50 days of Contemplating the infestation.

As I am now working on more shows in the area, I’ve officially come to the conclusion that things in hardcore are at an all time low in many key places that are aesthetically pleasing and others which are fundamental to the strength and sanctity of our scene.
This new world of ours has been overrun with a locust mentality. They swarm and infest each sector of our shows. They don’t have the time to take in all the warm aesthetics and old traditions. They gorge themselves on what is most accessible and move along in packs to the next available source of food. There we are stuck ravaged and barren.
It’s a beautiful somber analogy and one I am fully prepared to back up in this entry.
I’ve come to see many of these bands as people who in their lust for popularity chose to get in front of a crowd of their peers and put on a show in hopes of gaining that star status that we never really were supposed to have in our lil world of “kids are the bands, bands are the kids”. There are far too many bands that take good hardcore kids out of the scene and turn them into overnight scene celebs. I watch them go from eager and hungry 1 year til showing up with their obligatory accessory girlfriend in tow, more then likely in time to just play their set and suck the dick of only those will help them to the next level. It’s a game that will lead to dead hopes and burnout and the inevitable end of an otherwise promising hardcore kid’s ‘hardcore’ life. This is a story being played every day in a scene in every nook and cranny on this planet. We were the underground where what matters most was involvement in a community where there was an honest exchange of ideas throughout the culture. For better or worse there was something to be said for the diversity in its simple ability to make so many in a room so close you had no choice but to accept the person next to you as your peer.
These things have been replaced by a homogenized youth wearing all the same uniform, all so carefree in their mainstream diseased ideals about how things really are and how our scene is not a bastion of hope for alternative ideas but the dumping ground of their immature grasp for something more then their cul-de-sac grown life has given thus far. I am not here to give you stories about when things were real; I am not here to be the sketchy guy that you have no relation to. Its sad to see a room of full of kids who went the lights go out and the bands goes on, they don’t go off, they text people who aren’t at the show throughout the set. Its so foreign to watch people in the midst of what was once an outlet of aggression turn into a sequence of events that seem almost choreographed and so neatly organized it has none of the energy and chaos that made each show so unreal and alive. There is only death of anarchy and inspired aggression and the sound of emptiness in the heart of each song these days. Songs about things that mean nothing to the people on stage, sung by an insecure guy who wants to be loved for reasons he can’t explain. The silly things they say, that they wear, that they associate and integrate into our world. It’s a wonder there is anything left when they take their 2 years and move onto something fruitless like Doom metal or just being a “bar” person. It’s a wonder what attracts them in the first place.
When I came to hardcore I was disillusioned, super aggressive and an angry long hair. Hardcore gave me what I needed to be balanced in my unstable quest for temporary stability. I had a place that accepted me under that umbrella and showed me a world that is malleable and ready for anyone who is willing to fight and persevere, the chance to place their hands upon it and mold it into what they think the core should be. It’s that same amazing parameter that allows these new kids to come in and fuck the old ways up. It’s theirs now, but what are they leaving us with when their ADHD wears out and they’ve found something else to waste their time and money on?
I think of these locusts the most when I watch the actions of their bands. They come out of nowhere and onto myspace. Within a year they’ve already done a Europe tour before they can actually draw a good crowd in their hometown. They jump into full time status so they can break up after realizing 6 months of touring for $150 a night at most is not the big life they dreamed of. They are no longer seen or heard from. What they leave in wake is a thousand kids pretending like they actually cared about the band or its insipid words somehow made a profound difference in their lives. It’s all so contrived and played out, I know the words sound more like a madlib filled out then from their own mouths.
5 years ago Punishment who had sold X amount of records, done plenty of U.S tours were turned down for opening for 100 Demons who asked Avocado Booking to bring us over. They said we weren’t big enough. Avocado is now the number one culprit of bringing these untried bands over to Europe tours and JUICING them of whatever cash they can from these hype machines. Selling them a world of bullshit and providing them nothing but financial headache. Its an interesting change in business practice by them, and it only hurts the bands who are out there hoping to continue their reign of success (terror? :P) only to be fiscally screwed to near bankruptcy. I find it so unrealistic for someone to ever “build” their bands up the way that we had to. Sure there is unsure moments when we do something that we may feel not up to but we never were as green as some of these bands are today. This GPS world has left everyone with a laptop and google maps and no way to figure things out if they go wrong.
I could write 10 blog entries a day about how we used to get the address for shows from flyers and just FIND the place by the process of elimination. Get a map and make it fucking happen. There are many things that are gone from the world of bands of yesterday due to the LOCUST/EXPRESS system today. Every band has a merch selection that rivals large touring acts. Everyone has merch printed by credit. Its so unlike the way things used to be. Bands printing demos by hand, spreading the word not by myspace but by going to other shows and NETWORKING, like making actual friendships. There was so much more human interaction that I am not surprised that there is just silence between songs these days. There is no one really friends at these shows now. I can tell you that have such an overwhelming respect for people today, who at the time in which we were both going to shows we had nothing but that in common. There is a bond of a familiar face, one who’s seen what I seen, been where I been. Yet I love the new kids energy but they have this ability to approach what they don’t know with disdain and fear and almost indignation.
In our new computer driven- knowledge-at our fingertips world, these kids can’t fuck with the notion that there is shit out there they haven’t heard of, don’t know about or can’t comprehend. So they are apprehensive and disrespectful (in my opinion) it’s why they never bother looking passed their own hands for something. They don’t want invest the time, the energy, the love like we did. The idea being that because their interaction has been automated by credit card purchases online, Itunes and massive filesharing that they know what they need to know, but they haven’t crafted that weird obsession because it’s a just click away and two seconds to turn off and move on. Its not hours spent with your eyes peeled to the band names in the tape bin hoping to see something familiar or something you’ve heard of while you thumb records between bands at the distro table. That small piece of the missing hardcore aesthetic is the reason why I have the walls of the floor lined with tables from the best labels at This Is Hardcore Fest. So the curious can partake in something that I view as crucial to the hardcore experience can still live on in this generation. Maybe some of these kids who never did it before or who rarely have the chance to touch the music they have on their ipods will be ignited to do more then walk away when the rest of their friends do in 2 years.

It’s a shame really. I’ve spent a lot of this blog downing the new generation but its only because I see that they have not caught on, they’ve ran so fast over everything its like they’ve skipped reading the hardcore books I have and just downloaded the cliff notes in PDF. It’s a world of difference yet the parallels remain if you look hard enough. The generations before them may have invested more time and effort but that has only shown that for all the interaction something made them leave. I can’t speak for them because I am still here. I want to be able to awake a piece of what made us want this more, what interaction we had developed the will to push harder then our peers, to outshine our contemporaries, to not be satisfied with our interaction so we went deeper and took on more responsibility in each kid I see at the shows today.

In my life I’ve lived a bipolar existence with hardcore, from fighting at some venues and helping others, to booking shows and helping bands on tour. It was a sick duality that pressured me on all ends. God bless being 18 and not knowing how silly I must have looked. But it weathered me for the storm of 2004 when as I took on the shroud of FSU I began to promote as hard as ever. I will eternally give props to Sean Agnew and R5 productions for allowing me to do so. Since then I’ve developed a keen sense of what is most important to the success of our scene, and I’ve dropped many a bad habit. Its hard to maintain order if you live in disorder. Its been through these years that I’ve learned the new kids faces and names, how I watched their bands go from suck and then work their way up into acts that make me proud of our scene. I give it up to Guns Up! for being one of the only bands at the time that I ever got a chance to like before I was friends with them, their music energized me at a time where although my interaction with the core was constant a lot of the new stuff was bouncing off of me. Guns Up was one of the new bands that had me out of the corner and onto the floor for them. Others came but nothing amounted to that first burst of joy the way they had. Everything else up til then was known to me because I was friends with the band and they already ruled. It was good to stand with my fellow hardcore kid and sing along and dance and be reminded of my first church shows. It's one of these weird moments that only hardcore can grant you. You’re 25 and back to thinking of that first time you’ve done something and its because of 5 strangers to you on stage playing music that energizes you to a point where you will react as if you were still 17. Its such a glorious revival.

Back to the hate now… ha.
I can only hope that we have a better future then the present. With our new bands on a constant tour rotation they may never truly develop and build themselves up the way it used to be. By the LP stage these bands have toured so much its not long before the 2nd Lp is recorded and the band breaks up. Its hard to imagine a bunch of early to mid 20’s kids giving up on something at what seems like the rise of their star because of the stress and burden. It comes from eating too much like the gorging locusts that they are. Disenfranchised with the idea of weekend trips and region touring they want the world to fall to their knees within the instant they arrive on the scene. The take no prisoners style touring has fallen to the wayside in the heap of the hordes of Johnny-Come-Lately tour booking agents who all have classy myspace pages and about 6 months at tour experience at most yet are boasting with 20 something bands on each of their rosters. We’ve got more quantity then we ever had quality. It’s a fucked up situation where a band tours for 30 days and 6 are really good shows and the rest are duds or barely breaking even. Yet we still play the game as attendee, promoter, band and booker. It’s a poorly executed dance that screams of going through the motion. Is it avarice? Is it pride that pushes all through it again and again?

I can say that I turn down 5 tours for every 1 show I do. I see now that there are more promoters in the area trying to get their teeth in what we choose not to do. Their venues are weaker; their rep is smaller yet the bands will still come. The kids may even come for a time and as long as the cycle is still spinning we’re all happy but no one is really being served. This is too drawn out; it’s too by the numbers. You could replace any name of anyone involved and the outcome is similar. We’ve been cloned as I’ve come to associate it with. ATTACK OF THE CLONE CORE. More kids with nothing to say, 15 passenger vans full of electronics I can’t afford and a brand spankin new trailer with their parents well invested cash in equipment in tow. Crisscrossing all the small towns, looting and pillaging where they can. Leaving nothing for these kids to go home to worth thinking about. Its all for the moment, for the advancement of their egos and at the cost of all the ideals we had and promise this scene once had for each of us. Intentions are as rotten as the disdain for any remark that places what they’re doing as insincere or contrived. It’s a sad world of locusts feeding off of anything they can. What they leave must be burned so we can plant again.
I shall spend the next few passages talking with friends and hoping to get some of your cobwebs clear so the wheels get in motion. We need a revolution of ideas, a contemplation of our present actions and what we can invest to strengthen our world before its depleted and fit only to be blackened with fire. It’s a world I am dedicated to salvaging, if for nothing else because it gave me freedom from what I was born into, it released my demons and set my feet to a course that was unknown to most of my Frankford contemporaries. My goal is enlighten and awaken the best in each of the kids who read this and want more then the shallow surface interaction. The wasted moment of showing up only to talk through a bands set outside. The cowardice act of confrontation after a show online. It’s all pathetic and a plague that I will fuckin cut it out of each of you if I have to.