There are those defining instances where a song or even just a line connects with you so fiercely that the entire history of music seems stretched to create this electric moment. They seem heaviest in adolescence, maybe because people are more open then or maybe because they're thirstier to find a relevence. During those early teenage years they seem so monumental I still feel guided by the shock of hearing Metallica or the Beastie Boys for the first time. And by extension, sometimes I try to piece together how all of my middle school friends and I created our own identities from the same pool of references - Carcass, N.W.A., the Misfits - and still ended up in wildly different places.
In any case, at a certain point it feels like those moments are a thing of the past, that you've gathered up all the breath-taking, eye-opening first shots at Rites of Spring or Tiger Trap or Irma Thomas and you no longer get hit in the same way. New records are still exciting, but they're probably not going to save your life.
At age 21 I got talked into going to the More Than Music Festival in Columbus Ohio. I was mad about Promise Ring, hadn't heard of Charles Bronson, and wasn't nearly punk enough for Code 13. In a way the whole thing was as baffling and inpenetrable as if I were one of my parents, and it had only been a couple years since I stopped going to hardcore shows. But of course the turnover is fast and the evasive tactics of the scene cut you out pretty quick. I kept wandering off when the bands would play, there was a lot of metal-influenced hardcore, not good like crossover but bad like Florida. I just kept feeling like I was getting yelled at, like the band was right and I was wrong.
I will confess that I wasn't particularly caught by His Hero is Gone's set, again it was a lot of screaming and pick slides and guitar guitar guitar but this introduction, oh it was one of those moments that changes everything. It distilled everything that brought me to hardcore in the first place, this refuge from polo shirts and haircuts and SAT scores and phony smiles. I felt foolish not being able to scream "I! Fight! Every! Day!" along with the rest of the room. I almost wrote "the rest of the tribe" and I even meant it, without irony or scorn. At fourteen I loved that punk said "we're fucked, come join us" and even when it didn't I was too crushed out and dreamy to care. I feel like I must've stopped hearing it at some point, and this song, this introduction returned me to the fold.
When I went to More Than Music the next year I had all the His Hero is Gone records.
2 comments:
you know me and helen were there too right? alienated and disconnected in similar ways always and forever!
HHIG was the only good band that played that thing. and thats not saying much. the highlight of the entire fest was Canada vs. USA in football in the field outside.
Post a Comment