Hardcore, Tony Hawk, and Pit Riffment
meanwhile the gaping maw of the political machine is going to swallow me whole
My poor fucking partner has had to deal with my incessant whining and complaining about the Iowa caucus for like a full week at this point and I need something, literally anything, to take the edge off my near-unhealthy obsession with American electoral politics today. Luckily for you and I, I got some mighty fine questions this week, so it’ll be nice to take an hour or four and talk about the real issues facing the American working class rather than angrily listening to Chapo Trap House and TrueAnon and donating to Bernie’s campaign for the fifth time in a month. If you’d be willing to indulge me I think I will probably rant a little bit about it at the end of the newsletter, but for now, let’s deal with some more pressing matters.
TONY HAWK’S TIME SUCK 17
Patron Ben asks:
If you had to make a modern soundtrack to a Tony Hawk Game, what would be some highlights?
The Tony Hawk soundtracks are great because 1. they unilaterally rule 2. they are at least five to ten years behind the times in most cases and 3. they’re genre-inclusive. If I were going to mastermind the imaginary soundtrack to, let’s say, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 6 (or Tony Hawk’s Underground 3, or Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland 2), it would probably have a couple of these thumpers on it:
The Story So Far- “Quicksand”
Title Fight- “Symmetry”
Vince Staples- “Norf Norf”
I Wish I Could Skateboard- “Unfair”
Shin Guard- “Kennedy”
Trash Talk- “Slander”
Ceremony- “MCDF”
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib- “Palmolive (feat. Pusha T & Killer Mike)”
Tyler the Creator- “Who Dat Boy (feat. A$AP Rocky)”
Denzel Curry- “Percs”
Inclination- “When Fear Turns to Confidence”
Restraining Order- “This World Is Too Much”
One Step Closer- “The Reach”
Anxious- “Seeds”
Man Overboard- “Al Sharpton”
Rotting Out- “Laugh Now, Die Later”
Such Gold- “Two Year Plan”
SCARLXRD- “Heart Attack”
City Morgue “Gravehop187”
Touché Amoré- “Pathfinder”
LET ME HIT YOUR PIT, BRO
Patron Allistair asks:
I admit this is stupid and aimless and not really a question but lately I've been thinking about PITS. I've lived in enough areas and been to enough shows that I've been exposed to the most vicious pit at a Beach Fossils show and I even saw people attempt to mosh at American Football last year. I'm always interested in how pits reflect local youth culture and temperament: When I lived in Austin in the late 00s, I never saw any pits and they mostly weren't allowed at venues. In Brooklyn, it seems like only pissed off teens went to emo shows and they honestly seemed like they wanted to kill someone by stage diving and would do gross shit like grope the female lead singer (feel like that would go down differently these days). Moving back to Austin in the 2010s, I now see a lot more pits at shows. I even saw someone jump off the balcony at Glassjaw and Joyce Manor (a band that apparently discouraged moshing in the past -- they sure didn't mind this time.)
Also worth pointing out, I used to LOVE going to shows for a mosh pit but now I'm old and my body sucks so I'm the type to avoid it like the plague -- my brother is in a wheelchair and it further makes me realize how much pits suck when they get out of hand, even at the outskirts of a venue where you can't see shit people can still be assholes. So, I'm sympathetic to both sides: When you're young and healthy, it's a great way to have fun, make friends and get out aggression in a healthy way (within reason); when you're old, it's fun to watch unless it's not and starts to ruin your experience.
I realize this is kind of dumb but I know you've been to a lot more kinds of shows then me and may have some insight on pits, pit etiquette, and why they vary so much by city/culture/genre: stinky pits, comfy pits, angry pits, friendly pits, pits of all kinds!
Hey, you live in Austin too! You’re right, Austin pits are really enthusiastic— the exception is dad-emo shows like the Get-Up Kids and Dashboard Confessional, where everyone is just trying to get home safe so they don’t have to pay the babysitter overtime. I literally remember that kid flying into the crowd from the balcony at that Jeff Rosenstock/Joyce Manor show!
Put simply, pits are so variable because, like you said, they are so reflective of the youth culture. When I was coming up in Vegas the pits were starkly violent in a way that mirrored how nasty that city’s culture could be at the time— the hardcore scene there has changed a lot since I’ve moved to Austin, but back in my peak show-going days (circa 2009 to 2014), I definitely noticed a contrast between the Las Vegas shows and the more organized and friendly shows that I’d witness whenever I’d go to California. In hardcore specifically, there’s a contrast between straight-edge types and the spiraling dirtbag contingent that fed into some of the animosity too. Appropriately enough, some of the craziest pits I’ve ever been witness to were at pop-punk shows where meathead types felt like they had free reign to beat on the younger kids— for example, when I saw New Found Glory and the Story So Far, a knife fight nearly broke out over some dumb beef about a girl, and weirdly Tigers Jaw shows always have the gnarliest pits.
The older I get, the more I feel like my pit days are behind me— not just in the push-mosh sense (although I never really felt like that was my thing) but also in the fighting-invisible-ninjas sense, although I’d never begrudge somebody the fun of wildin out to their favorite band. I’m much more a fan of the desperate, pile-up sing-along.
I feel like there’s always been some friction between what I’d refer to as the Fugazi mindset vs. the Hatebreed mindset— ie, people who view moshing as a fundamentally alienating activity and people who view it entirely as catharsis. Of course there is merit to the idea that moshing should be reigned in at times, and I’ve spoken to a lot of women who find that the violence of a mosh pit is an obstacle to their enjoyment of the show. Simultaneously, I realize that there is no real way to control the way that everyone at your show is expressing themselves. Really, all you can ask for is a basic awareness of your surroundings, and perhaps a recognition that you should not spinkick or stage-dive on top of the eighty-pound preteen girl who is just there to sing along.
That being said, if you’re at a Harms Way show, in my opinion that gives you free reign to go the fuck off. Being aware of your surroundings also means being conscious of the band you are going to go see, and if the band in question is a tough guy act with a shit-ton of pit riffment— say, a No Zodiac or a Xibalba— don’t be shocked if you get clocked in the head if you’re not paying attention. There’s always a balance to strike between being courteous and being cautious, and given that no one has been able to come to a conclusion in 40 years of our subculture, I doubt that any one person is going to magically find the answer.
HARDCORE FOR HARDCORE
Finally, patron Maddie asks:
Probably already been answered somewhere before but since you’re asking about hardcore: I’m an emo kid who doesn’t really know what hardcore is (besides the early 2000s “post-hardcore” stuff like dgd, if that counts), so: educate me! Give me some bands/records to get emo kids like myself into hardcore.
As my good friend Claudio of Commander Salamander has said, lots of emo kids are getting into hardcore right now because of emo’s relative stagnation and the fact that the hardcore scene is absolutely booming right now. In my opinion, this is a fucking awesome thing— I realize I harp on this a lot, but emo came from hardcore and hardcore is where it should always return.
If you’re a fan of Dance Gavin Dance, the heavier contingent of early 2000s post-hardcore is a good entry point, as is the hardcore-adjacent renaissance of the 2010s. Some good records to whet your appetite for heaviness would include Glassjaw’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence, The Blood Brothers’ Burn, Piano Island, Burn, Every Time I Die’s Hot Damn!, Poison the Well’s Tear from the Red, Drug Church’s Cheer, Touché Amoré’s Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me, Code Orange’s Forever, and Title Fight’s Shed.
From there, it’s a bit of a choose your own adventure narrative, but I think that 90s hardcore is probably the most fruitful and varied era of the genre and would yield the highest number of records that would appeal to you. Snapcase’s Progression Through Unlearning, Damnation’s No More Dreams of Happy Endings, Endpoint’s Catharsis, Cave-In’s Until Your Heart Stops, Converge’s Petitioning the Empty Sky and When Forever Comes Crashing, Disembodied’s discography (which is now conveniently available on Spotify), No Comment’s “Downsided” 7”, Vision of Disorder’s self-titled and Imprint, Still Life’s From Angry Heads with Skyward Eyes, Unbroken’s Life.Love.Regret., Hatebreed’s Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire, Indecision’s Most Precious Blood, and Integrity’s Humanity Is the Devil are some of the most oft-cited essential records of 90s hardcore, and I recommend all of them highly.
From there, it’s mostly a game of tracing influences backwards and forwards. You can head back into the 80s and familiarize yourself with some of the canonized records— Negative Approach’s Tied Down, Gorilla Biscuits’ Start Today, the Adolescents’ self-titled, the Minor Threat discography, Bad Brains, Black Flag, the first Suicidal Tendencies record, Rites of Spring, et al— and you can also head forward into the 2000s and beyond, where some of the most important and vital work in the genre was and still is being made. American Nightmare’s Background Music and We’re Down Til We’re Underground, Have Heart’s discography, Harms Way’s Isolation, Weekend Nachos’ Still and Worthless, Modern Life Is War’s Witness— the genre really is just an embarrassment of riches, and the classics are classics for a reason. For more information, you can check out my section on hardcore in my “I Love the 00s” installment of this very newsletter, or check out this Google doc I wrote for a metal discord giving them a rundown of the genre. I could and maybe one day will write a book about hardcore but for now these resources will have to do. Hopefully more people will chime in throughout the coming weeks with more specific questions, which is, in my opinion, where I really shine in the recommendation department. For now, though, check these out and let me know what you think and where you stand, and we can go from there.
AT LONG LAST, A NOTE OF DESPERATION
By the time this newsletter comes out, the New Hampshire primary will be… tomorrow, holy fuck. Normally at the end of my newsletters I find that there is nothing I want more than for people to donate to my Patreon (which, by the way, I would still love), but I linked a button to donate to Bernie at the very beginning of this thing and I really, in my heart of hearts, hope that you donate, and I hope that you phonebank for Bernie, and I hope that you scream in everyone’s faces to support Bernie, because it really is coming down to the fucking wire here and it is no way an exaggeration to say that if you at all give a fuck about the marginalized and disenfranchised in this country then you should be throwing all of your weight behind Bernie. Not only is he the only candidate that could feasibly beat Trump, a presidency from any other Democrat is going to be functionally the same as Trump, though perhaps with better optics.
Make no mistake, we are not all on the same “side.” Politics is not a game of aesthetics, it’s not about which team you like more, it’s not about milquetoast representation without any weight behind it. This is lives on the line. Bernie is our one small window to really seize on a moment of class consciousness in America right now. It’s not just about getting a social democrat into the White House, it’s about using this momentum to build a coalition and introduce radical concepts like solidarity strikes and general strikes to reorganize power in our dead fucking democracy. Bernie will not be the one to solve all of our problems, and even if he does get the nomination and win the presidency, November 2020 will be only the beginning, not the end. We will have to keep agitating and we will have to keep fighting the capitalist class.
But I want to make it very clear to you that Bernie is the only candidate in the Democratic field who gives even a little bit of a fuck about you. Elizabeth Warren does not give a fuck about you. Pete Buttigieg, a CIA asset who fixed fucking bread prices, cheated in the Iowa caucus, is proud of taking money from billionaires, and gutted South Bend with gentrification and a ruthlessly racist police force, does not give a fuck about you. Amy Klobuchar is a psychotic rage monster who is verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive to her staffers— she, you guessed it, does not give a fuck about you. Creepy Uncle Joe Biden, the oatmeal-brained, tapioca-filled expired condom who sundowns on the debate stage, palled around with and exalted the memory of Segregatin’ Strom Thurmond, and whose treatment of Anita Hill makes Brett Kavanaugh look like a feminist ally, does not give a fuck about you. Michael Bloomberg, who pushed the virulently racist stop-and-frisk policies in New York and for whom spending $500 million on a presidential campaign amounts to pocket change, does not give a fuck about you. Andrew Yang, whose UBI is meant to replace social safety nets, might give a fuck about you but is going about it in the most colossally incompetent way possible. Tom Steyer might also give a fuck about you— it’s hard to tell because it seems as though his entire presidential run exists in order to boost Bernie, which is awesome, but he’s still a billionaire, so I can’t trust the motherfucker as far as I can throw him.
It’s Bernie or fucking bust— even if you personally feel that it’s your duty to vote against Trump in November no matter who else is on the ballot, do not let any of these soft-bodied milquetoast liberals know that for a second. If they think that Bernie’s base consists of people who will straight up not vote if anyone else gets the nomination, that makes it their ethical fucking duty to vote for Bernie in the primaries, doesn’t it?
Get on board, and get on board now. This is more important than emo. Fuck, it’s more important than any of us as individuals. Not Me, Us.
Yours in solidarity,
Ellie (xoxo)
If you’d like to submit a question to be answered in the newsletter, consider contributing to my Patreon. If you’d just like to read dumb jokes, follow me on Twitter on my personal account and on my podcast’s account (you can listen to that podcast here). Or (and I realize this is a risky proposition) just friend me on Facebook if you wanna see all my bullshit “life” stuff. I’ll see you all next week!
Love the little political bit at the end! I know this isn't the patreon to request topics, but please, I would love hearing anything "political" from you in any one of these newsletters.
And, thanks for the hardcore recs! Gonna start listening and I know who to contact if I want more recommendations:)
-maddie