Earth can be a lonely place
Blank stares on the people's face
I contemplate their pointless chase
That traps me and my friends
Is this the place where I belong?
Where did we go wrong?
Will it last real long?
Are you too singing this song?
Sometimes I feel it
Sometimes I feel all so alone
And yes yes I must confess
I feel so far from home

Ok why is Joe taking lyrics from a Shelter song and posting them up?For this demonstration purpose and ambience these lines best explain how I felt Thursday night. It was the last Modern Life Is War show in Philadelphia. Funny that bands do that sort of thing now, but I will back it over that one show in a venue that holds 500 so 1,500 show up at and its a mess. I remember having a good night fighting at practice and quickly changing clothes and heading over to the Church to get there for the very beginning of my young boys Brain Dead. They were the support right before MILW took the stage one more time. I can see the usual faces and alot of newer, stranger ones as well. Bands like Modern Life Is War always bring these types of offshoot core types who know there are other shows but are much to busy to show up. Its funny to even see them dancing. They almost always an eyesore to watch and the first one to get upset over contact. Its a great show of passive aggressive energy. For me going to these shows is as close to Church as possible. Enlightment is found through the release of aggression or the social contact of my fellow hardcore kid renews my thinking and I am once again whole. I could probably build a whole cult based on it but I digress that I need more time fighting and less time taking over the hardcore scene one cult at a time. BrainDead was far from powerful. In fact their newb drummer really didn't have it together and you could tell they were off. Its ashame, because they need every show to be a banger. Thankfully most hardcore fans are not too discerning with their tastes or able to pick up those nuances but they were there. The pecking/picking order for local bands to play the Church show follows a rough basic idea that the same bands shouldn't open every show. It allows a breathing space of a few months between the bands playing at the fun spot at home. It makes them a drawing force as opposed to the weekly special and really showcases our talent. A band like Braindead played last July with Ceremony and I can't think of when they played between then and now so in that time, nearly a year there is time for growth and kids to get ready for them. The place was moving. One thing I love is seeing my young friends bands getting the place riled up. I would go further but its never going to be the same for me I think. Hence part of those lyrics above. I feel alone sometimes out there on that floor. I am near 30. When I started coming here I had to fight for my 10 secs of dancefloor fame. There were titans in there with these great moves and these awesome tattoos. They made my 14 year old self feel so insecure and different. I wasn't ready for the culture shock of the church shows. No visible bouncers. No shirtless guys with the shoving. It was a different envoirnment altogether. I knew some faces from shows but hardly anyone to strike up a conversation with outside of whom I travelled with and who they knew. I remember I didn't dance forever. I remember going home and practicing at home. Moshing seemed like the best thing on earth to me. I'd been in pits for all the greats and I've gotten my bruises and had my fights (all loses). But those church shows were where the dudes really came out and moved gracefully. It wasn't like other shows where it was brute force or a show of aggression there was a style and technique. Each guy had a deviation of its own. So many different archetypes as well. It was such a wonderful palette of people,style and mosh tactics. The anxiety of a darkened church floor before the band began would ride high til the place opened up for the initial song. it was almost always the craziest the beginning and the end of the set. The thing I liked the most about the church was the lack of the steps that injured so many at the Troc. Sure the troc is where it was really jammed packed and alot of the church shows I went to were never packed til the very latter days of the Robby Redcheeks era, but still it was good not to have some fat asshole fall onto you and you fall with your ankle crushed on the steps underneath the balcony. Nowadays the church feels so small. I look out and I know the faces but I can trust a select few. I could hear Mike's voice back to his heckling and I knew I was still home but it just don't feel right. I find myself watching the front of the stage wondeing why stevie sings but no one can hear him and I realize he is doing the new cool guy technique of not holding the mic to his face. Its a huge let down to see someone do that. Go to practice, earn your pipes and make that shit audible. I see all the kids for what they are now. No longer are they really kinsmen so to speak. They haven't been through the shit I have. We're not here for the same reason. I don't relate to their tastes, their social outlooks and their choice in clothes. I have more respect for a girl named Tiffany who came from somewhere else that proved to be a lone wolf amongst these fuckin sheep. Its like they have a cloning device offshore between NJ and Philadelphia. Something on Perry's Island that mutates the young into these wanna be urban chic, fake hardcore aesthetic looking kids. They know the words, they know the moves, they know my name before I know theirs but are they really here? Are they really letting it all go the way we used to? I can't understand it. The best hit I've got in the face at a show was almost 3 years ago during Guns Up. Some kid levelled me and my lip was split. He was bummed and apologizing, but I was more happy to see someone not afraid to just let loose for a change instead of doing the hardcore hokey pokey gay dance that I thanked him. Do we need to go back to violent mosh with bricks in our schoolbags to prove a point? No. But it just feels like its all too choreographed. I am almost ready to hear some director yell cut and have the lights go on, the music instantly cut out and have some fucking technical advisor come over and give me shit saying that people just don't stand in the middle of the floor not dancing. I want to just tell him, well its 2008 and most of these kids couldn't mosh through a paper bag let alone do anything that I won't see coming. So I'll stand where I want. I think the element of fear that turns people away being gone from shows is a decent thing in the fact that it brings a better understanding of what we do as a community to the forefront, but come on. LET FUCKING GO. Get out there and just rage for once. No more of these 25 second jumping jack katas before the song really gets going and then once the banger hits you're out of moves or your cardio's shot and its an empty floor. Do you need some fucking Mosh viagra to keep this shit up? I watched the whole MILW set as kids were jumping around like they were going to kill something, be it a person, bear,dragon or tiger. They weren't going to stop, and once the song really hits they're out. Its like the mosh pre-ejaculation sympton has spread across the land. I think its just as bad as these bands in hardcore that want to be looked at as villains or so fucking tough and really they're softer then cotton candy. All these XasskickerX bands like that fat faggot AJ from the Storm and his new band Congo. I am tired of hearing the words "2 step" "Moshcore" associated with hardcore. Its all pussy la la shit and I could care less about how tough your lyrics are. Its as bad as CDC from Lansdale with their "Ghetto isn't cool, ghetto is hell" saying. Its just dumb shit that in hardcore today makes me want to laugh outloud, put on armor and forget about the whole thing completely. Where have we gone wrong? Did the fruits of real bands like Madball,Cold As Life, Fury Of Five turn into these piss poor subhuman species like the mesh shorts, castro hat fat kid mosh or the 90 lbs wet 6 foot tall freak of nature with the bad neck tattoos. These kids are getting younger, wimpier and trying harder then ever to be what they were never set out to be. I guess thats why over the course of the past 10 years, I've gone across the board in what band I support, what bands I play in and what shows I put on. Gone are the days of Second To None and Clubber Lang. The people who want to play music like that are bigger bitches then the posi kids who hated us for dancing like dicks in the 90s now. All this loud mosh say nothing go through the motions crap is just played the fuck out. Its roots are always sadly traced to Hatebreed, which to me stands as one of the greats. Not because they're on ozzfest but for other aesthetically pleasing reasons that have been disintegrated through years of the internet and the death of the work ethic. Hatebreed and Jamey really worked their fuckin balls off. All those demos,split 7"s. Stuff he used to write and sing about was nearly untouched. Mark My Words is probably the name of 12,000 shit bands across the globe now, but when I got that comp 7" It was the hardest fucking thing I'd heard since Suffocation "Pierced From Within". I don't really know whats worse. I am still contemplating the commission of a scale which will weigh things out to figure out whats a shittier element in hardcore. The kids who are decked out and know all the right songs and lyrics and do all the right moves but are just going through the motions so there is no follow through or the herbs that really think that they are tough guys because they have a pair of brass knuckles and are in a mosh crew. Most of these jokers on either side will never be shit, may even take their parents money and get the surgery to cover up the bad tattoo choices of their earlier years. It sucks to feel like an entire generation before me is gone, and the ones after have left nothing. The one going on today are just wearing this like a pair of cool sneakers. They will find its use and when we're old for them and the rise of being what they wanted to be is over they will be gone. Who will be left? What will be left? Should I stick it out another song to see how the show ends? Should I stick it out another show to see if there is some glimmer of hope amongst the rubble of wasted space?Do I have another year to put it up with fake smiles and bullshit hellos? I am not sure. The place is still packed, it looks like things are fine from all the right angles but honestly every now and again I feel like if I could just freeze time I could run through the place and realize all these people standing on that floor are nothing more then cardboard cutouts on cardstock set up like players from the candyland boardgame who are only a swift breeze away from fallen flat to the ground... Oh well. I guess time will tell.