Thoughts on a book I’m reading called New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goodbye and it’s implications on the hardcore scene in Saint Louis.

I found an interesting quote in chapter 4 of NBNJG, “I once read a quote that said: ‘If punk is “I won’t” then hardcore is “I will.“‘”  I wondered who Kauffman was quoting, so I Googled the sentence which gave me one result, and it was from a review of NBNJG.  No luck on that.  But as a statement, I think it’s very interesting, and revealingly true.  Punk was defined by saying “no” to societal expectations and the way people are “supposed” to live.  The original British punks were disillusioned working class kids who decided that they didn’t have to follow the path their parents made, and their “revolution” was made visible by their bondage-style fashions, simplistic music, loud swearing and nihilistic worldview.

Hardcore, on the other hand, was about taking action.  It was a response to the overindulgence of 80s buttrock and disco and the overall lack of real “revolution” in punk.  Hardcore was about saying “yes” to the ability of a community of kids to change society.  Hardcore is saying “yes” to straight edge, vegan and vegetarian culture, to having a political stance and caring about your neighborhood and music scene.

In many ways, I wish I had the opportunity to grown up in an urban area with this kind of music scene.  I wasn’t exposed to “real” hardcore until I was 17 years old, and wasn’t really a part of it until I was 19.  To add to that, it wasn’t until this past year that I really started listening to the originator’s of hardcore: Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Black Flag and the like.  Unfortunately, the hardcore patriarch’s music does not have the same effect on my ears as does the music of 2nd and 3rd generation hardcore bands: Converge, Breather Resist, Breach, Botch, Curl Up and Die, Cave In and others.  I wish I had been there in that moment, and had been a member of that scene! I wish there was some scene where I live!

This makes me sad for the city I live in/near.  Saint Louis music scene is deader than dead nowadays, way worse than when I first moved to the area in 2002, and about as bad as Hampton, VA when I was in high school.  Is there any hope for the scene?  Can a few bands bring it back?  Part of me thinks that it is very unlikely a scene as good as DC, Boston, LA and any other good hardcore town will ever rise up in STL for any reactionary musical style. Mostly for reasons including urban blight, the great Saint Louis diaspora and suburban sprawl.  The city isn’t crowded with enough angry teenagers for a scene to rise up.  They all live in the county, with suburban, middle to upper-middle class parents.  The only hardcore that comes from there is derivative scene-core and screamo; predominantly garbage, without teeth or edge.  Which is funny and seemingly contradictory because that is exactly where I came from. Then again, the music I made as a teenager was extremely derivative and those kids have the same chance to grow out of it as I did, but we’ll see if it happens.  Either way, it’s more likely by the time they go to college they will stop making hardcore, so there won’t be any other good “harder” bands in St. Louis anytime soon. The “hardcore” in me should say “I will make a scene in Saint Louis!”  I should stop sitting by and just do.  But I do not have those teenage, revolutionary, “pissed off” feelings like those original hardcore kids of the 80s and 90s did. I just want to write music I like, and it happens to share the “aggressive” qualities with the music that propelled those scenes.  Who knows what I should do then?

Maybe I should move to Louisville, or Boston or to some city where the music is still happening and let St. Louis fend for itself.

Nah….