Hardcore nostalgia has yet to sweep the boardrooms at VH1, but give it time. At the moment, everyone from my fifth-grade neighbor to Shania Twain is wearing a Ramones tee, but I haven’t seen anything bearing the names M.D.C., Adrenaline O.D., or The Offenders in almost 20 years. Not one to acknowledge The Go-Go’s and Squeeze as particularly punk, I say bring it on.
Yeah, I was rotting to Barry Manilow Live when CBGB’s was going off, but I wised up by ’82 or so. To me punk was the stuff that consistently involved yelling and distorted guitars. And a lot of it seemed to be made by generally informed people who didn’t have time to fuck around with body art. I was a hardcore kid.
Thankfully, this menacing music is starting to get its due. Steven Blush’s dense, well-documented tome American Hardcore: A Tribal History was published in 2001, the same year M.I.A. were anthologized on Alternative Tentacles (Jello wrote the notes). A new album by Channel 3 and the three-disc 20 Years Of Dischord box came out last year. But the reissue that exited me most was Stäläg 13’s 1984 bruiser In Control. With a throaty twin-guitar growl, punchy production, and some of the best-belted vocals in the genre, the damn thing rocks plain and simple. And since I wore out my cassette copy back in the day, I recently welcomed the opportunity to throw the boys some belated royalties.
While I’m defining things however I see fit, let me just say that Rhino is punk as fuck (maybe more so with Christopher Cross and Yes on its roster). Among other things, these reluctant corporate raiders don’t mind if I blather on about records they’re not even selling. That said, buy some of our Germs, Fear, and Circle Jerks stuff. It’s good for you anyway.
And for chrissakes vote in 2004. Wouldn’t it be nice if nobody had to write songs like “Holiday In Cambodia”?
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