Wednesday, January 26, 2011

I Wasted Time Hanging Out With My Friends


"If you've got the 'Everybody's Scene' book, then you've seen this photo; I'm in the back, standing behind Gavin's right shoulder. To my recollection, this is the first visual documentation of the whole 'Youth Crew' concept, which was an idea that Ray Cappo had because he was really into the whole Boston Crew image-- you know, the photos of Al Barile and 20 other guys in their letter jackets, walking through Kenmore Square. Both Ray and Porcell used to really be into the DYS and SSD record covers, for instance, and wanted to have the YOT records look the same as the XClaim! records, with a Bruce Rhodes photo taken at The Rat and so forth... they were really into duplicating those same visual images. So, this photo was our attempt at staging a Boston Crew sort of thing." --Dave Run It, from Double Cross web zine

If you wanna bump on over to Double Cross right now, you'll see the latest "where are they now" segment, featuring my dopey mug... big thanks to Chris Daly for putting the series together and including me as part of it... the photo at the top of the page was taken outside the Anthrax Club in March 1986 by Chris Schneider, the weekend that Albany Style, Youth of Today, and Crippled Youth played a show together-- that's why you can see some of the guys from all those bands in the photo, plus a few other people like Gavin Van Vlack, and of course myself behind Gavin's shoulder... as an incredible freaking coincidence, I got an envelope in the mail today from Rich Stremme (The Deacons/M-13), whom I've known since 1985 when we had the only two HC zines in the Waterbury area (Rich was from Southbury, though)-- Rich sent me his own personal copy of one of my old zines from May '86, one that I haven't seen in ages, and which happens to have an interview with Albany Style in it, from the same month that the above photo was taken... so, what the heck, to go along with the post on Double Cross and the old Anthrax photo: from that old zine of mine (which should've been called Run It #4, but instead I called it Boris #1 for some reason-- hey, N0rb stole my idea!), here's an interview I did with Dave Stein of Albany Style (also of Combined Effort Records) back in March of 1986... since we're both named Dave, he's "Dave" in the interview and I'm "D" (click on the pages to get an enlarged view of each one)... the photos alongside the interview are mine, taken at the old Stamford Anthrax, and also the Albany VFW where Dave used to put on shows... that's Gavin carrying Drew from Albany Style on his shoulders... "old school straightedge, muthafuggas!"














2 comments:

Joe Stumble said...

Man...this photo is PERFECT. Makes me want to espouse on the first wave of US Hardcore again!

Brushback said...

Fuck yeah! We didn't even know how good we had it.

There's a second version of this photo, with all of us holding up the X'es on the back of our hands... it looks kinda sloppy, though.

Gavin Van Vlack = Absolution and Burn, of course. There were two shows that weekend, at the Anthrax and in Albany, and most of us slept on the floor at Gavin's house in between, listening to Motorhead records. I remember that Gavin was in the middle of typing up some reviews for a fanzine, but I don't think it ever came out.