This week, I decided I needed to write a blog on something that I really care about. Something that I’ve spent almost half my life dedicated to, and that means the world to me.
I have been involved with hardcore and straight edge since I was 12 years old. I owned a small hardcore clothing company, here in Los Angeles. We promoted bands and shows. I’ve met all the big promoters, record label representatives, and a countless number of bands. At 19, I am older than more than half the straight edge population.
Maybe then, it is fitting that I am now sickened by what I see in the scene that I once loved more than anything. When I was growing up in the hardcore scene, we were expected to learn where we came from. To listen to the bands that started what we now enjoy, and to gain a respect and understanding of hardcore values and roots. Most of us started out listening to punk music, and came over to hardcore, looking for a more positive vibe and a more advanced music. Hardcore in LA dried up in 2003, all of our major bands called it quits. Nonetheless, for several years since, there have been many kids who play in solid bands and tried to relight the fire.
Nowadays when I go to a “hardcore” show, I usually end up seeing some kids who think they are the hardest thing to come out since Rambo. Kids who are looking for trouble, and bands who promote it. Not only that, but the bands have lost touch with what hardcore truly is and means. Many of the bands have come from the metal scene, and thats what they play. They play mindless metal, tune down to D or C, two chords, with mindless lyrics. The kids who are being brought up in the hardcore scene today have no respect those who have come before them, and the values that have been in the scene since it started in the 80′s.
To someone like myself, who has so much invested in hardcore, this is a knife to the heart. I will never be ashamed to state my beliefs and where I’ve come from. But the longer the hardcore scene continues this way, the more I disassociate myself from it. My beliefs are as strong as they were when I signed on as a pre-teen. But all of the veterans like me only have a couple bands left standing to hold onto. There are bands that will always be there and have been since the 80′s or 90′s, and are continuing to try to get the scene back on track. But a lot of kids like me, are getting sick of trying and are giving up.
To me, this is reflective of exactly what’s happened in society for the last, who knows how long. The young set fires to what the old have built and instilled. They have no respect for the predecessors and seemingly have no shame in that. At my age, I clearly see the cliché problem that elderly people complain about, and sympathize deeply with them. Maybe this is a long shot comparison, but to me it makes perfect sense. As for a solution, maybe the legendary band, Bane, had it right.
“Can We Start Again”
Can we start again
Go back to what it meant back then
Open minds and open hearts
The things that set us apart
Was it more than words
And do they still apply
And do you still believe
Well so do I
I was a 15 year old kid
With nowhere to fit in
I just wanted to skate
Listen to my Suicidal tape
When someone told me about a place
Where the strange were accepted
And judged by what’s inside
A scene of truly open minds
Somewhere, somehow, everything has changed
Look at what we’ve gotten ourselves caught up in
The same mindless clicks
The same high school shit
All the walls you scream about breaking down
I’ve watched you build brick by brick
Do you still believe-I do
Look beyond the 3 chords that fill your lives
Look beyond the gossip and the lies
Beyond the dullest of outsides
Look beyond
Try harder
See what’s inside this burning in my heart
Born under the same songs that you know
But our blood will never blend
Until you let those doors go
