Generation Records limited OFF! 7"

Dimitri Coats and Keith Morris with OFF!, Photo: Keith Marlowe

Limited Edition 7" single, released during Record Store Day 2011. Sold out everywhere, but still some in stock on this collectible piece of vinyl at Generation Records.

This single features four stand out tracks recorded during the band's Generation Records in-store performance. Mixed by the OFF! member, Steven McDonald.

Generation Records

Bobby Sullivan talks Soulside

Bobby and Alexis with Soulside at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ, Photo: Ken Salerno

Crucial John Scharbach, singer of DC's Give, got in touch with Bobby Sullivan of Soulside to get the backstory on the lyrics behind each song off of Soulside's Hot Bodi-Gram. Bobby delivered a great write-up, and John sent it our way. Very cool insights on one of harDCcore's most important bands. This is a multi-part entry, with the explanations to the lyrics coming in part 2. Stay tuned.

Thanks John and Bobby! -Gordo DCXX

At the beginning of the Soulside tour in 1989, it was apparent it would be our last. With 2 months in the US and 4 months in Europe, we played over 100 shows. And in a sense, the recording of Hot Bodi-Gram, just outside of Amsterdam, was the last show of the tour. Many of the songs were composed along the way at sound checks and experimental portions of our live shows. All the energy from the tour went into the recording. It was a great way to express all the things we had seen and felt along the way.

The European leg of our tour took us to the East Block where we were the 1st US band to play in East Berlin and 3 cities in Poland. It was 6 months before the Berlin Wall fell. We went as far north as Oslo in Norway and as far south as Thessaloniki in Greece. We played in Croatia and our shows in Bosnia and Kosovo were canceled because of the rising tensions in the region. This was one year before the horrible war there and the breakup of Yugoslavia. We drove right through Kosovo and had a hard time driving around Albania to get to Greece. The checkpoints were intense.

In Rome we played in a squat that was a former army fort on the outskirts of town. When the police tried to take it back, which happened from time to time, the punks simply locked the gates and dropped the bridge over the moat. We played a show with 5 bands for the equivalent of $5 and Soundgarden played the same night in a club for the equivalent of $20. Needless to say, we had the crowd at the fort. In northern Spain we stayed with anarchists in the Basque Country, where they had a longstanding independence movement. In Oslo we participated in an anti-fascist rally on May Day. People filled the streets with signs promoting their various agendas. The fascists wore white jumps suits and the communists wore red. The squat we played at was bombed by the fascist party a week after we were there.


Soulside's Scott McCloud at Maxwells, Photo: Ken Salerno

Even with all our adventures, tensions were rising in the group, especially about the direction of our message. I was experiencing a lot of resistance to specifically mentioning the political and social issues I was involved in at the time. Unfortunately we were growing in different directions and I was in a separate camp all by myself. I always felt that the lyrics should represent the whole band – they were getting sick of doing interviews about Mumia and veganism, so I acquiesced, making my references more vague. I could see the potential of value in this approach. Sometimes a message can get out better when you're not putting it right in somebody's face.

After we got back from the tour we had a couple weeks off and then our last two shows. The 9:30 Club and then Ft. Reno 2 days later. The 9:30 Club show was the last one with a nice controlled sound system. The very last show at Ft. Reno was outdoors and it was always hard to get a good sound there. At the 9:30 Club I can't remember who played with us (maybe somebody's comment could straighten me out), but it was a charged set. We played as hard as we could.

The very last show at Ft. Reno was with Fugazi. It was nice to do it there since it was in a park most of us had grown up near. It was a fitting end to the kids we were when we started. It was also probably one of the largest gatherings of people Ft. Reno had ever seen at the time. This was a city funded free concert, which was part of a weekly series of shows throughout the summers in NW DC, in our neighborhood. Members of Fugazi were also tied to this area. The high school most of us went to is across the street. It was a fitting end.

We split on good terms. I moved to Boston and started 7 League Boots and the rest of the guys moved to NYC and started Girls Against Boys. I was glad to move on, as the punk scene was going mainstream and I wasn't going to work for a multinational corporation. The DIY ethic was good for me. In Boston I broadened my musical and spiritual horizons, only to move back to DC a few years later to join Rain Like The Sound Of Trains and then Sevens, with my brother...

(TO BE CONTINUED)


Johnny Temple on bass for Soulside at The Court Tavern, Photo: Ken Salerno

OFF! live @ Gilman Street, Berkeley Ca. 4/22/2011

WHERE ARE THEY NOW - Ajay James / Enuf

Ajay with Enuf at Rutgers, Scott Hall, Photo: Ken Salerno

Ajay James, former lead singer of NJHC band Enuf, fan and follower of NYHC scene. I went on to a successful career as a male model, (hahah, no really though), while at the same time being a full time Muay Thai teacher and fighter, and doorman at many popular NY clubs.

In 2000, I got my US citizenship, joined the military in 2001, and have been working in the special operations community since.


Ajay 2011, Photo courtesy of: Ajay James

Orange County Hardcore Scenester screening

On May 12 at The Yost Theater in Santa Ana, CA, the documentary ORANGE COUNTY HARDCORE SCENESTER is going to have a ONE NIGHT only screening for FREE. The movie starts at 7pm sharp. There will be a 10-15 minute musical performance beforehand, OCHS will play, and there may also be a Q&A afterwards. There will even be a special shirt made up for this event.

ORANGE COUNTY HARDCORE SCENESTER looks at the OC Hardcore/punk scene in a very personal way from 1990-1997. You can watch the first 7 minutes here:

ORANGE COUNTY HARDCORE SCENESTER

The Facebook page is:

ORANGE COUNTY HARDCORE SCENESTER on Facebook

I sincerely hope that anybody who wants to see the movie, and can get to the theater on that night, will show up. Having taken part in the Hardcore Reunion show back in 2009, I am hoping that this event captures some of that spirit.

Best,
Evan Jacobs

Jules - Side By Side / Alone In A Crowd 2011 Interview - Part V

Jules, Lars and Eric with Side by Side at The Anthrax, Norwalk CT, Photo: Boiling Point

Here's part V of our ongoing interview with Jules. This picks up where the last part left off, as Jules was explaining what caused Side By Side to break up, what was happening at that time in the NYHC scene, and how that tied into the formation of Alone In A Crowd. In case you missed part 4 (or the previous parts), go here:
Jules Side By Side 2011
And in case you've been under a rock, here's the latest batch of records Jules is auctioning off here, with ALL money being donated to the Japanese relief effort:
Jules Auction
Take it away Jules... -Gordo DCXX


Just after Side By Side's breakup, this whole nazi skinhead revival thing was happening. There were always a few right wing skinhead types hanging around the NY scene, but prior to maybe mid-'88 they were a superminority. White power was a thing that Skrewdriver sang about in England, and any interest in them in NYHC, as far as I can remember, was purely musical. Even the closest thing to a New York Oi! type skin band at the time, YDL, was not so extreme. Listen to AF and War Zone -- United And Strong and As One were the anthems for the NYHC skins.

Then on the weekends down at Tompkins Square Park, I can remember packs of skinheads showing up -- nobody local knew who they were. And each coming weekend there seemed to be more and more of them. They were "weekend warriors" from Jersey, Pennsylvania, upstate NY...who the hell knew. And they would just come and camp out on the corner, drinking beer until they got bored enough to find some unfortunate soul who just happened to be alone in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the thing is, these guys weren't even going to shows, they'd just come into the city, loiter at NYHC scene hangouts, and cause trouble -- presumably so they would have some "war story" to tell back home.

This caused major problems in the scene. For example, one weekend, they jumped a kid from the alphabet city projects and then split for the suburbs. Well, not long after, a bunch of project kids, with weapons, started sweeping through Tompkins Square attacking anybody who looked even remotely like a skinhead. So a lot of folks that had nothing to do with this got hurt, including some of the toughest guys who used to hang out pretty regularly at the park. There was a crew of old school Krishna consciousness types who you absolutely did not mess with. I remember one of them, I think it was Mike Boyer, got cracked in the knee with a bat. My memory is pretty dim on this, it could've even been John Joseph -- because he used to hang out outside the Alcatraz all the time. Anyway, they went looking for the skinheads who started all this. A bit of a witch hunt followed. But since the instigators were from out of town, I don't know if anyone ever figured out who they were. It would not surprise me if some other innocent got their skull cracked by mistake in the retribution.


Jules and Lars with Side By Side at The Anthrax, Photo: Boiling Point

Then all of a sudden in late 1988, there was a media blitz about Nazi skinheads. All of the talk shows and news magazines started showing all these freaking skins on TV that none of us knew. They were palling around with Tom and John Metzger, who were KKK and Aryan nation types -- from California, I think. These shows made it appear like the third reich was reborn and there were hundreds of thousands of skinheads ready to start a race war. The media loved it. And the white power political organizations loved it because it gave them national media exposure. Geraldo Rivera had a show that ended in a brawl -- he got his nose broken by a chair. Some people think it was staged (I don't know). The video is on YouTube, judge for yourself. A week later, competitor talk show host Morton Downey Jr. had white power skinheads on his show. Sometime after that Morton Downey Jr. was on the front page of the rags, with his head shorn and a swastika drawn on his face, claiming that he was attacked by skinheads in San Francisco. San Francisco. In the airport bathroom. Needless to say, almost everybody believed the attack on Morton Downey Jr. was staged, and his show was canceled soon after.

All the sensationalism and exaggeration was nonetheless a great recruiting tool, apparently. Almost overnight, the white power skinhead population exploded. Every weekend, more and more of these out of town, white power skins started showing up at shows. I don't know what they were thinking -- because they were not welcome. Things got violent.

Tommy Carroll got into a fist fight with this big fat skin at a matinee. Tommy was a boxer, though he hadn't started fighting competitively at this time. This skinhead was like two heads taller than Tommy and about three times his weight. A circle formed around the two in front of CB's -- his buddies were clearly smart enough to know not to gang up on Tommy, 'cause everybody watching would've jumped in to beat their asses. Tommy cracked the guy in the jaw with a right -- and he looked at Tommy shocked like he had never taken a hit like that in his life. Big as he was, nobody probably ever tried. Tommy went low while the guy tried to grapple and started hitting him in the gut. This went on for a while. And, inexplicably, the skinhead just walked away. Tommy let him go. He said to me afterwards the skinhead was just "too fat to fight." I never saw him again. But there seemed to be a never ending supply.

Billy (Side By Side) also had similar problems. Billy's girlfriend at the time was Japanese. She had a skinhead girl haircut (bangs only) and wore Docs. She got attacked at CB's by some white power dicks, and Billy had to step in. This kind of _ _ _ _ started happening with increasing regularity.


And not only was the NYHC scene defending itself physically from the encroaching white power skinhead "movement," we had to deal with the public misperception that we were somehow a part of that movement. I had spent years of my life having dicks say _ _ _ _ to me on the street, throw things at me, etc., because of the way I looked or dressed. But now I had to deal with being called a racist and a nazi to boot. I needed this like a hole in the head. I think a lot of people started phasing out of the scene at this time -- it was just too much of a hassle to even go to shows.

Marcus Pacheco fought back, though. To his credit -- he didn't take it lying down. He formed SHARP and used the media's love affair with the skinheads to call attention to the non-racist hardcore, Oi! and ska scene. I think he and his organization did an admirable job of attempting to educate the general public. I have heard that SHARP later devolved into gang violence, and if true, that is unfortunate. It was a positive thing when it started.

For me, though, I think I was already heading toward the exit. Because in addition to the rise of this white power lunacy, the scene, as I had come to know it, had been pulling itself apart in other ways...

(TO BE CONTINUED)


Side By Side at CBGB, NYC, Photo: Bri Hurley

Jules - Side By Side / Alone In A Crowd DCXX Charity Auction for Japanese Relief ROUND 4

Here is the latest round of record auctions from Jules of Side By Side / Alone In A Crowd. Every penny is going to the relief efforts in Japan. Jules has secured a matching donation which will double the value of the money raised through the auctions.

In case you needed any reminder of the ongoing severity of the catastrophe in Japan, or needed any incentive in bidding, please check out this article:
Japan quake victims face health issues

Clearly the people of Japan need our help more than ever. Please consider bidding. If not, we encourage you to give a donation in whatever amount you can to one of the many relief organizations who will need your help. If you can make a difference in one person's life, however small, it is worth it.

Please help us to let the people of Japan know they are not in this alone.
This auction ends this Friday, May 6, at 8am EST.

Terms & Conditions:
*All items from Jules' personal collection.

*Please read each individual record's description for specific details and condition.

*Bidding is to be made on individual records. This is not an auction for the whole batch.
*You can bid on multiple items, but a specific bid must be placed on each item.
*Bidding must be rounded to the dollar. No cents business
*All sales are final.

*All records have a starting reserve price.
*All offers/bids must be sent to Gordo at bcjordan1@gmail.com, who is handling this for Jules.
*Offers/bids are not to be sent anywhere else, not in the comment section, not to Tim, not via Facebook, etc.
*Paypal is the only accepted method of payment.
*Do not bid if you are unable to pay at the time of auction close or if you cannot send funds via paypal.

*Bidders will be contacted ASAP privately via email from Gordo with the status of their bid and the current top bid.
*Re-bidding is allowed and encouraged.

*The bidding for these specific Round 1 items will close at 8am Eastern Standard Time on THIS FRIDAY, MAY 6.
*At that time, the top 3 bidders will be contacted privately to place a final bid.
*The final top bidder must be able to transfer funds via paypal to Gordo at bcjordan1@gmail.com within 48 hours of final close.

*All shipping & handling costs must be paid for additionally by BUYER, and this amount is not a part of the bid amount.
*All shipping & handling costs will be determined fairly between Gordo and buyer.
*Shipping & handling costs can be combined if multiple items are won by the same bidder.
*All items will be shipped via USPS to the buyer's liking.
*All proceeds will be transferred by Gordo to Jules for the purpose of final matched charitable contribution, doubling the total amount.
*Bidder/winner identities will not be disclosed.

*EVERY CENT GOES TO CHARITY FOR JAPANESE RELIEF. NOBODY IS MAKING A DIME ON ANY OF THIS.
*Questions, offers/bids - Gordo: bcjordan1@gmail.com - auction ends Friday May 6 at 8am EST.

THANK YOU!!! - Jules, Tim & Gordo


Youth Of Today - "Can't Close My Eyes" 7" - 1st pressing, black and white labels, slight tear in lyric sheet. Reserve price: $40


Unity - "You Are One" 7" - Black vinyl, no lyric sheet. Reserve price: $30


Pagan Babies - "Immaculate Conception" 7" - Gold vinyl. Reserve price: $20


Side By Side - "You're Only Young Once" 7" - Black and white labels, newsprint style lyric sheet. Reserve price: $25


Bad Brains - "Rock For Light" LP - Promo copy with cut in front cover, no lyric sheet. Reserve price: $20