Love + Sexual Assault in the Time of NYHC
Intent on dismantling each and every aspect of what could have once been a legacy of survival against the odds, the hardcore community in NY is roiled by a 40-year-old accusation of sexual impropriety
In tennis it is called an unforced error. While, arguably, the lowest form of armchair analysis involves the use of sports’ analogies, this was an unforced error to end all unforced errors. Specifically, this last week an accusation was leveled at the long-dead singer for the New York Hardcore (NYHC) band Warzone. To put a finer point on it, it was that he was a child molester, pedophile and predator. The accuser? John Joseph, singer for Bloodclot, former singer for the Cro-Mags.
[Total disclosure: I know everyone I am writing about here, some better than others, and I was actually physically present for large chunks of time referenced in the accusation. I would go even further and claim that all involved were, or are, friends of mine.]
John Joseph is a bright guy, and a hustler. Not necessarily in that order. Years after the hellscape that was where NYHC had called home morphed into walking tours of the Lower East Side for culture adjacent rubberneckers, I happened to be on some corporate junket. Paid for by Scion it involved all expense paid weekends at a chi-chi resort. One year in Marfa, Texas. The year after, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Playground of the wealthy and well-heeled.
The idea was that these kind of Chautauquas, though sponsored by a deep-pocketed auto manufacturer, could yield bursts of creative thinking that might help Toyota frame a connection to arts and artists that resulted, somewhere along the line, in improved sales. John Waters, Prince Paul, George Clinton and more were guests along with a coterie of publishing types (me), marketing folks and advertisers.
My phone was blowing up with texts from NYHC habitués near and far: could it be? HOW could it be? Was it true? And then later down the chain, why now?
Sitting in the audience in a white terry cloth bathrobe and white bedroom slippers (I had been told dress was casual), I had just come from a spa treatment. Dress was not actually casual though and while it may have seemed shockingly inappropriate to be sitting there thusly dressed the real shock hit when we took our seats and our star attendee was, indeed, John Joseph.
I never twigged how it was that he had pulled this off but with the right amount of street cred and a happy line of patter, he had convinced them to take a flyer on him, and so there he was. All expenses paid. And frankly, I couldn’t have been more proud. I mean I was there because I was the Deputy Editor at OZY Media. John Joseph was there because he was John Joseph. A fact that I assumed was only of interest to, possibly, John Joseph.
Later pictures of him with celebrities started popping up and still the head nod from me.
Of course in the age of the Internet where everyone with both an asshole and an opinion has a platform I later squinted through his bro-fueled diatribes on vaccines and so on. “Squinted” because my first conversations with him, on the outskirts of Tompkins Square Park in 1983 were all health related. The power of a non-meat diet was his thing and he was persuasive in explaining how he had made a choice to be a vegetarian. This, maybe, was an extension of that.
Ever the peace maker in latter days I spent my time trying to run interference between him and the founder of his band the Cro-Mags, Harley Flanagan. Right up until we had a moment of clarity with him telling me “Eugene…I can see your heart’s in the right place but I need to tell you man that that’s never EVER going to happen.”
OK. But what did happen was an attack on Flanagan at Webster Hall, that led to Flanagan’s arrest and the eventual dropping of charges when the prevailing orthodoxy — that crazy motherfucker Flanagan was trying to stab the world to death — fell apart without much resistance.
Since then Flanagan went from win to win: retaining ownership and rights to the band name, revived his band, has published a book, appeared in movies, award-winning documentaries, earned a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, sired two sons and gotten married to the lawyer that put him back on the map.
John Joseph, in addition to reforming his band Bloodclot (and this is how I first knew him. John Bloodclot. Bloodclot, from the rastafarian curse), had taken to triathlons where he was often pictured riding what the discerning eye saw were really expensive bikes. Triathlons and now, a few days ago, accusations that our friend Raybeez from Warzone was a fan of drugging and fucking 14 year olds.
My phone was blowing up with texts from NYHC habitués near and far: could it be? HOW could it be? Was it true? And then later down the chain, why now?
But John Joseph went a step further and made the claim that there was a causal connection to another recently departed hardcore guy’s recent death (connected to his past use of drugs and alcohol) and the “abuse” suffered at Raybeez’ hands. So, if you’re keeping track, two dead friends, one an accused perpetrator and the other a victim.
John Joseph at this point makes some claim about clearing the air and wanting there to, effectively, be no safe port for predators. Nevermind the time passed. He was standing for this idea, as a foster kid himself, that the good must make right this evil wrong, and so he would, and did, go public. The idea being, I guess, that sunlight cleanses.
If only.
The “funny” thing is hardcore as a both a music and a scene was always pretty…sexless. Maybe it was the blueprint laid out by Ian MacKaye…
Though I write about Raybeez in my memoir, I make no mention of this but only because I had heard no mention of this. What I remember about Ray was that he kicked someone’s ass for me as I was on my way to kick someone’s ass. I remember him steadfast and earnest. But, of course, I would. You see, everyone knew me to be a nondrinker, nonsmoker and, it was assumed, nondrug user.
So I was rarely involved in those reindeer games though I knew enough to know who was and who was not. I also knew that with the possible exception of Vinnie Stigma, who was a few years older than most of us, that we were all, initially teenagers. I also remember that the scene was full of kids who had been abused, neglected or thrown out by parents who didn’t deserve them in the first place.
Some were younger than teenagers with Roger Miret’s brother Freddy being about the youngest I ever saw at a CBGBs matinee. I would guess that he was eight years old and CBs was his good home away from the bad one that Roger writes about in his great memoir.
However if a 19-year-old dates a 14-year-old runaway, of either gender, it is a statutory crime, in some states. If those teenagers also happen to be doing drugs the weight of responsibility rests, in the eyes of the law, with the older teenager. The same one that John Joseph is accusing of being a groomer.
The “funny” thing is hardcore as a both a music and a scene was always pretty…sexless. Maybe it was the blueprint laid out by Ian MacKaye who was very forthright about his lack of interest in smoking, drinking, drugs and for good measure: fucking. But yeah…at least he could fucking think he’d go on to sing.
What he didn’t think about was the fact that there’s a difference between standard, which he held for criticism, and normal. It’s normal for teens to be interested in what burgeoning hormonal changes might have wrought. Teens. Though David Thorstad, the one-time head of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) claimed in an interview in The Birth of Tragedy Magazine, that there wasn’t a boy in America who didn’t need a blowjob, many of us boys disagreed about who it was cool to get one from.
But teens experiment and sometimes regret those experiments on the way to adulthood. Which is to say, there’s a qualitative difference in perpetrators. Indeed the law, as it used to stand, in California at least, went thusly: three years after the date of the last occurrence was the standing statute. So if you and your 17-year-old lover had sex the evening before their 18th birthday, after three years it would be adjudged that the crime was out of statute.
I am neither minimizing or negating claims of sexual abuse. I do have questions though about choices that are made regarding when to call abuse, abuse. Or like Dave Chappelle once asked “how old is 15 really?”
I also have questions about John Joseph’s targeting of perpetrators when there’s enough paint and enough brushes to go around, including a number of his close friends, who could be accused of the same. Is the idea though that the dead can’t be hurt so then are comfortably instrumental in helping to put you on the right side of history?
I’m unsure but while the rumors abound about present members of the “scene” pimping and pandering girls from the scene with scene-fueled cocaine habits, I have to wonder if John Joseph’s chagrin is fueled by same sex, sexual activity (Ray, it seems, was bisexual) or…
Well, who knows really? What I do know is that you’re as significant as those you help/don’t hurt and unforced errors are unlikely to do either.
