...

Anonymous said...

Glad I am too young to have experienced the NFC, but unfortunately it seem FSU has taken up their mantle. Same shit, different assholes. This blog is cool and I know I am going to start one when I get out of my twenties and fully realize how much time I've wasted. Can't tell me shit now, but when I get older and look at a pic of myself in a flat brim and dog tags, I am going to feel like an asshole.

Anonymous said...

This is great. I wonder how I missed it for so long. When dealing with the NFC, one must point out the correlation that the more militant/preachy/hypocritical hardline dudes got, the more money their parents had.

I remember hearing stories of one of the kids from XRacetraitorX making his pops re-cover the seats in his Lexus because the dumb old man had actually bought him a $60k car with leather seats. What a dick.

...and what about Catharsis? You gotta love a dude who's family has more money than god telling you that you're a piece of shit if you have a job. haha

It's funny, being poor always made me feel kind of out of place in the 90's hardcore scene.

Anonymous said...

Wow, just... wow. You nailed it. Hit it out of the park. While I was mostly more into the crusty / grindy / powerviolence-y side of things, I did also travel in the Ebullition / No Fun Club circles. I had a tiiiiite Spitboy shirt. "Fuck YOU mom and school! I have a t-shirt with titties on it!"

Anyway, all I really have to add to this is:

"[Powerviolence is] the music that really drew me in during that early- to mid-'90s black spot of DIY hardcore, when faux humanism, tolerance for morons, celebrations of inadequacies and screen printed manila envelopes were de rigueur." -- Andy Nolan, The Endless Blockade

XRosenbergX said...

heh, despite all the funny clothes, haircuts, etc of the 90's i still prefer this to the worst thign that happened to hardcore - "modern hardcore" bullshit when all the rich kids sing about hard life on streets etc bullshit.. i just cants tand it.

when it come to Polish hardliners, alot of them sold out big time, some remained but back then i was a baby goin to shows and these dudes thought they are gods, all of them looking like clones and act like proper dickheads..

regarding Kurt, well dont be such a cry baby and moan about quality, at least theres a counter-balance to all the shit that's comin out right now.

Its funny how music for disenchanted kids have become msuic for rich kids who barely started listening to hardcore last year and have all superexclusivelimitedblahblah vinyls. these twats we'll be getting rid off these records in a year or two.

Anonymous said...

oh man. this was great. it hit the nail on the head in summing up what sucked so hard about the 90s hardcore scene. i have plenty of fond memories(mostly connected to earth crisis), but the no fun police. absolutely 100% THE TRUTH. and it was about a hundred times funnier when it was followed by an angry comment from dave agranoff. i still talk to him on facebook all the time, and i was hardline back in those days so i feel totally qualified in sayin its all true and all sadly funny. it was such a humorless time and the music was what suffered the worst. brothers keeper was a headlining act!...............pete spielman

Anonymous said...

that was so great. sums up how i felt about the mid 90's hardcore scene to a T.

denver style said...

so what was wrong with sumthin ta prove?......good band

Anonymous said...

oh man. brought back some memories. i remember being drunk as fuck arguing with the brothers keeper singer at a show in maryland. I miss the 90s. Half the fun of going to the shows was going for the laughs at watching all the kickboxers showing off all the moves they have been practicing at home. D.C. was a funny scene back then.

Anonymous said...

I was never "into" the hardcore scene, but growing up a metalhead in NJ, it was all around. Why do you all associate the straightedge, vegan, etc with 90's hardcore as a whole. The fashion, the shows, the styles are spot on, but I guess I was too close to the big, bad, tough guy, NYHC, thug type of hardcore (Etown Concrete, Madball, Orange 9mm, NJ Bloodline, VOD) to notice. The vegan, whining about earthworms, political activist, emo-type hardcore was nowhere to be found.

Dead Air said...

Dont forget the lyric sheets being passed out. Also of note, these 90's hardcore tropes survived well into the 2000/2010's at ABC No Rio.