WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Sick-o-Mind's Second Coming - Mind Eraser's 'Glacial Reign'

After I graduated from Ewing High School in June of 1990, all I wanted to do was move to California and ditch my family, my roots and my lame ass central Jersey town for good. While so many of my class mates were contemplating college majors, I was ready for sun, sand and maybe actually talking to a girl. I had my flight booked by the end of June. I also wanted to go out there to see Infest perform live. They were a blinding Hardcore wrecking machine from Valencia, California who only had this one 7” they put out themselves, but I fucking loved it. It was equal parts Brit ’blastbeat’ (Napalm Death) with the most primitive of early 80s’ American Hardcore (DYS, Siege, Deep Wound, The Abused, Negative Approach, etc.) It had a shitty looking Xeroxed sleeve and had no intentions but to slay your ass. I knew it just had to be a completely mind blowing experience live. Well, to make a long story short, within three weeks of my west coast jaunt, I was already back home in Jersey kissing cable television in my parents’ living room without seeing Infest AT ALL. It seemed not one of my Straight Edge pen pals in Cali knew or cared about the band . ‘Dude, those dudes are total druggies’. One of them told a story of how he tried out to be their bass player while the band chain smoked grass in front of him the whole time. He ended off the story with a very passionate ‘Fucking losers!’ and that was that…no Infest for me.

Old Codger Screams - 'Hey You Kids, Get Off My Half Pipe!' -- Film at 11

...It's just dawned upon me that I don't think I have bought an issue of Maximum Rock 'N' Roll since sometime in the late 80s'. The friggin' thing used to be the bible to me and all my skate buddies in high school. What other publication could make you so politically aware as well as keep you abreast on the Hardcore Punk scene in Peru? Sometime in the early 90's, I traded my (somewhat) complete collection of the mag for a stack of Hawkwind bootlegs and a bag of dirt weed sprayed with Lysol. So what I’m trying to say is I don’t really have that firm of a grip on the goings on in the Hardcore scene of 2006. All I know is whenever I do get the chance to peruse through a box of recent Hardcore 7”s, I see a severe lack of images I think should be essential to our time and place. You know, bad collages of ole G.W. mixing it up with warheads and starving children and stuff like that. All I usually see is kids in basketball jerseys and bad graffiti. It’s sort of a bummer to me, but luckily a shiny piece of tinfoil has just come out that might teach the kids a thing or two. For some reason that is still foggy to me, the Subterranean label has re-issued the complete discography of Code Of Honor, a politically charged Skatecore band from San Francisco in the early 80’s (Jesus, did I actually just type all those words out in a sentence and not bust out laughing?) C.O.H. were the perfect embodiment of the typical teenaged MRR reader of the era. Earnestly left wing kids who could lecture you on the atrocities of Nicaragua while busting the raddest christ air you’ve ever seen. Their tuneage was a pretty streamlined form of melodic thrash that didn’t offer much in the ways of cacophony or chaos…sorry Void fans. But for some stupid reason or another, their songs were infectious enough that they stick in my head some twenty years later. I can still recite both the ‘code of honor’ stated in the song of the same name (‘Never desert your comrades in need in danger or in trouble…’) as well as the declaration of revolution in ‘New Era’ (‘Take away the government and you take away the lies/Kill all the politicians and no one else will die..’) Perhaps these raging tunes will incite the youth of today to drop acid and not bombs. But most likely all that’ll happen here is oldsters like me will listen to this and sadly reminisce on endless days of skating and waiting for my Ill Repute 7” to come in the mail while ’the kids’ buy up more cone belts at the local Hot Topic. Bleech.

Old Codger Screams - 'Hey You Kids, Get Off My Half Pipe!' -- Film at 11

...It's just dawned upon me that I don't think I have bought an issue of Maximum Rock 'N' Roll since sometime in the late 80s'. The friggin' thing used to be the bible to me and all my skate buddies in high school. What other publication could make you so politically aware as well as keep you abreast on the Hardcore Punk scene in Peru? Sometime in the early 90's, I traded my (somewhat) complete collection of the mag for a stack of Hawkwind bootlegs and a bag of dirt weed sprayed with Lysol. So what I’m trying to say is I don’t really have that firm of a grip on the goings on in the Hardcore scene of 2006. All I know is whenever I do get the chance to peruse through a box of recent Hardcore 7”s, I see a severe lack of images I think should be essential to our time and place. You know, bad collages of ole G.W. mixing it up with warheads and starving children and stuff like that. All I usually see is kids in basketball jerseys and bad graffiti. It’s sort of a bummer to me, but luckily a shiny piece of tinfoil has just come out that might teach the kids a thing or two. For some reason that is still foggy to me, the Subterranean label has re-issued the complete discography of Code Of Honor, a politically charged Skatecore band from San Francisco in the early 80’s (Jesus, did I actually just type all those words out in a sentence and not bust out laughing?) C.O.H. were the perfect embodiment of the typical teenaged MRR reader of the era. Earnestly left wing kids who could lecture you on the atrocities of Nicaragua while busting the raddest christ air you’ve ever seen. Their tuneage was a pretty streamlined form of melodic thrash that didn’t offer much in the ways of cacophony or chaos…sorry Void fans. But for some stupid reason or another, their songs were infectious enough that they stick in my head some twenty years later. I can still recite both the ‘code of honor’ stated in the song of the same name (‘Never desert your comrades in need in danger or in trouble…’) as well as the declaration of revolution in ‘New Era’ (‘Take away the government and you take away the lies/Kill all the politicians and no one else will die..’) Perhaps these raging tunes will incite the youth of today to drop acid and not bombs. But most likely all that’ll happen here is oldsters like me will listen to this and sadly reminisce on endless days of skating and waiting for my Ill Repute 7” to come in the mail while ’the kids’ buy up more cone belts at the local Hot Topic. Bleech.