Hardcore Punk... Before the Monk

i'm currently enjoying the book "American Hardcore: a tribal history". It takes me back to my teenage years and the music i still love today.

Being the age that i am, i was too young or not born during the initial punk movement. The 'punk' i grew up with was the second wave, the 'hardcore' era. In time i reverse engineered my way back to the roots of punk.

After listening for years to bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat (and later Fugazi) i was finally introduced to The Ramones. At first they sounded like Beach Boy punk compared to what i was listening to. Joey Ramone's easily enjoyed vocal sense of melody is what first hit me until i realized that he was singing about beating a brat with a baseball bat. They quickly won me over.

Later i was introduced to The Clash and found were the politics met the punk, an important root in the development of the hardcore i was most attracted to. So driven. So determined.

Hardcore and skateboarding are wild bedfellows. What attracts me to skateboarding is also what attracts me to hardcore punk. Being a skateboarder growing up in the 80's and early 90's it was almost impossible to not end up listening to hardcore. Simple acts like walking through the halls of school, walking home after school, or just walking anywhere for that matter, became a potential fight. To dress or behave different from the status quo during the Reagan/Bush Sr era opened you up to public ridicule and abuse that seemed supported (or at least blindly ignored) by adults.

Eventually, if you didn't want to give up your beliefs you had to get tough. The bright colors and fun styled dress of skateboarding quickly evolved into a functional and intimidating punk look for many of us as we struggled to defend ourselves against the small minded (but large bodied) jocks, rednecks, and/or whatever you have in your own town.

The music unified us. We realized that we weren't alone. There were many of us, just separated in small groups across the country. We wore our boots, carried rolls of quarters to hold in our fists in case a group surrounded us (and they only really picked on people who were alone at the time, they never said boo if a group of us were together) and shaved our heads with clippers plugged into random outlets at the local mall (mohawks just gave steroid using football players something to grab onto in a fight).

Anger, like all emotions, is felt for a reason. When you've got to hold your ground against a bunch o' tools much larger than yourself you need something to draw strength from. When kept in check anger can have it's benefits, as all emotions serve an important purpose at various times. The discipline of hardcore, the outlet of those shows, and the feeling of not being alone were valuable things at a crucial time that have helped me become the person i am today.

Hardcore punk combined the energy and attitude of punk with an internal strength, intimidating style, and a self-correcting sense that has kept it from ever becoming corrupted by popular culture. In this day and age where any jack-off can buy a CBGB t-shirt and say they're punk, it's nice to know that Fugazi never made merchandise.