Hey, y’all, I have not been blogging as much here lately. I had a lot of big ideas and let them mostly get away from me. Mostly too exhausted to get to work and have mostly been reading old zines I have bought on eBay the past few weeks and filling in blind spots. If you have a few spare dollars, I would recommend blind-buying a random zine. It is a fun way to jump into random moments in a subculture. I bought two issues of Pains. It is from about 2009 or 2010 in Toronto. I have already discovered how hard it was to find music online from that time. Some reside on Bandcamp; for others, I would have to spend money on Discogs.
I am getting away from myself. Last week, I published something on the hardcore blog No Echo if you are interested in reading it. Lately, I have become fascinated with Chicago punk and hardcore, which were in the 80s. So I talked to my friend Doug Ward, who was getting into stuff around 83 84. What you see is only a tiny portion of our chat. There was one little tidbit I felt like sharing with whoever came across this page. It was a random aside that came up when I mentioned Fireside Bowl and one that did not feel right to sit on my Google Doc. Here it is below:
"How Fireside Bowl gets started goes back to Underdog Records. Underdog would have our weekly meetings on Monday or Tuesday. Russ is still around but not as involved in Underdog. He had found Fireside when it was just an empty bowling alley. After our meetings, we weren’t too far from Fireside. 5 or ten of us would go over there. It looked like it was dead. Beer was 3 dollars a pitcher, and nobody else was there. That started happening, and then Russ stopped doing Underdog. We would go there once a week. There was no jukebox or music or anything. He’d been getting into the first wave of retro nostalgia for tapes. He put out a fanzine called 8 Track Mind.
So he would bring a goofy eight-track and start putting in eight tracks so that they would have music. A lot of the eight tracks were disco stuff. That had been happening for a couple of months, and more and more people started coming. There was a TV show called Wild Chicago on WTTW. It was a half-hour show where they would find something zany going on in Chicago. The original had a pith helmet like he was an explorer. He heard about disco bowling. He went and did a bit of bowling at The Fireside with Russ and his 8-track tapes. Because people knew he was coming, they camped it up a little bit. They did the bit, and more and more people started coming.
There are no shows. One of the people involved in bowling was doing a cable access TV show, and she wanted to do a fundraiser. She asked the guy if he could have bands play here. He said no. Eventually, she talked him into it. It was a weekend thing. They put risers out on the four middle lanes of Fireside. It was a big hit. Other people got excited about it. About that time, Jim’s dad retired. A few different people were putting on shows, and it took off into the 90s when it became a thing. Once again, Russ Forester and Underdog Records had our hand in getting something going, although indirectly."
Being as involved in music as I try to be means I am constantly either in a state of passivity or euphoric engagement. I recently went to a couple of shows last week that reminded me why I still try to be as involved as I can be, finding as much to be gained from a dirty ass basement that had one vocalist in clown makeup writhing on the floor playing to 50 people to a sold-out Saetia show in a venue that fits 900 people. Below are some concert reviews, along with a recommendation for a radio show I have been enjoying.
Deletar/Ultimate Disaster/Mock Execution/Necron 9 at Chi-Town Futbol
It was out of sheer boredom that I decided to go to the d-beat/punk show. It was at what was formerly known as Chi-Town Futbol on the south side of Chicago. Going there is a very fun clashing of cultures, where primarily latinx people of all ages play indoor soccer. Nestled in the corner when you enter the building is a small field of artificial grass where a bunch of punks congregated to watch some atonal music. It made me an interloper and outsider in two ways. I wasn’t wearing the proper punk uniform. The person taking door money who was in Mock Execution had a punk battle vest, and others were wearing attire that felt retro in the sense that it felt ripped from the documentary Decline of Western Civilization. It was partially a nice reminder that as much as the internet has collapsed culture into a flat two-dimensional space, these pieces of punk culture still exist. It felt like a distinctly different experience from the hardcore kid going to a “big-room” show at a proper venue.
The touring bands of Deletar and Ultimate Disaster stood out the most for me. Their sets got a more arms-crossed punk crowd to move. It also ignited what feels like a deeper interest in D-beat for me. It can be easy to complain that it all sounds the same. I have had the experience of checking a couple of newer bands out, and feeling like a 10-minute EP felt like an eternity. But I am also aware that without Discharge and some imitators, much of my favorite music wouldn’t exist in the first place.
The bands themselves were enjoyable. Necron 9 is part of that community of what I’ll call raw punk bands from Milwaukee and supported by Unlawful Assembly. I was hoping to be won over live as the demo washed over me, but each song was undiscernible from the other. I still had some fun and never got overly annoyed.
Chalk/Circus/Crimelight/Gangstalker/Contempt/Isolation Unit
Chicago is a massive city, allowing anyone to shut yourself off to your little two to three-mile radius. It is not different for the larger punk and hardcore scene. Most of the venues are clustered around the north side of Chicago. It is the result of decades and decades of history that you can mostly ignore. Most of the shows lately happen in a venue that, if you are lucky, is 17 plus. Lately, I have felt an increasing disinterest in going to shows at these places. Something is lost when you go to a 900 cap with a barricade.
Those barriers to entry are necessary and lead to greater enjoyment. I forced myself to travel an hour to Chicago’s southside. It was far away from the comfort I mostly felt living near Wicker Park. Taking the western bus out of my routine reminded me of where I am living. But I eventually was at the show at an unnamed venue for its first show. It was a relatively spacious basement underneath a clothing store. Even the bands I did not enjoy didn’t matter. To me, it was the manifestation of hardcore and punk. It’s all about going up to some random person and shooting the shit before moshing into each other. Contempt might be the best example of what I care for. The art for the demo conjures images of Confront and is deeply reverential of the past. Every other riff, I was wondering if it was ripped from some 80s band that I adored. Their set started with a Leeway cover of “Rise and Fall,” along with an Agnostic Front cover that I wrongly attributed to a Negative Approach to a stranger. Another standout was Circus for the sheer presentation; the singer in clown makeup was writhing on a filthy basement floor at one point.
Heccra as Sub-T
I felt some weird obligation to see Heccra. In 2020, I heard their name mentioned as influence for newer emo stuff that got named fifth wave. It might have come up when I interviewed Your Arms Are My Cocoon. I never fully became invested in the music of Heccra, but I respected it more. I did not have the experience of discovering any of those early EPs many years ago and creating some reality in my head that may not have existed.
I mostly came away from the first Chicago Heccra show with a similar feeling to the one I have when I see artists that exist online first: a light disappointment. These songs weren’t crafted with an audience in mind. There was a slight lapse with the backing track at points. There was a slight cringe during one song when I was paying attention to the lyrics. I did not go deep into Heccra lore or listen to the few interviews. It reminded me that, for all the eccentricities that may be the top layering of their songs, they still have that adolescent core that makes them unmistakably emo. It was a show for those few I saw singing along to “Camp Algonquin” and other songs. I hope it lived up to their expectations.
Sadder Star
Like most music obsessives, I am constantly overwhelmed by the endless choices in the streaming era. I want to devour every inch of the music I love and never dive as much as I want to. I have lost count of how many deep dives I gave up on after a few days. Sadder Star helps alleviate that insatiable need to learn more without ever being overwhelming. Each episode of the radio show is about an hour. Listening to it does feel like going onto your favorite 2013 Blogspot in the best way possible. Each show invites you to explore emo and screamo and delve deeper. You can also just listen passively, enjoy an hour of music, and move on with your life like a normal person.
Booking DIY shows and fests and all that comes with it is a thankless task. In reality, no one cares who booked that legendary show that people reminisce about all those years later. I am guilty of this phenomenon. It was not until Jeremey Nelson reached out to me that I saw his trajectory in Itto and Suffix and how he was directly in contact with so much of the punk and emo revival of the late 2000s into the early 2010s that I adored. He helped book Gnarfest 2012, a festival I still think about and wish I had attended. His trajectory is similar to anyone who spent time in anything you would label DIY. He did the thing for a while as hard as he could and then made his exit. He now lives in Los Angeles. I talked to him the other day about his journey in Chicago DIY and condensed our conversation for you to read. Hopefully, there is something mildly interesting for you to get out of it.
Schedule for Gnar Fest 2012 (from Gonzo Chicago)
So, chronologically, I moved into the guesthouse. Then we moved into a spot called The Shitspace for a little bit. And then we all moved into Phrat Farm. Phrat Farm turned into Treasure Town. It was in the middle of a three-story building. On the bottom was Casa Donde, and on the top was Mortville. The Keep was after that. That was my trajectory.
The building (that Treasure Town was in) was called Wiser and Sons—the people before it called it Wiser House. I remember going to look at that building. Another guy named Ryan and I went to check that place out, and we were like, “Oh my god, this place is massive.” It was a huge warehouse. There were rooms already for everyone. We didn’t know who lived above us or below us. Mortville was already active. I think the downstairs was vacant at that time. We called everyone and said, “Oh my god, this is it. Let’s go. We started throwing shows pretty instantly. We moved because landlords wanted to demolish or revamp the house. There is always a nice beginning and a bad ending to these places. There started to be crackdowns on DIY spaces ahead of the NATO summit. Or, really, they just started cracking down on landlords. “You can be liable for this if you are illegally letting this happen.”
That is kind of how a lot of Chicago houses come and go for political reasons. The culmination of Phrat Farm was three or four punk houses getting shut down by the police. That usually happens around the time of Lollapalooza. A lot of local businesses, bars, and even venues are attending city council meetings. These are the people who are talking to the police chiefs. There is a concerted business and political effort to shut down these DIY spaces around certain events and times of the year.
Our stuff at the beginning was more like DIY screamo and hardcore. We started to branch out. It was in a sketchy part of town, but we could do whatever we wanted. We would have shows back to back. We would have shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday sometimes. There were ten people living there. I booked my shows. Other people had their shows. Eventually, we started doing noise shows. One of the guys who moved didn’t even play music, but he was an artist, so we started having art shows. We would have game nights. Once or twice, we got approached by French EDM people who were like, “We’re going to give you a lot of money if we can have a rave in your place.” That’s all of our rent, so it's fine. We did a couple of things like that that were not DIY. It started siloed in that emo/screamo/hardcore lane, and then it got into everything.
Different people started moving in and booking different shows. That is how DIY is. It is why I love it and why I hate it. Nothing stops you from moving into Chicago, renting a house, and throwing shows in your basement. Anyone can do it, and no one can stop you. I never really judged the shows at Treasure Town that I wasn’t particularly interested in. It is not business what they do as long as they don’t jeopardize the space. I eventually moved into a regular apartment. After three or four years of house/loft communal living, it was time to get a regular apartment.
I was in that apartment for a bit and had a relationship that fizzled out, and I moved into The Keep. The Keep had shows, but not too many. We had all been evicted a lot. We know what happens. We were getting over it. Playing music is still what we do. We took a responsible approach. It is not going to be a gritty warehouse with dynamite going off. There were fewer shows, and it was more of a place to live. We were trying to make it a more livable space.
Shread & Breakfast was my attempt to go legit. There was an effort amongst the DIY community to create in Chicago something along the lines of Gilman Street or ABC No Rio. Chicago doesn’t have a 501 (C)(3) all-ages venue. That was my goal. I recognized that Chicago needed a space that could always exist freely without worrying about cops or neighbors and is a legit venue and not a fucking bar. It is an art space. That was my attempt to give that a shot. But then the neighbors called the cops on me. The cops showed up, and I said, “Hey man, we’re a 501C.” The cops said, “We don’t care. We can hear the music from outside. You need to fix that.” Harrison Hickok and I from Summer Camp built some insulation because it was a storefront with thin glass windows. It kind of helped. I had a good amount of shows but it was not going to work. I did file for 501C. I got the business license and tax-deductible.
With all of these things, I pushed the limit every time. There is so much of Chicago that is underground, and you have to dig to find it. Most people, if they aren’t looking, are just seeing what’s at Coles or Empty Bottle. I just kind of wanted to press that button and see what happens. The Logan Monument is one of the most badass places to throw a show. I think there was a show a year or two before Gnarfest 2014. They were always sponsored by something or kind of lame. I wanted to try to see if I could do that.
I didn’t even know where to start. Someone pointed me to the alderman. The alderman was not stoked on the idea, and he gave me this impossible task of getting the Department of Cultural Affairs behind it and getting the ok from the sheriff of Logan Square. I rode my bicycle to the police station, met with the sheriff, and asked him to sign this thing. He said I’ll sign if you have insurance. I was personally liable for everything that happened at the show. The alderman wanted porta-potties and barricades. I said yes to everything, and they didn’t care. It was a lot of work. I had to rent a generator.
I had worked my ass off for a year meeting all these people. When I would go out and hang out with people, and they would ask what I was doing, I would say, “Oh, Gnarfest.” After it happened, people told me it was the coolest thing they’ve seen happen in a long time. I thought maybe that was as far as I could push it. I can’t open a venue. I can’t go further than that. It was the culmination of my thing. I tried something way out of my wheelhouse, and it worked. After Gnarfest, I got calls from local venues to figure out who threw the show on the monument. They wanted to hire me. I had some meetings with certain people in that sphere. They didn’t want to work with me; they wanted me to work for them.
It definitely left a mark on Logan Square. People talk about it still. Now that it is ten years later, people don’t care who did it. People don’t care if the Empty Bottle did it or who presented it. I was never trying to put my name all over it. I was just trying to make a cool thing happen for people to enjoy.
“In Chicago, none of the bands really sound alike. Every band has a different sound. Really Good.”-Rights of The Accused Interview (Taken from Bullshit Monthly, 1984)
In reading a lot of old 80s hardcore and punk fanzines, I have been thinking about how local scenes developed in their infancy. While the details vary from city to city, there is a throughline you can follow. Everyone heard Black Flag, and suddenly, punk seemed too tame. Local scenes were transformed. Depending on who you ask, it was for the better or the worse. That is at least the consensus I see across all the various music histories I have read. A lot of information on Chicago during hardcore’s beginnings is scant. Unlike New York or DC, it has not been archived to depth. We don’t have something like the University of Maryland’s punk archive, which allows access to much history. There isn’t some old Blogspot from a decade ago that has uncovered some rarities originally intended as tape to give to a promoter (Rorschach is the one I’m thinking of in this case). I have heard of a couple of Chicago punk zines from the 80s but have been unable to locate any. If someone has a copy or a scan of Steve Albini’s, hit me up.
It makes it so we have to rely upon documentation that looks backward. Occasionally, I’ll find some info, such as the quick interview I took a quote from. But much of the information on early Chicago hardcore and, by extension, punk comes from a documentary called You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk. It chooses a concentrated period, starting in 1977 and ending in 1984. There is a compilation that I recommend finding on YouTube that was released alongside it. The participants in it are representative of that era in that it leans heavily on punk. From my perspective, many of the participants still carry those same feelings of being a little anti-hardcore. The end of the movie has a similar refrain as all these music documentaries have. By 1984, that initial spark of the punk scene was gone and tainted. Everyone began to sound the same. The music was trying to be as fast as possible for its own sake.
While I am quick to ignore that refrain, it can partially explain why Chicago seemed to be a bit later to adopt hardcore than other cities. That is at least the impression I get whenever I come across any Chicago recordings from that time. Our nearby neighbors in Detroit had already made a significant impact, which may be due to other factors. It had a fanzine-turned-record label in Touch and Go, which provided the infrastructure to uplift the local music community. It had a short-lived venue in the Freezer. On the other hand, Chicago had a much-publicized feud between The Effigies and Articles of Faith, highlighting the division between those who were around before hardcore and those who came after.
This original context for Chicago hardcore can help explain some of the “small-town syndrome” I feel as someone who still goes to Chicago hardcore shows. Touring bands will give a passing mention to The Killer and some current ones. Older folks may mention AOF. Maybe Los Crudos and some 90s stuff will get mentioned. If you’re my friend, I may force you to listen to The Repos sometime. The East Coast still dominates the conversation with good reason. You cannot change that touring the midwest is different from other parts of the country, leading to situations where certain cities seem like they live on an island. It can occasionally lead to fruitful scenes, like Springfield, Illinois. It still feels odd for Chicago to be in a situation where I feel we are underdogs.
Thanks to the documentary No Delusions, we have gotten some documentation of Chicago hardcore in recent years. It looks towards the 90s and beyond as its source text. I rewatch pieces anytime I need to remember some Chicago lore. I wanted to take a closer look at what is a very short but essential period. 1980 to 1984 would create the building blocks for Chicago hardcore in years to come. Future years would give us releases from Bhopal Stiffs, Life Sentence, and others later in the decade. Not everything from that limited scope of time forty years ago has necessarily held up. It may be too silly or sophomoric. Early hardcore, too, was tasteless, looking for shock value, which comes with the fact that you are listening to music made by teenagers. I cannot deny that recording quality is the best and is sometimes unlistenable to 2024 ears.
There is some early Chicago hardcore that is worth your time. I still get something from What We Want is Free by Articles of Faith. It is one of the great hardcore debuts, and I can imagine the shift it signaled for Chicago at the time. Below is a sampling of what was happening alongside Articles of Faith, which dominates the history of early Chicago hardcore. And as always, I am not an expert. I am just a guy who loves thinking about how hardcore developed in Chicago and wanted to add my perspective to a conversation I haven’t seen much of beyond the spare few mentions. If a million people salivate over old hardcore ephemera from other cities, why can’t Chicago get a mention?
Articles of Faith
Articles of Faith's arrival in Chicago feels like one of those drawn lines, marking what came before and what was to follow. I imagine not everyone was on board, leading to some divisions I discussed in my little introduction. It was markedly different, moving up the tempo and distinguishing it from other early hardcore in Chicago. There were no post-punk dablings to be found. The origin of AOF came when Vic Bondi saw Bad Brains while in DC, shifting from Clash-indebted punk to something more aggressive. There are several iterations of this scenario across early hardcore, but Articles of Faith still stand out to me. The debut EP hits the spot between catchiness and playing as fast as possible. It has all the qualities of the best first-wave hardcore. Songs like “Every Day” and “What We Want Is Free” stick to me, all while channeling some need in me to hear music that may be incomprehensible to someone who thinks it just sounds like noise. Articles of Faith would break up in 1985, laying a path for the next generation to carry forward for the rest of the decade and beyond.
Rights of The Accused
The little info on Rights of The Accused identifies them as a band of teenagers with a jokey bent. The one live recording I found takes place at Cubby Bear. The performance is rough and hard to watch. It does feel like high schoolers who are just beginning to try out their instruments. That is the story with a lot of early hardcore, but it is even less put together than other bands from the time. When it gets into what people would call thrash at the time, I can see the appeal. There is some proficiency, and they know their way around the punk beat. There is one person who does a stagedive. The 1984 EP Innocence is the best version of the band. It is fast, with some semblance of melody. "Faith" is kind of catchy. The lyrics are simple, reading as what a teenage punk kid might send to MRR at age 16. The band would continue for years, abandoning hardcore for metal, following the same trajectory as many hardcore bands during the 80s.
Negative Element
Similar to Rights of The Accused, Negative Element is full of youthful exuberance. A review of their one release from 1983 says: “This is good and sloppy.” It makes demos that come out now seem very pro. But that is part of the appeal of listening to very early forms of hardcore. It just sounds like kids fucking around on their instruments, trying to make something semi-comprehensible. The recordings sound rough and like they were done in someone's garage. The group's energy is best felt on what is not even a song but an interview segment on a hardcore radio show. You can hear at the end of their collected discography. It is kind of chaotic and hard to track who is talking, which can tell the story of Negative Element. The band is mostly a fun artifact and one that I have fun revisiting every once in a while.
Trial By Fire
The Bandcamp description for Trial By Fire’s posthumous release identifies them as “ one of the first Chicago bands to play thrash style hardcore.” I have no way to confirm that, but it lines up with the general timeline, forming around 1981 and releasing one demo. I imagine the arrival of Trial By Fire was somewhat momentous for Chicago at the time, given that it had Strike Under members who were very important for first-wave punk. In listening to the collection released in 2017, you can feel the tension in the band between wanting just to write fast-as-hell songs to slam to and play something a bit slower and more refined. It seems to be a recurring story of many of the early Chicago hardcore of this period. There were still vestiges of punk in it, looking to find some middle ground between hardcore and punk.
There is a feeling of what could have been when I listen to Trial By Fire, too. Most of the songs on the 2017 collection were never released in the 80s. It makes it more of an archival listen than anything else. All I can do is wonder how different early Chicago hardcore could have been if Trial By Fire had stuck around a bit longer. I do not think it surpasses Articles of Faith. That is an impossible thing to do, in my opinion. But I think it could have connected to people outside of the city, given the amount of interest in hardcore by 1982.
Savage Beliefs
Savage Beliefs is one of the more interesting artifacts from early Chicago hardcore. They released one EP that had more in common with punk. Only a couple of songs in their discography (Shake Your Neighbor’s Hand, Pink Shirt, What’s Left in The Fridge) feel tied to a hardcore lineage. It may be because Savage Beliefs had a member from Goverment Issue, intertwining Chicago and DC together at a pretty important time. But the band seemed pretty uninterested in writing, just ripping hardcore punk. The unreleased tracks on the compilation Alonha Dream released in 2015 strike me more as proto-indie rock and seem more interested in creating catchy lines than projecting aggression. With forty years of hindsight, Savage Beliefs is an example of the desire to move beyond the limited confines that hardcore had already been created in its few short years of existence.
