D.C. Hardcore - An Ethnographic Study
When hardcore reared its ugly head in the early 1980s, it was a unique beast.Though the music bore similarities to its punk ancestors, this new sound was particularly vicious, potent, and wholly unmarketable to a commercial audience. Forced to live outside of the mainstream, the hardcore punks had to turn inward to define their sense of accomplishments and success. Authenticity was defined not by number of records sold or in dollars made, but rather by instilling an insular sense of community amongst the scene and its inhabitants. As a concept frequently chased by musical subcultures looking for an alternative to mainstream industry practices, the idea of democracy became an essential facet of the hardcore culture. David Hesmondhalgh highlights in his article ‘Post-punk’s attempt to democratize the music industry’ that the fundamental elements of a functional democratic system are ‘participation’ and ‘access’ for constituents of all levels. Whereas mainstream media seeks to create and promote a product that is shiny, neat, and expertly crafted, neglecting the contributions of anyone outside the pre-determined elite, hardcore was set up to be fully inclusionary (Hesmondhalgh, 256).
Fittingly, this concept of democracy was most fully realized in the nation’s capital of Washington D.C. Not in the government of course, but rather, in a community of young hardcore punks eager to claim a culture as their own. Dawson Barrett claims, in his article ‘DIY Democracy: The Direct Action Politics of U.S. Punk Collectives,’ that at its core, punk is a form of “direct action.” He argues that in a DIY (or Do It Yourself) culture, punks are able to solidify their own “elaborate network of counter-institutions, including music venues, media, record labels, and distributors” that specifically caters to their own needs. In D.C., this way of thinking was brought to life. Spearheaded by de facto leader Ian MacKaye, vocalist of Minor Threat, and bolstered by his record label, Dischord Records, D.C. became the face of democracy for America’s hardcore culture.
The seeds for hardcore’s democracy were sown just as the genre was in gestation. Regarded by many as the country’s first hardcore band, Los Angeles, California’s Middle Class were barely musicians themselves. “The original punk bands, most of these people were musicians and were into glitter and glam, stuff like that. They already knew how to play and adopted punk rock as a style,” explains the band’s bassist, Mike Patton. He elaborates, “We listened to the first punk rock records and we learned to play. And we were doing it really primitively because we didn’t really know, so we just put it all into energy (American Hardcore).” The music posed a radical shift from typical songwriting conventions such as melody and structure, focusing more on speed and aggression. Chris Foley of Boston’s SS Decontrol emphasizes that “the whole thing with hardcore was that it was people just picking up a guitar, learning three chords, and playing as fast as they could (American Hardcore).” Though they were often shouted at a tone and speed that rendered them incomprehensible, typical lyrical content consisted mostly of issues with politics and social injustices. According to Chris Doherty of Boston band Gang Green, “We were just screaming against authority and our parents and about everything that was pissing us off in our life (American Hardcore).”This sort of ‘anybody can do it’ approach allowed both participation and access for wayward youth all across the country. Hardcore scenes eventually popped up on both coasts, most significantly in L.A., Boston, Minneapolis, New York, and of course, Washington D.C.
Data collected from the 1980 census shows that, at the time, the neighborhood of Washington D.C. consisted of nearly twice as many African-Americans as whites (U.S Census Bureau, 1980). “In my junior high school, I was one of 10% white kids,” said Ian MacKaye, leader of Minor Threat, Fugazi, and the eventual face of D.C. hardcore, “And in senior high school, I was one of 20% white kids (American Hardcore).”. In search of an identity separate from their black peers, these white, middle-class kids of D.C. discovered and embraced punk rock, which bore no elements of the funk and soul music popular with the other local youth. “If you grew up white in this city and you’re not part of the political establishment or you’re not part of true culture, which is a black culture, then you have no culture,” elaborated MacKaye, “There’s nothing here (Azerrad, 121).”That is, until, ironically enough, a group of young African-American Rastafarians known as the Bad Brains brought hardcore into town. The punk-on-speed aesthetic that characterized the music left a huge impression on the D.C. youth (Blush & Petros, 117). Bands such as The Teen Idles, S.O.A., Government Issue, and Scream formed in the Bad Brains’ wake, each putting their own spin this frenetic brand of punk rock. Hardcore subsequently became a culture for these kids in the early 1980s that didn’t fit in with the local majority. Footage of live shows during hardcore’s peak years gives a good sense of the scene’s demographic. Most bands and fans alike ranged from teens to young adults, anywhere from around 15 to 25, the vast majority of which being white males (Minor Threat - Live at Washington D.C., 1983).
These live shows consisted of a chaotic environment where a slam-dancing was a common occurrence. This was an intense, violent form of physical expression where fans would, as the name implies, slam into each other at full force during the band’s songs. They used this dancing as almost a ritual to unify the scene, especially at events that were outside of their home turf. For instance, while attending a Black Flag show in New York, the D.C. punks allegedly “knocked into anyone with long hair (“hippies”) or those who weren’t slamming with them.” Instigating violence in such a manner led to a full out brawl between the D.C. and N.Y. punks, which they used as a means of proving themselves (Azerrad 131).
As less outwardly violent rituals, stagediving and crowd-surfing eventually became fixtures of live shows as well. During a band’s performance, a fan, or sometimes even several at once, will climb up onstage, often run across with their hands in the air, scream along with a few lyrics, and proceed to dive back into the crowd. Footage from a 1983 Minor Threat concert at D.C.’s ‘9:30 Club’ features the band welcoming the fans access to the stage; they play along with unflinching persistence despite the added presence, and sometimes vocalist Ian MacKaye will even throw an arm around the stage-diver so they can share a few lyrics into the mic before he returns to the sea of bodies from whence he came (“Minor Threat - Live at Washington DCs 930 Club…”). Even when the fans are not on the same literal stage, they are invited to participate in singing when the vocalist would putthe microphone into the crowd. At this same Minor Threat show, MacKaye holds the microphone into the crowd below him during several songs in the bands set. One instance features a call and response between Ian and the crowd, another features Ian letting the crowd sing an entire verse of their song “Out of Step” while he coaches them along. At another videotaped Minor Threat show in Baltimore in 1982, the venue’s P.A. was shut off and yet the band still played on. MacKaye acted as a manic preacher, conducting the crowd to sing along to every last lyric (“Minor Threat live in Baltimore…”). The fans’ access to the stage and opportunity to participate in the live show is a big part of what makes the D.C. hardcore scene so unique. The connection to the music on the behalf of fans and bands alike is nearly unprecedented.
This connection was established early on as the genre’s namesake term was created. “We called ourselves ‘hardcore’ to distinguish between us and the Sid Vicious kind,” says MacKaye, intent on establishing he and his contemporaries’ music-centered approach, “We weren’t into the fashion as much as we were into the approach and intensity and urgency (Blush & Petros, 134).” As Jason Middleton points out in his essay ‘D.C. Punk and the Production of Authenticity,’ this distinction is a necessary one, as English punk style in the 1970s was commodified and turned into runway fashion almost as quickly as it began. Even the Sex Pistols, England’s most notorious punk export, were born as a sort of business venture from Malcolm McLaren, the owner of a U.K. clothing shop, ‘Sex’ (Middleton, 336). To avoid this potential pitfall, bands were often discouraged from selling any sort of promotional merchandise at local shows.
Middleton posits that this practice played into one of the major elements of authenticity production for the D.C. punks. In order to keep things within the scene, the investment of profits back into community projects instead of lining any one person’s pockets was essential. The flagship indie label for D.C., Dischord Records, was formedby Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson (both of Minor Threat) in 1981 with a strict set of ideals meant to further enhance the community. Bands had complete creative control over their projects, profits were split 50/50, albums were sold for sub-standard prices, and there was little involvement in promotional or merchandising practices. Minor Threat, and later MacKaye’s Fugazi, disassociated themselves from selling band t-shirts, stickers, posters and other sorts of consumer products to distract from the music (Middleton, 345). ‘Folding parties’ were held at Dischord’s headquarters, where the bands and their friends would spend entire nights at a time gluing and folding record sleeves together instead of hiring out to an outside company to manufacture them (Azerrad, 143). Along with Middleton’s scene investment concept, here we also find yet another example of Hesmondhalgh’s idea of democratic participation and access.
Compounding the idea of music as the exclusive product was the fact that a lot of members of the D.C. scene were underage kids. In order to ensure participation and access to live shows for fans of all ages, the D.C punks were forced to bypass mainstream venues and take advantage of alternative spaces to put on shows.They would use backyards, abandoned stores, basements, and pretty much any other empty space they could find to create a makeshift venue. H.R. of Bad Brains recalled, “When we found out that somebody had a shopping center, or somebody’s apartment complex, or somebody’s mom and dad was moving, we would then rush to that place and say ‘Hey! There’s a show going on tonight and everybody’s invited’ (American Hardcore).” These alternative venues, removed from the bar scene, took the consumer commodity of alcohol out of the live show, leaving music at the forefront of the experience.
Alcohol’s absence from these live events became a convenient intersection with the burgeoning 'straight edge' movement in the D.C. underground. Coined after a Minor Threat song of the same name, ‘straight edge,’ often stylized as ‘sXe,’ denotes a lifestyle where one voluntarily abstains from doing drugs, drinking alcohol and engaging in promiscuous sex (“An Interview with Ian MacKaye”). Despite being originally intended by MacKaye as a declaration of his own ideals, the lyrical content of “Straight Edge” hit home with a large group of hardcore kids not only in D.C., but across the country. In his book “Straight Edge: Hardcore Punk, Clean Living Youth, and Social Change,” Ross Haenfler suggests that this movement gained traction among the hardcore youth because the nihilistic, “no future” attitude of the early punks was lost on this new generation. Haenfler posits that “being clean and sober was the ultimate expression of the punk ethos,” the epitome of punk’s ‘question everything’ ideology. He went on to refer to it as “an act of resistance that defied both mainstream adult and youth cultures (Haenfler, 100).” What is more punk than being forward thinking, but presenting yourself in a professional manner? Jason Middleton points out though, that the straight-edge movement, despite its unification of those who shared a certain mindset, created a separatist attitude amongst its followers. This caused a schism within the otherwise tight-knit community (Middleton, 342). What began as something meant to allow participation and access to the outsiders of typical punk culture started to alienate those who opposed their radical new views.
The vibrancy of the D.C. hardcore scene would eventually start to fizzle out come the mid-1980s as most of the bands started to splinter and fall apart, but hope was not completely lost. After Minor Threat’s breakup, Ian MacKaye’s new project, Fugazi, maintained the ideals of his old band with an even more militant attitude. For instance, the band flat out refused to play in venues that operated as bars so every show could be all-ages, and they wouldn’t charge any more than $5 a head for attendees. This was to ensure that fans of all ages and budgets to have access to their shows, and if these requirements were not met, they would simply pack up their equipment and leave the gig (“An Interview with Ian MacKaye”). They kept this practice up until entering an indefinite hiatus in 2002, making them the last of the original D.C. punk bands to wave their democratic flag.
Despite the core of the scene’s dissolution, the music and its legacy still lives on. Dischord Records is still running strong to this day, continuing to release D.C.’s finest underground indie and punk rock albums, and many of the scene’s original members have gone on to find success with other bands (“Dischord History”). Minor Threat’s Brian Baker is currently in Bad Religion, and Scream’s drummer Dave Grohl went on to join Nirvana and found the Foo Fighters. And none of this would have happened if these people hadn’t had access to music at a young age. The D.C. hardcore scene’s unflinching commitment to ensuring people of all ages, shapes, and sizes the ability to participate in and access musiccreated a tremendously influential environment in the history of music and in the lives of its inhabitants.
American hardcore. Dir. Paul Rachman. Perf. Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Paul Hudson. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.
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Azerrad, Michael. Our band could be your life: scenes from the American rock underground 1981-1991. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print.
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Haenfler, Ross. Straight edge clean-living youth, hardcore punk, and social change. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Print.
Hesmondhalgh, David. "Post-Punk's attempt to democratise the music industry: the success and failure of Rough Trade." Popular Music 16.03 (1997): 255. Print.
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"Minor Threat - Live at Washington DCs 930 Club in June of 1983 (Part 2)."YouTube. YouTube, 4 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 May 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgVmAkdi22A>.
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