The Discreet Charm of NYHC
Going gently into some dark night? Not even a little bit.
“What does ‘flip out’ mean, Dad?”
At almost four years old the questioner’s question, amidst all of the other questions regarding why the sky is blue, why bad people are bad and why everyone has to die, this one had a special resonance. Mostly because I just told daughter number four that I was about to do just that. On the occasion of some non-signaling lane changer in California’s notoriously horrific traffic.
“Well, kid… ‘flip out’ is when Dad starts screaming his head off because someone who should be taking the bus tries driving.”
“Do you think the people in the other car can hear you?”
BOOM. Out of the mouth’s of babes, a stunningly effective counter-perspective. But this is a well-known corollary. Screaming at people who can’t hear what you’re screaming does next to nothing.
…[I]t really was less about being heard by everybody, the essence of pop music, for example, and more about serving the interests of people who would lose their minds if they didn’t scream.
And yet…an entire, almost full decade of people doing just that was the especially trenchant offering of what hardcore music, the uglier and less radio-friendly version of the punk rock that gave birth to it, was all about. Similarly it really was less about being heard by everybody, the essence of pop music, for example, and more about serving the interests of people who would lose their minds if they didn’t scream.
Which was really more of a need than a want. Or in my case a want to need. Because, in general, I like to think of myself as a man with a sunny disposition. Hard to offend, even harder to excite to action. I think the word to describe how I see myself is phlegmatic.
Until it’s not.
“You two should do a porn together.” The commenter, in response to a social media posting of the photo above on Facebook, was a guy I knew from high school who I’ve maintained some infrequent contact with over the years.
“Well that’s quite an honor coming from a guy who was heavily rumored to have tried fucking his cat. How’s the cat fucking business going?”
I posted this, and then watched as minutes later it disappeared. Maybe it was Facebook taste cops not liking my use of the word “fucking”. So I reposted.
“Well that’s quite an honor coming from a guy who was heavily rumored to have tried having sex with his cat. How’s the cat screwing business going?” This also disappeared, but what appeared was an unexpectedly violent surge of emotional content. “Flipping out” in action.
Because when I figured out that it was the cat fucker who was deleting my comments but leaving his own I blocked him, reported him for harassment and defriended him in short order. If he had been standing in front of me someone would have been hurt. And I’d not be talking about feelings.
All of which left me a skosh surprised. Was it the porn blast? The gay porn blast? Was it his out of left field clumsy attempt at humor? Not any of these really, but mostly, in final analysis this: I have no sense of humor at all regarding my love of NYHC. That is, New York Hardcore.
As detailed in A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer’s Row, I was an early stage adopter, getting my first punk rock record in 1977, the same year I started going to shows. Not even four years later starting Whipping Boy, a band whose initial aspiration was “hardcore”. Touring and following the moveable feast that was first wave hardcore we went to or played shows all over the United States, but nowhere had hardcore bitten in a more aggressive way than New York of the early ‘80’s.
And in New York all of the usual regional intra- and inter-scene tribalism was largely absent in the face of much more serious existential threats. It didn’t matter if you were from Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx, Manhattan or Nutley, New Jersey. The external threats to health and well being were serious enough that if someone had a t-shirt for a band you recognized this might be the difference between an ass kicking and no ass kicking because there were two of you up against Guardian Angels, Hells Angels, and assorted meatheads drawn by Sid Vicious tabloid exploits and the smell of chaos.
Other hardcore scenes looked down their noses at New York but New York Hardcore was, for the aforementioned reasons, open armed. But DC would throw Boston shade — famously Jeff Nelson from Minor Threat crapping on the Boston band use of the word “crew” to describe themselves — Boston would crap on New York, a possible holdover from sports rivalries. The Midwest would crap on New York, recalling here Barry Henssler from The Necros on the Process of Elimination tour declaring at Irving Plaza that New York sucked, to an audience of New Yorkers and smirking Midwesterners.
[W]hen my Ivy League friend cracks wise about porn as it relates to Harley Flanagan and me, I, unexpectedly, but unsurprisingly, went off.
It all stunk of what we later understood as “Upper Westside-ism”, a borderline class contempt that seemed to be an undercurrent all across America. There were the sons and daughters of politicians, professional types and professors (as I was), art and college students. All sort of the offspring of hippies and bohemian intelligentsia. And then their working class corollaries.
As with any other aspects of class warfare here in America, my personal sympathies always have rested with those whose chances at success seemed to fall somewhere between slim and none. So when my Ivy League friend cracks wise about porn as it relates to Harley Flanagan and me, I, unexpectedly, but unsurprisingly, went off.
Not for me. My sense of humor regarding me is well documented. But if ever there was someone who has survived against any and all possibility that surviving would be a probability, well, Flanagan was the poster boy for it. Touring as an eight year old because he told his hippie mom he wanted to, Flanagan by the age of 10 had been ensconced in low income hell on the pre-artisanal cheesed Lower East Side.
Rapes, beatings, robberies and assaults were a daily occurrence. And by “daily” it is meant, every day. Finding a release in art, with Allen Ginsberg publishing his first book (of poetry) when he was four years old, and hanging out at parties with Joe Strummer, Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry et al, Flanagan was still not immune to the neighborhood’s “quirks” and developed a carapace to match the general level of danger he was living with. Daily.
I saw Flanagan for the first time when he was drumming for The Stimulators, his aunt’s band. I was 16 and he was 12 and caused me, for the first time in my life, a much more than lingering sensation that I was wasting my time with idles. So, with what was within my grasp, I doubled down and took what I was doing much more seriously. So weightlifting (and writing). Something that served me well during punk rock’s early days.
Over the years when people have made the public connection between Flanagan and me though, it has often been accompanied by reported tales of his failures. People he robbed, threatened or beat. When asked to address these as has sometimes happened Flanagan neither ducks nor dodges: “hey man…when I was younger I did some foul shit.”
Which I understood. Even more so after reading his memoir. Same with Roger from Agnostic Front’s memoir. These were breathing testimonials to No Plan B’s. The frisson of having no ways out of abuse, poverty, drug use (PCP, heroin, LSD, and acid all at the same time? The world’s toughest cocktail), and abuse and general life failures but one, music, is intense. No retreats into familiar familial career paths. Nothing, if not what was chosen, and that thing that was chosen is the quixotic path of musical art?
Not one who should be expected to absorb/embrace the brickbats of some cat fucking Ivy League’r. Not at all.
These are heroes journeys if I’ve ever seen them and even if you’re not digging on the 1-2-3-4 of hardcore circa 2024, it’s really about much more than that. It’s about being a thriving survivor and this is something that should be stood on.
Say what you want about me but not for a second, talk shit about NYHC and expect to get a pass from me. That was the realest scene I’d ever had the pleasure to experience and it welcomed me like the prodigal son of the city that I was.
So, sorry for taking a whole substack to say so, but it seems it needed to be said. By way of very directly, giving credit where credit is due.
OK…So you have ordered the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
Might you consider giving it a review in either of those places?
I’ve been told it matters, somehow. So please: review away! Unless you think it sucks. Then, maybe, just keep that part to yourself. At last count there were 58 reviews…so yeah…GET AT IT!!! Every one helps. Or so they tell me.
AND if you want to come to see OXBOW in the US, very possibly for the only time remaining in 2024, please plan on coming to Caterwaul. You won’t regret it.
Maybe.
Hard pure writing.