So Eric and me became best friends. I finally had a kid my own age to hang out with. Prior to him, everybody was older than me. We’d meet at Chock Full O’ Nuts across the street from Max’s Kansas City, which by then had already closed down. But it still had an arcade underneath it, where the old soundman worked. And he used to hook me up and give us free games. We’d hang out with his sons and fuck around all day.
Eric, like all young people, would go through a bit of an identity crisis from time to time. He’d be hanging down on the LES with us, dressing like a Skinhead, then he’d go back to his neighborhood with all the Ricans and they’d be like, “Why are you dressing like that and hanging out with those white boys?” And the next time I’d see him, he’d be rocking his blue sheepskin, gazelles, and fat laces and shell toes. I guess like so many kids at that age, he really didn’t know how he fit in—especially back then, ’cause the lines were pretty drawn. He was Puerto Rican, hangin’ with all these crazy punk rockers, and all his old friends from the neighborhood were B-boys. Sometimes he’d get jumped with me, mistaken for being a white boy by the Spanish kids. That shit used to fuck with him, ’cause it was like, where did he belong?
I know people who went through that shit even years later. Jorge from Merauder would get into shit ’cause he looked more white than Spanish. SOB got into shit, too. But the irony was that the New York Hardcore scene had always been more diverse than most Hardcore scenes. There had always been some Spanish kids, black kids, and Asian kids. I mean yeah, it was mostly white, but our scene was more open and diverse than some people might think. A lot of the early NYHC Skinheads were Spanish. Roger from Agnostic Front is Cuban, Diego was Puerto Rican, as was Jose from the Mob, and so were a lot of the Skinheads that came around later on. Even back in the Max’s days, you had the Bad Brains, Pure Hell, Th’ Influence—who were one of the first real NYHC bands—and they were all black.
When Eric first started singing with the Cro-Mags, it was so great, ’cause he was like “the B-boy-Hardcore-kid.” He’d come out screaming the words, then bust into some ill B-boy shit, break dancing and working the floor—do like a head spin into a pose or some shit—and then spin back into Hardcore. It was off the hook! He would have become such a great frontman if he could have stayed with us. He had too much energy, he never stopped moving. He’d be sitting on a bench doin’ B-boy shit—poppin’ and lockin’ even while he was sitting down. He was so much fun to hang out with.
The first people I can think of mixing those influences were Eric Casanova and Mackie Jayson. I’m just trying to give credit were it’s due. When I came back from Ireland with my head shaved, no one “got it.” Even Vinnie Stigma still had a mohawk back then. You said Skinhead over here, and people thought of the Fordham Baldies from the ’50s, if that.
Back then, I put out a fanzine. I only did a few issues. I did interviews with bands like the Circle Jerks and Madness. I also did show reviews of whoever was in town: Siouxsie, 999, Buzzcocks, Undertones or Stiff Little Fingers. When I became a Skinhead, I wrote an article compiled from a bunch of newspapers I got in Ireland and from England about Skinhead history—violence, hooligans, and music, to teach my friends and the scene. I was on a mission.
Every day, I kept recruiting friends, bringing them to my house, and shaving their heads. As the Hardcore scene grew and grew, it really started to take on a life of its own. Like I said, at first it was just me, and then like maybe five of my friends—me, Eric, Jimmy, Little Chris, Paul Dordal, Vinnie Stigma and the Agnostic Front crew, and Diego, a fuckin’ crazy redhead Puerto Rican Skinhead who roadied for the Mob. We started shaving up whole bunches of our friends’ heads. We would have “head-shaving parties,” music blasting, everybody slappin’ each other in the head, and giving each other “red necks.” Before you knew it, Skins were the biggest part of the New York scene. And we were getting known all over the States and the world—thanks largely to Maximum Rocknroll, and the lies and rumors they spread about us.
HARLEY IN FIGHT OUTSIDE CBGB, BY DREW CAROLAN
In those days, there was no Internet, so Maximum Rocknroll kind of became the global link for Hardcore kids and punks. And people would anonymously send in letters and “scene reports,” talking mad shit about people on the scene—especially about me and my friends from the NYHC scene. People who didn’t know any better took it as the truth. In the beginning, we laughed it off. But over the years it got annoying.
I remember when Raybeez first got his head shaved. The first few times I saw him, he was so quiet. He was probably high on dust. Raybeez had duct tape wrapped all up and down his pant legs, and a chain around his waist. He had this crazy bushy mohawk, a big-ass nose, and big bushy eyebrows—he looked like some kind of crazy big bird!
When Agnostic Front got together, Vinnie and Raybeez got into the Skinhead thing.
They went through a few singers in a short time before Roger got the gig. Raybeez was on drums, and they got this kid Adam Mucci on bass, later in Murphy’s Law. At one point, Vinnie offered to buy anyone an Agnostic Front “Skinhead Army” tattoo. And would you believe people jumped on it? Hey, a free tattoo was a free tattoo, especially back then. All of a sudden there was a whole ton of Skinheads on the scene. You had the so-called Agnostic Front Skinhead Army, the Warzone Crew, the Lower East Side Crew or Lower East Side Skins. But the truth is, most of these knuckleheads weren’t even really from the city. We all just wound up there together on the Hardcore scene.
My mom wasn’t happy about the whole Skinhead thing, especially in the beginning. When I first got back from Ireland, she kind of freaked. And my mom’s husband Simon Pettet, the poet/writer from England, didn’t dig it at all. Him and me had always gotten along well, but when I came back from Ireland as a Skinhead, it freaked him out. They had no idea how much trouble I was getting into at school or in the neighborhood. I was drinking a lot, huffin’ glue, takin’ pills and lots of LSD, and whatever else.
PART 2: THE BEGINNING OF “NEW YORK HARDCORE”
It was around that time that the D.C. guys started to enter the picture. The Stimulators played D.C. with the Bad Brains several times, as well as with Black Market Baby and others. I had met Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, and the whole gang there, bands like Void, Scream and Iron Cross. For the record, not everyone in D.C. was straight edge back then. Every time I went to D.C., I had a great time, especially when we played the legendary 9:30 Club.
A few of those D.C. guys had been to Cali, and adopted the “Huntington Beach thing”—the whole look and style of stage diving, slamming, skanking, or whatever you wanna call it. In New York, people kinda stage dived, but it was more like get onstage, sing along as long as you can, and try to jump off before the bouncers get you. The D.C. guys were more launching themselves off the stage, with boots, spurs, chains with locks, and fists flying. The whole thing looked violent as hell, but really, not too many people got hurt. Unless of course assholes got on the floor, or fools who didn’t know made the mistake of hitting someone who was “down with the crew.” Then it got ugly very quickly.
The first shows that made a big impact as far as kicking off New York Hardcore were when bands like the Circle Jerks and Black Flag came to town. Things like that were big events, even bands like Flipper—it was always a big deal when West Coast bands would make it all the way east back then.
Circle Jerks’ first New York show was the first time New Yorkers experienced real slam dancing. It was Circle Jerks, the Stimulators, and the Necros, and a lot of the D.C. kids came up on a “road trip,” and some of the Necros’ crew from Ohio. They made it a point to really go apeshit. They wanted to leave an impression on New York, and they definitely did.
That gig was a huge moment for me ’cause it was the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. We played our show, we did our thing, but I’ll never forget how that show really changed everything. There were the Necros, just raw and fast. And then the Circle Jerks; they were fuckin’ sick, they just ripped. The songs were so fast an
d tight, the dance floor was insane. It was a pivotal moment for me. I knew it was time for me to do some new shit. That whole gig really made a big impression on New York. Even though most of the D.C. dudes weren’t that tough, they weren’t like thugs or hard-asses or nothing, but they were goin’ crazy. They were tearin’ shit up on the dance floor. That experience left a tremendous impression on me and NYC.
Some of the New York people were intimidated at first, especially the old punk rockers. The “New York Hardcore sound” didn’t really exist yet. New York is now considered to be a home of real Hardcore, but it wasn’t that way at first. There was lots of great stuff, but the New York scene consisted mostly of girls and really young kids, the few leftover punk rockers, and a handful of dudes who were, for the most part, kind of soft. I don’t mean that in a bad way, they just weren’t thug types or tough guys. The Beasties, Luscious Jackson, and Neneh Cherry crowd, who’d been coming to see the Stimulators, disappeared as it turned into full-on Hardcore.
All the West Coast bands and D.C. bands started coming through more regularly as it officially turned into Hardcore. I remember after the D.C. guys came to a few shows, even Stigma was at first annoyed about these “Skinheads” from D.C. He pedaled by on his bike one day by Tompkins Square Park with his mohawk, plaid pants, and bum flap, sayin’, “Who the fuck do all these Skinheads think they are, comin’ and startin’ shit?” Meaning all the D.C. crew that had started to come up for some of the big shows.
A lot of those D.C. guys are very PC now, but back then, they would fuck shit up on the dance floor! Henry and Ian and all of them, from what I recall, there was a point when people started getting jumped on the dance floor, or at least singled out and targeted for cheap shots, back fists, and all that dirty shit by some of those guys. Not all of them, but it got out of hand from time to time. Some of them dudes were pretty fuckin’ nuts on the dance floor and fights would break out. I mean, not as much as it does nowadays, but they weren’t as “peace-loving” as they claim to be now. But it seemed more pure and unrehearsed and spontaneous. Back then, punk rockers of any kind and “Skinheads” got fucked with so much in regular life, we didn’t really fuck with each other on the scene at shows. It was only when outsiders would come in and get in shit. But things started to change; I think it had a lot to do with the whole straight edge thing, and New York was so not straight edge.
In the beginning, the D.C. guys would come up and go nuts for some of the big shows. Then the Boston guys—who were just fake jocks and middle-class dweebs all on D.C.’s dick—would come try to do the same.
D.C. had pulled off some kind of hard-rock shit two or three times as far as intimidating the crowd a little with all the slam dancing, and Boston maybe once or twice.
It’s fucked up—a lot of these guys that had been cool turned into a bunch of dicks. The first two or three times they came down, they were almost timid—’til the music would start, then they’d slam and go off. They all came down with this attitude that they were gonna “mosh New York” or something—like they were gonna come down and fuck shit up, and make an impression. I still haven’t figured out what that was all about or what they were trying to prove, but those Boston kids had this grudge with New York as a whole.
I guess they were all frustrated and pumped up ’cause they didn’t fuck and they drank too much Coke and Pepsi. We were all getting laid and getting high. Of course, I’m just kidding, but it was all just stupid kids’ shit.
They tried that shit again at A7, but by then, me and my friends were “growing up,” and for shit-sure we weren’t gonna take no one’s shit anymore, especially not from a bunch of fuckin’ suburban middle-class jocks pretending to be Hardcore—fuck that. We were used to getting jumped by Puerto Rican gangs who would stab us or shoot at us. We took shit to another level—that’s just the way it was. They started it, and we finished it.
That last time they came down was to A7, that’s what fucked it all up. Al Barile, the guitarist from SSD, was rockin’ this “Kill New York” T-shirt. I remember his big-nosed ass wearing it, written in marker. I don’t know if it was just some jock mentality carrying over into Hardcore, like some Red Sox/Yankees rivalry or whatever, but it was some really dumb shit. My boy Paul Dordal went up to him and said “You wanna kill New York, motherfucker? Start with me!” Al didn’t do or say shit. He just stood there looking stupid. His friends were not tearing up the pit that night—we were. A lot of those Boston kids got hurt on the dance floor that night; by the end of the show, none of them were in the pit, they had their tails between their legs, and they packed up and left.
Let’s just put it this way: they never came down again. I heard some bullshit story about how a bunch of Boston straight edge cats came to New York, and they all had X’s on their foreheads and hands or whatever, and they were punching everyone on the dance floor who didn’t have X’s. I don’t know what universe that happened in, but not this one.
One time, Jerry’s Kids and the FU’s and a dumb band, the Fucking Assholes, played at CBs. At that point we were still chill with the Boston cats. Then the Fucking Assholes came on, which was a joke band made up of those other bands wearing ski masks, so no one would know it was them. They started playin’ and talkin’ mad shit about New York.
Well, I wasn’t having that shit. So, I came running from the back of the stage and tackled the singer around his waist right off the stage, and a bunch of friends of mine started kicking him. He was lucky he made it back onstage. They cut their set short and got the fuck off. Backstage, they were all cowering like bitches. I walked by and looked in on them. One of them was like, “I thought they were gonna kill us!” They were all realizing that it wasn’t as funny an idea as when they had it back home. They later said one of the Boston guys got cut with a knife on the dance floor. I don’t know, and I don’t care.
One guy that inspired me a lot, and that I respected the most, was Ian MacKaye. He is one of the few people that I can say has never lost his integrity; he has always maintained a high standard for himself. I was really tight with those D.C. guys, before they got on their “Fuck New York” kick. I discussed that with him one time, and he said he never thought of it so much as a fuck New York attitude, as opposed to more of a D.C. pride thing, like they were putting D.C. on the map. And they really did. They came in, and they really left their mark, at least on our scene.
I became friendly with a lot of the D.C. kids. A lot of them weren’t straight edge—cats like Bill and Jay McKenzie and others who were fucking messes; I mean, pill-popping, beer-drinking, and getting-fucked-up motherfuckers. But when fights would go down in D.C. with some drunken jarhead Marines or whoever, pretty much all of them cats would get down. Guys like Henry and Ian, when push came to shove, those guys would scrap. They all had chains around their waists with padlocks on them—they’d all tie heavy locks or those lead sinkers that you use for fishing to the corners of their bandanas. So if they got jumped or got in a fight, they could use those things to beat the shit out of them.
Back then was when I first met John Joseph, a.k.a. John Bloodclot. I met him when I was in the Stimulators. I remember seeing him on the street around 1980. I mistook him for Rob from CFA. He was walking by a restaurant where everybody was eating, and he blew a snot rocket at the window!
John used to come up from D.C. and Virginia, where he was stationed when he was in the Navy. His family lived in a middle-class neighborhood in Queens, but since he was stationed in Virginia, he used to go to shows in D.C. He wasn’t a Skinhead, but he had his head shaved, ’cause he was in the military. He’d dress like the D.C. guys, with spurs on his MC boots, bandanas around his ankles, and a chain around his waist. Most of the D.C. guys looked like the drawing of the dude in the Circle Jerks logo. Most of the D.C. guys also wore black trench coats and wool caps, so they kinda looked like a crew when they rolled in together. But John didn’t wear the trench coat—he wore a leather jacket.
My mom never dug John. She was like, “Why is this
dude hanging out with my son? He’s older than my son, and he’s not really a good influence.” And I guess in a lot of ways, he wasn’t. But then, look at what other choices were around me. I mean, here’s this guy who showed me how to roll better spliffs. He taught me how to be a better get-over.
My mom always used to say that she thought John was gay, or someone who didn’t yet realize he was gay. She used to say, “He’s in his 20s and my son’s in his early teens. This guy should be at an age when he’s trying to get girls. He shouldn’t be hanging out with little kids.” That shit used to drive me nuts. I was like, “Mom, c’mon!” You don’t want to hear when you’re a teenager that your best friend is gay. But that shit cracks me up now looking back on it. It didn’t help that he used to wear a T-shirt that said in Magic Marker, “Fuck off bitch, I’m celibate.” Now, straight edge is one thing—“don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fuck”—but there’s definitely some unsettled business in that dude’s mind, or some kind of sexual tension or something that I still don’t get.
John says that he lived in all kinds of foster homes and foster care. Some of that is probably true. All I know is that when I met him, I went out to his mom’s house in like 1980, and it was a nice apartment in Queens. It was bigger than where I live now or did then. It had pictures of him and his brothers, all over the house, like any family. He even cooked me a steak! Can you believe that? John and me eating steak at his mom’s. I know his brothers Eugene and Frank quite well, too. I never heard as much of a hard life story out of either of them. I mean, I know they went through a lotta hard shit, like all real New Yorkers did back in the day, but it ain’t all like he spins it.
Hard-Core: Life of My Own Page 10
