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LUCKY LEHRER: When we first got started,

we were dealing with a bad economy,

inflation, change of administration.

Reagan was the kind of antithesis

or the reaction, a whole new...

Like a paradigm shift.

And there was a lot of concern over,

you know, what might that mean

in terms of all kinds of issues,

freedom of speech and repression and civil liberties and...

That was the... Sort of that era.

(PAY TO CU PLAYING)

* Not long ago when things were slow, we all got by with what we know

* The end is near, hearts filed with fear, don't want to listen to what they hear

* And so it's now we choose to fight, to stick up for our bloody right

* The right to sing, the right to dance, the right is ours... We'll take the chance

* A peace together

* A piece apart

* A piece of wisdom from our hearts *

In the early '80s, there was this sense of reestablishing the order.

You know, the white man... The Ronald-Reagan-White-Man order

is coming back.

You know, you'd had that wimp, Jimmy Carter,

talking about peace and human rights and all this other shit.

And you'd had, you know, the feminists and the negroes and the...

They're all getting uppity on us, right?

So we're going to reinstitute order here, right?

And so the whole country goes into

this--this really puerile '50s fantasy

where they're dressing in these cardigan sweaters

and we were just like, "Fuck you. Fuck you. Not us."

You know, "You can take that and shove it up your ass."

* Jealous cowards try to control

* Rise above Were gonna rise above

* They distort what we say

* Rise above Were gonna rise above *

We'd been going through one of

the worst periods in music possible.

Disco was at its peak.

Rock bands were still big, like Foghat.

Just crap.

Everybody was into this, like,

"Well, we've got a shiny brand-new car."

And, "I just got my hair feathered."

And, "Oh, look at my clothes."

And "Oh, here, want some cocaine?"

And "We're drinking wine coolers."

And just all that kind of crap.

For me, it was just...

So bored with what was going on.

I mean, in 1980 we're still listening to the Doors and the Beatles

and we're supposed to be bowing down to that music,

and it just wasn't our music.

They were all like, formulaic bands,

like Journey and the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.

They're all great bands for what they do.

It's just that when you hear it constantly, over and over and over again,

you're gonna want to just vomit

or jump off the nearest cliff,

throw yourself out in front of an oncoming bus.

As a boy, I'm coming up through the '60s, so I thought, you know,

my late teens, early twenties, were gonna be

the most radical years of my life.

And I get there and it's, yeah,

Pete Frampton in a kimono, man.

Time was slow back then.

Things were barely moving and this music just came along and just...

It was like an electrical charge.

It was like a fucking comet hitting

the fucking planet, you know what I mean.

It came out of left fucking field, dude.

I had never heard nor seen anything like this.

* Ronald laughs as millions starve

* And profits forever increase *

The music that we were performing,

the lyrics that we were writing

had nothing to do with about holding hands and smiling

and skipping off into the sunset.

I couldn't fucking resist this incredible scene

being under my fucking doorstep, you know,

full of hatred for mainstream normalcy, just like I was.

I mean, it was just like, "Fuck it, I'm diving in,

"I don't care if I ever come back up again."

And it took a good long while.

MORRIS: We'd been made all these promises.

You go to school, you do your homework,

you go to college, you get a great job, you make lots of money,

you get married, you have a couple of kids.

Dog, cat, goldfish, two-car garage.

And that's just not the way that it is.

Somebody's got to say, "This isn't right."

Because everybody else is saying,

"It's morning in America," you know.

Somebody's got to say, "It's fucking midnight, man!"

I'm working Monday through Friday.

Here comes Friday night and I'm just gonna go off.

I hate my boss, I hate the people

that I work with, I hate my parents,

I hate all these authoritative figures, I hate politicians,

I hate people in government, I hate the police.

You know, everybody's kind of pointing the finger at me.

Everybody's picking at me.

Everybody's poking at me.

And now I have a chance to be with a bunch of my--my own type of people

and I have a chance to go off.

And that's basically what it was.

* Red, I'm seeing red I'm seeing red

* I'm seeing red I'm seeing red

* Red, I'm seeing red I'm seeing red I'm seeing red *

For me, punk was the portal.

It was the portal to the counterculture.

That's where I belonged.

That's where I lived. That's how I got there.

But punk rock at that time

was becoming more associated with just the Sex Pistols and Sid Vicious.

Now, Sid Vicious was, you know,

he was a junkie, a nihilistic junkie,

and we were not.

So we really were trying to carve out our own place.

And we said, "No, we're hardcore punk."

That's, you know, hardcore. Hardcore punk.

We started calling it hardcore, okay, like, you know,

as far as being like hardcore porn.

It means it's like, it's right down to the core. It's the real deal.

I could never be Gene Simmons or

Ace Frehely or in some band where,

you know, where you're spitting out fire and there's explosions.

And I couldn't play like Eddie Van Halen.

I still can't.

And then this new sound comes along

and it's, you know, simple but aggressive.

* Ready to fight, ready to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight

* Ready to fight, ready

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

RICHARD CRANMER: I guess the whole new wave thing was going on

and it was just kind of sickening, to tell you the truth.

They started having, you know, all these, like,

what they used to call "skinny tie bands, " all the "day-glo bands"

'cause they were all wearing those neon colors.

When hardcore came out I was a little kid

and I had missed out on, you know, the '77 punk thing

and I wasn't around for the '70s rock thing.

So here was something that was happening, that was new,

that we were making up as it went along.

We were making the rules up and creating this sound.

And the bands and the people around, when the scene was small enough,

it was exciting.

It was like you were on the cusp of something that was just...

You didn't know where it was gonna go.

* We'll have the straight edge *

Normal people did not listen to hardcore. And we liked it that way, right?

Because you can listen to that shit.

You can listen to Fleetwood Mac. Go listen to that shit.

We are not gonna abide it. We are about blowing all of that up.

We are about destroying everything in that.

And you can't live our way unless you cross that divide.

I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.

...that I will faithfully execute

the office of President of the United States.

And will, to the best of my ability...

And will, to the best of my ability...

...preserve, protect and defend...

...preserve, protect and defend...

...the Constitution of the United States.

...the Constitution of the United States.

So help you, God.

So help me, God.

Punk rockers loved to hate Reagan worldwide.

Songs were written, posters were made, signs were raised,

and oranges were hurled.

Every punk rock band of that era must have had at least one or two posters

where they'd have that picture of Ronald Reagan from The Killers

with the gun like this, right.

You know, with that look on his face, type thing,

like, "I'm going to kill you, motherfucker."

* You're fucked up, Ronnie You're not gonna last

* You're gonna die soon From a Neutron blast

* You're fucked up, Ronnie You're fucked up, Ronnie

* You're fucked up, Ronnie You're fucked up, Ronnie *

As far as we knew, we were the only people in Orange County

who listened to punk rock or knew what it was.

PATTON: The original punk bands,

most of these people were musicians,

and they were into like, glitter, glam, stuff like that.

And so they already knew how to play

and they just kind of adopted punk rock as a style.

We listened to the first punk rock records and we learned to play.

And we were doing it really primitively because we didn't really know,

so we just put it all into energy.

* One, two, three, four...

(OUT OF VOGUE PLAYING)

The whole thing with hardcore was that it was people just picking up a guitar,

learning three chords, playing as fast as they could.

The short fast songs, trim all the fat.

Later do the intro, later do the outro.

Cut the bridge in half and get on with it.

I will just say exactly what's on my mind, and do it in 32 seconds.

* Stand on both feet, hold my own No gun, no way to make a mark

* Impressed, obsessed with people dying *

The less it was a song, the more we loved it.

We're feeling this, and we don't want to go slow.

We're not trying to be melodic. We're not trying to be cool or digestible.

We're giving you all our angst and all our feeling as hard as we can.

* I've got no values

* Nothing to say

* I've got no values

* Might as well blow you away *

We don't know how to sing. We weren't singing.

We were just screaming against authority and our parents

and about everything that was pissing us off in our life.

We were just kids who refused to be sort of slotted

into this sort of generic kid role.

It was for kids, it was about kids, it was by kids.

It was the manifestation of youth.

It was fast, it was loud, it was angry, it was unpredictable.

That's what kids were. Like, we were just kids going wild, you know.

And I felt like the music perfectly represented that.

* I don't play by these rules

* I play by my rules

* Why should we listen to those rules?

* My rules!

Lots of these kids were like 14.

They were snorting methamphetamine and fucking in the alley.

It was considered an outcast thing.

It was considered something for losers. It was considered something

that people felt sorry for you for having to endure.

And all of a sudden we realized, "Wow,

"for being losers we've created something that's so much better

"than the milieu that we've been rejected by."

It was the only rock kind of music that came out

that didn't feel like it was totally ripping off black culture.

And it wasn't that it was white culture versus black culture.

It was just that there wasn't that guilt of listening to a Led Zeppelin song

and going, "Wait, that's like, uh, this really old blues song."

You grow up in America as a minority group,

you know that there are preconceptions, um, that--that people have of you

just because you are part of a minority group.

Well, all of a sudden it dawned on me

that I had just become part of another minority group.

I was a punk rocker.

* Banned in D.C. with a thousand more places to go

* Gonna swim across the Atlantic 'cause that's the only place I can go

* You, you can't hurt me

* 'Cause I, I'm banned in D.C.

People would assume, you're in a band, you're trying to make it to the top.

And you'd go, "You don't understand the scene I'm in.

"We're trying to level the top."

No one ever made a record and said, "They're gonna play that on the radio."

It's like, "No, they're not." It's like... That's like...

You know, that's like a black guy saying,

"I'm gonna be elected the president of the Ku Klux Klan."

"No, you're not."

I mean, no one would even think like that. You know what I'm saying?

So none of these bands ever thought, "I'm gonna be on the radio."

No, you're not. So why even think like that?

You're not accepted, they're not gonna play you,

you're just doing this for the fun of it.

You're not gonna sell a ton of records, you're not gonna make a bunch of money,

you're just doing this 'cause you love it.

It was totally living in the moment. You didn't think about like, you know,

trying to build a fan base or trying to have a career,

because that was absurd.

You weren't going to have a career playing this music.

It just wasn't going to happen.

MAN: One, two, one, two, three, four...

(AGRESSIVE PUNK MUSIC PLAYING)

We would play wherever we could play so people would know we existed as a band.

There were no promoters knocking on our door,

wanting us to come and play their clubs.

We played at churches. We played in basements.

We played in living rooms.

Abandoned gas stations, people's parties in their backyards.

We did a show at this... It was at a dog...

It was at the canine dog college. Basically it was like a dog training school.

Boogied all the way to Salt Lake City and we got there, uh,

and the place was closed, locked up.

So we went to the kid's house, pulled him out of bed

and we threatened him with a baseball bat,

and we would have kicked the shit out of him.

We made him give us all the money he had on him

and stole some other shit from him. But when we got there, there wasn't a gig.

You just never knew what you would walk into.

Would it be an arcade, would it be a basement,

would it be like some guy's work?

When we found out that somebody owned a shopping center

or somebody's apartment complex or somebody's mom and dad was moving,

we would then rush to that place

and say, "Well, there's a show going on tonight."

And, you know, "Everybody's invited."

The record industry is all about getting big, getting coke, getting girls.

Right? And fuck everybody else.

And because our position was, "We're against that.

"We're the opposite of that."

The industry trivializes music because they want people to consume.

So there's like, "Buy this, it doesn't mean nothing."

So in a way, if you have already, you know...

Once you buy into that kind of, that picture, then it's sort of like,

artists are like, "Oh, well, you know," you know, "I'm just a fuck up."

And "I'm getting paid millions of dollars," you know. Whatever.

And it just becomes really dismissible.

There was no record companies behind the bands.

There was no A and R interest in the bands.

So anything that grew, grew at a very grassroots level.

You were in charge of everything.

You know, putting on gigs. Putting out zines.

It was more than just a look on stage.

D.I.Y. Do it yourself.

If there's someplace you wanna be, go there yourself.

If there's something you wanna create that does not exist, do it yourself.

Recording is pretty much, "Play the song. Okay, the song's done."

You know, it's not like, "I don't know, you know.

"Maybe if you could, uh, lay back a little behind the beat on that."

I mean, that--that never happened, you know.

It was just what you got is what it was.

CHUCK TREECE: These records were done in, like, a day.

Like in, cut, and then out, you know what I mean?

Because it's like, you really didn't have time

to mull over the fact of like, crafting songs.

I mean, it's more or less like if you had your energy right

and you played in those shows, and you went into it,

you know what I mean, with like, your head straight,

then that's, you know, what you got.

The group had to rely on creativity.

And the music had to come off live that way,

as soon as we delivered it in our expression.

Um, in the early days, that was it.

Our first records, we made ourselves.

Pay to Cum, the first single we did, we paid for it.

A friend of ours who worked at a printing company

printed this stuff off after hours,

and we sat down there and folded them and inserted them lyrics in there

and did all that stuff ourselves.

It felt like it was a million damn records, and we didn't even get through the first...

There's only a thousand and we didn't even get to the thousand.

We only actually did inserts and covers and everything for 500 of them.

We had some singles from England that we liked,

so we just pulled them apart

to see how they were fabricated, unfolded them.

So you had basically, this sort of like,

you know, seven inches and then there was like little flaps.

You know, like, and you fold them up and you fold the flaps inside.

You fold them together and you glue them together.

So we said, "Okay, that's how you do it."

So we just took that unfolded thing.

We laid it on an 11" by 14" piece of white paper.

We drew a line around it and we laid the art within the lines.

We took that to a printing press and said,

"Just print this 11" by 14" piece of paper."

And then, using scissors, we cut out every fucking one,

and Elmer's glue and folded every one, inserted every one.

We did that for 10,000 records easily. Every seven-inch.

We did it by hand. Just sat there cutting and folding.

It's... We didn't know. We were learning.

GREG GINN: The first shows we played were parties, free parties in the South Bay.

Uh, Hermosa Beach and we played... We did that for a long time

because, uh, we couldn't really find gigs.

This is where Black Flag's second gig and our, uh, first gig was.

It's apartments now. These four little things.

It was the Teen Post here and it was with the Alley Cats.

And the Descendents' first gig, they were like 14, 15 years old.

ATTA: People would always hang out whenever there was a show,

and this kid came up to us and he's going, "I've got a band, too, you know.

"We're really, like, hardcore, like, just straight ahead,

"you know, fast punk rock. You know?"

And we were going, "Okay. Yeah, that's great, what's the name of it?"

And he said, "Black Flag." And, uh, it was Keith Morris.

And we were going, "You mean, like the roach spray?"

Black Flag had this austere,

kind of very earnest, serious thing about them

that made you kind of respect it, be in awe of it.

The band had a logo. The band had a look. The four bars.

It was really all very overwhelming.

They just had this very intense take on things. They had a political agenda.

Those guys were operating at a very, like, intellectual level, and then...

But the brute animal fucking strength of it and the power and ferocity

was also like, off the map.

Black Flag brought the suburban element into the, uh, the punk rock

and helped define what punk rock was gonna turn into during those times.

MORRIS: The scene in Los Angeles was spreading out

like if you were to spill a bucket of water.

All of a sudden it wasn't just about Hollywood.

But it was more about Ventura County, it was more about the Valley,

it was more about Orange County.

It was more about where we were from, which is the South Bay,

which is about 25 miles south of Los Angeles.

Still part of LA County, but it was the beach area.

The Church was like a commune, a hippie commune,

an arts and crafts center.

It was in Hermosa Beach. It was about a block from the beach.

Beautiful building, perfect for what we were doing,

throwing parties, playing loud music late at night.

That's where the whole, you know, 1980s LA Orange County sounds...

It all revolved around these parties at The Church.

STEVE SOTO: We're at the Black Hole.

And it's pretty much where, like, the Fullerton punk scene

really kind of came together.

Everyone hung out here.

It's where you came to get away from your parents and everything else.

And this is where everyone came and got drunk.

We were frustrated. And we were trying to find a way out of the normal,

just weird, basic, suburban normality.

CURTIS CASELLA: The Adolescents represented everything that was LA.

Frustrated, suburban,

dissatisfied with getting up in the morning,

and hating everything around you.

TONY CADENA: I was making a--a record

to um,

really to nullify

m-my Orange County existence.

You know, to really say to the... What, you know, what was around me.

You know, you know, it was... You know, it was literally to--to lash out at that.

Tony was an amazing performer right from the start, you know.

It was like putting a cat in a bag and shaking it up

and throwing it out at the crowd.

* We'll attack, we'll attack

* We'll attack, we'll attack We'll attack, we'll attack

* We'll attack, we'll attack We'll attack, we'll attack

* We'll attack, we'll attack We'll attack, we'll attack

* We'll attack, we'll attack

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

Somehow we got to the opening slot of a Germs show.

And Eddie from the Subtitles, who was really connected up in LA,

that night goes... You know, didn't ask, told us he was our manager.

And he was a great one, because I mean, really he got us...

He got us in the door in LA, got us hooked up there.

Uh, he got us all, you know, hopped up on pills.

For some reason, real surfers have always been fucked up.

The HBs, we called them, from Huntington Beach

who wore leather jackets and leather engineer boots

with chains and bandanas on them.

They were the high school jock who found punk rock.

So they still have that, like, "What's up, dickhead?" mentality.

The music was just basically a backdrop for being fucked.

Jack Grisham is like the Iggy Pop of--of LA hardcore.

He used to go up there onstage

in full drag, a full face of makeup and a dress,

and if anyone said anything to him, he would kick the living crap out of them.

He was so tough.

* I can hear the sounds of laughter

* Could it be they're laughing at me?

* I can hear the roar of thunder

* I'm mad, I'm deranged

* I see clowns in costumes, voices that carry

* Their message to my mind

* I'm a child so young and carefree

* My eyes see what they want to see *

You roll into somebody's house, you know, and you start drinking,

and then, you know, you're throwing the fucking potted plants at each other.

You know, somebody breaks in the parents' room.

You know, you go in the closet, you're pissing on the shoes.

You know, you're stealing shit, you're going through...

You're getting the credit cards out.

You know, a fight breaks out in the kitchen, everybody's jumping on.

You know, the house gets fucking wrecked, the band plays,

the cops show up, you know, and instead of running,

it's, "Let's get them, man."

You know, and it's... And then you turn on the police.

Somebody came up and wanted to get into the show

and didn't have any money and gave me two pipe bombs.

I remember Mike being kind of a snot. He goes, "Why should I get you in?"

You know, I'm just some guy, you know, "Why should he get some guy in?"

And I go, "Well, 'cause I have a bomb. Here, I have a bomb.

"I've got two. You can have one if you get me in."

And he's like... He goes, "How do I know it's gonna even work?"

I go, "Well, okay, watch."

So I went down the street and took one of them

and put them against this garage door and lit it

and just blew this fucking garage door off.

(EXPLOSIONS)

And me being a violent, robbing, grave-digging rapist

was part of my world.

I mean, that was like, "Well, this is what we do, man.

"Yeah, that chick passed out and I pissed in her face. What. So what?"

One of the first times we went out of town at all,

we went up to San Francisco.

So we drove up, you know, us, all of our friends

piled into everybody's cars,

maybe 20 or 30 kids from the scene from LA

and we played a show

with the Dead Kennedys, at the Mabuhay Gardens.

And we go on and the kids totally took over the pit.

It sounds like someone's exaggerating when they tell you the story.

It sounds like, "Oh, yeah, you're just making it up."

No. I've never seen anything like it.

Ask Ian. Ask Hetson. Ask Keith Morris.

The Circle Jerks started playing, and all you saw was fists

and San Francisco locals hitting the floor.

HETSON: They were still pogoing back then, up there in San Francisco.

So we came in with our people and they just fucked up the whole thing.

The promoter was freaking out.

"What's this, you bring these crazy kids

and they're destroying shit and they're fighting."

It's like, "No, we're not fighting, it's the way we do it in LA."

And they're stage diving.

Nobody had seen anything like that. So that was kind of cool.

They're knocking guys out. One bouncer gets cut open.

I mean, there's blood. There's violence before the show.

They chased a guy underneath a car

and were trying to pull him out and beat him.

I mean, I've never seen anything like this.

And like, they had the whole place kind of terrified.

It was a huge impact on us. So we, of course, go back to the DC scene.

When bands play the audience is like...

(GRUNTING) And we're like...

You know, mowing through people, elbows into heads.

People were like, "What are you doing?" We're like, "That's what we're doing!"

And it'd be like...

Because we... All of a sudden it's all agrro.

Within two weeks, every male hitting puberty is in that crowd,

and every bouncer's getting swung at.

So, me and my friends used to call them Washifornians,

because they, like, totally imported the West Coast style to DC.

That influenced DC sound, that and the Bad Brains.

The combination of those elements kind of contributed to creating the DC sound.

* You can't disappear anymore

* I see your face lurking outside the window

* You say you're a trife, I'm a bore

* You touch yourself, put your face in the pillow

* But the funny thing about you is

* You remembered to leave it behind

* The funny thing about me is

* I'm a member of the right brigade *

We had to come up with an angle

or some kind of, uh, approach

that would be very radical and creative,

but then at the same time kind of traditional.

And something that people would be able to universally relate to.

It wasn't like, a musical thing. It wasn't like, a fucking entertainment thing.

It was like, we figured out these riffs, we had this message,

and we just had to drop the shit.

* Not long ago when things were slow, we all got by with what we know

* The end is near, hearts filed with fear, don't want to listen to what they hear

* And so it's now we choose to fight, to stick up for our bloody right

* The right to sing, the right to dance, the right is ours... We'll take the chance

* A peace together

* A piece apart

* A piece of wisdom

* From our hearts

The Bad Brains were the band that everybody feared to play with.

'Cause you knew you were going to get your ass blown off stage!

They were tight and powerful and committed

and exhibiting an incredible emotional, involving emotional vibe,

while playing as technically challenging as you can imagine.

I mean, stop-on-the-dime starts and stops,

and extreme precision, locking up of rhythm

and, uh, just innovative melodies,

and--and chord patterns,

and, uh, over it all, HR,

the maniac vocalist,

dancing across the stage and screaming and whooping and hollering

and just slinging his soul out into the microphone.

H.R.: As a teenager I was into acrobats.

When I went on the stage,

the intensity of the music would sometimes be so immense and so energetic,

that I would feel like jumping into the audience

or doing some kind of, uh, flips in the air,

something like that, you know. And that's what it came from,

just a feeling of exuberation, of jubilee, you know.

It really was inspiring. It made me realize, like, "Take it seriously.

"Like, don't just... Don't just be satisfied with some shit. Push it."

They would come to our shows and they were very young,

about 13, 14, 15 years old.

And they wanted to start a group called Teen Idles.

(AGGRESSIVE PUNK MUSIC PLAYING)

They were very enthusiastic but couldn't perfect their instruments.

You know, I was nervous, 'cause I was playing in front of the Bad Brains.

I was having a hard time. I was thinking like, "Well,

"that's some shitty bass,

"setting up a bad amp, you know, bad equipment."

But then when I hand the shit to Darryl, man, it was not the bass, it was not the amp,

it was definitely the player.

I was able to come up with some really great plans for these undergraduates,

is what I'd call them, or students or interns.

And their interest was immense.

I referred them to the Bible, and also to this great book

by an individual named Napoleon Hill. And it's called Think And Grow Rich.

The "think and grow rich" concept was just a positive influence.

And that was the catalyst to just make us find God, still, you know.

So, it wasn't quite L. Ron Hubbard,

but it was concepts of power of positive thinking.

I don't care what you say, I don't care what you do,

we got our attitude.

I don't care what you may know. I don't care. You can't touch us.

JENIFER: You got that PMA You got that PMA

Like how we used to say, you know.

Hey, we got that attitude We got that attitude

That was like a song that really, like, said that, you know,

we're, you know, we're here on some punk rock shit.

* Don't care what you may think

* We've got that attitude

* Don't care what you may do

* We've got that attitude

MacKAYE: It's a self-loathing town. It's a transient town.

If you're of here, if you're from here, and you're of here, you hold on tight.

You got to. 'Cause the currents are just whipping on past.

Every four years another President, some other jackass comes through.

Who are your parents when you're living in Washington in 1980,

and you're a teenager? Why are your parents here?

What do they do? Well, there's a good chance

that they are involved with the current administration,

or perhaps they're involved with one of the major colleges here

or they're involved in the news media in some way.

My father is a United States Senator.

He's the Senator from the state of Hawaii.

BAKER: Georgetown Day School is a private school. It was a hippie school.

You didn't have to wear shoes. You could bring your dog to school.

Uh, you called your teachers by their first names.

I happened to be at the right school at the right time,

and that's how I got into Minor Threat.

Our first show is going to be at a party at 1929 Calvert Street,

and we're going to open for the Bad Brains,

who I have never seen play, who are the biggest thing in the world.

(SIGHS)

* We're just a minor threat

* We're just a minor threat

* We're just a minor threat

* We're just a minor threat

(FAN WHOOPS)

All right.

I understand a lot of people, they're like,

"Well, Minor Threat's such a simple band."

Minor Threat was not a simple band. That music was good.

Those guys could play. That was a good band.

And for guys who were 16 years old, 17 years old, they were knocking it out.

Their playing, it was unheard-of. It was a really... It was a new form.

* Something's fucked up Something's not right

* I came to have a good time You came to fight

* But if I do fight Nothing to fear

* 'Cause I know My friends are here

* I don't like to fight I don't like getting hurt

* Got my guard up State of alert

* I don't look for trouble Trouble finds me

* Need my friends In an emergency

* Don't go alone Go with a friend

* You might need him In the end

* Stand up, stand up Stand up, stand up

* And be counted

* Stand up

* Stand up, stand up Stand up, stand up

* And be counted

I stand behind all my lyrics.

But I know that when I wrote Guilty Of Being White,

I grew up in Washington, DC, which is a black majority city.

I went to the public schools here,

and I know that when I wrote that song I was writing an anti-racist song,

because I was singing a song about being in a minority. I was...

In my junior high school, I was one of 10% white kids,

and in my senior high school, I was one of 25% white kids.

And I know that when I wrote that song I was saying,

"I'm only guilty of being white. Don't judge me for the color of my skin."

It's anti-racist. It's so clear.

How could I know that some, like, nationalist Nazi guy in Poland

would listen to that song 15 years later and then say to me, like,

"It is so good you speak for the white man." How could I know?

* Guilty of being white

* Guilty of being white

* Guilty of being white

And here I thought I was like Mr. Joe Punk Rock,

and I went down to DC one day to go see SOA and I think the Untouchables.

It was a total hardcore show. I had never been to one before.

I just walked in, I was like, "Oh, my God! These people are killing each other."

You know, it kind of frightened me but it was kind of fun at the same time.

So I was like, "I wanna be a part of that scene."

But, you know, these guys were all from the DC area.

They all lived in... "Georgetown Punks" is what they called themselves.

Ian MacKaye and his brother Alec and that whole crew,

and Henry Warfield before he became Henry Rollins.

You know, I wanted to be just like them.

MacKAYE: Georgetown is a fashionable shopping district.

And, um, when the person called us Georgetown Punks,

they meant it as a really deep insult.

We, of course, took it as, like, "All right, well, we're Georgetown Punks."

So then we referred to ourselves as Georgetown Punks.

* Face to face

* Face to face

* Face, face, face

* Who are you?

* Who are you?

* Came without warning Came without warning

* Came without warning Came without warning *

ROLLINS: The Circle Jerks and Black Flag would tour.

So they're pollinating with this influence and with this music.

So every scene they're going through, all of a sudden bands are springing up.

And bands are starting to network.

Where we first met Henry Rollins was in, uh, New York

where he came up to from DC

to, uh, one of our shows there.

And then when we came back, uh, to New York a second time,

he was there again and he came and talked to us.

We just thought he was a--a nice guy

and interested in what we were doing and--and that kind of thing.

I said, "Hey, can you guys play Clocked In,"

a song about going to work, "Because I gotta go to work now."

And Dez goes, "All right, this is for Henry." 'Cause I was like right there.

"This is for Henry because he's got to go to work."

And I kind of looked, you know, wantingly at the microphone and he went,

"And, uh, Henry's going to sing it."

Henry Rollins ended up jumping up and singing Clocked In.

And all of a sudden it was like they called him the next day and like,

"You want to be the singer for Black Flag?" And... He moved to LA.

That was it. That was history right there. And we saw it.

We had the day off, so I was, like, hanging out in bars,

goofing off, being a jerk. You know?

And I see the guys and they're like,

"Well, we want you to ask this guy Henry to join the band."

About a day later, Greg Ginn called me at the store.

Said, "Hey, uh, we're auditioning singers.

"Dez doesn't want to sing. He wants to play guitar.

"We saw you sing the other night. We liked your 45.

"Your SOA record. Would you come up here and audition to be in Black Flag?"

I was like, "Y-Yes." I mean, I was terrified.

But what did I have to lose? I had a job that paid me $3.50 an hour,

and--and here's an opportunity. So I said yeah.

So I took the Amtrak up there, did two sets with the band,

and they took a little vote and I was in the band.

And, uh, it was pretty astounding news to tell a young guy.

I was still on the fence about the whole thing.

It was a huge step to take. So I called Ian. I--I told him what happened.

I go, "What do you think?"

He says, "Are you kidding? You're gonna be great. Get out there."

And that's what I needed to hear, Ian MacKaye give me the green light.

* Thirty-five dollars and a six-pack to my name

* Six-pack!

* Spent the rest on beer so who's to blame?

* Six-pack!

* They say I'm fucked up all the time

* Six-pack!

I don't care what anybody says.

When Black Flag got Henry Rollins,

that was a fucking mold, a melding of.

What a band.

At that-- At that juncture, with Rollins, and--and Dez playing rhythm guitar,

they were unstoppable.

ANSELMO: They were in a fucking frustrated

sweat...

I mean this is what your mind imagines, you know.

A basement of fucking frustration, man.

And fucking... They were fucking howling.

Henry being the face of the band

and being the front man, took a lot more of the abuse.

No question about it.

The first gig with, uh, Black Flag and he fucking gets up there...

(GRUNTING)

And fucking Tony Chuco just walks up and goes...

Fucking smacks him right in the face. His nose breaks. Blood everywhere.

He goes, "Welcome to San Diego." It was fucking mayhem.

He was dealing face to face with people's conception of what punk rock was

which included violence and nastiness, and he took the brunt of that.

Some people thought he wanted to have his ass kicked.

In hardcore you have a map. And every city is a band.

San Diego, I don't think of a zoo.

I think of one thing. I think of Battalion of Saints.

Reno, Nevada. I don't think of a casino. I think of 7 Seconds.

Portland, Oregon, I don't even know what's there.

Gus Van Sant? I think of Poison Idea.

In the Black Flag days, you stayed on a series of floors.

No, there was no hotel, no money for a hotel,

and we'd stay with The Effigies, we'd stay with Husker Du.

We would stay with, you know, whoever in Seattle.

You know, and there's all of these kind of alliances.

You know, you knew the SS Decontrol guys, you could always borrow their gear.

Uh, in DC, of course, any band will help you out because, you know,

I was on tour with Black Flag, I'm a DC guy.

We--We have, you know, uh, allies in New York.

We've got them in San Francisco.

In Vancouver, you--you stay at Joey Shithead's house.

We always had friends everywhere.

I mean, these guys were going places

that there were no punks.

They were just basically saying, "We're gonna play

"and we expect everyone within 200 miles to show up who's interested."

So we're gonna sleep not only on the floor but under the sink.

Black Flag rented rehearsal time

uh, for 8:00 a.m.

on Christmas morning 1981.

8:00 a.m.? Christmas morning?

They wanna rehearse?

I said, you know, "Hey, they're Black Flag, I'm not gonna argue."

Well, that was typical Black Flag.

Load in at bright and early and practice,

because we hadn't done a show in three days.

And that was the way of Black Flag. Just practice. Live it.

(CONGREGATION SINGING HYMN)

I am the Reverend, uh, Hank Peirce,

and this is the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford.

Here, the church I serve as its called minister.

You know, whenever I see people who are like rock 'n' roll ministers,

they're all like, "Oh, and that's when I was a sinner,

"and then I found the Lord."

And that's not what I believe. I'm, you know, a bit more settled down.

But I'm still the same, you know, jackass I always was.

The first time I ever went to a, you know, a really big hardcore show,

I kind of walked in, it was crazy. The Circle Jerks were playing.

I just walked in and I was like, "Oh, my God. This is crazy."

And yet at the same time having this like,

inner calm sweep over me and sort of saying, "This is my tribe."

* I've got the straight edge

MacKAYE: There is no shortage of people out there saying like, "Get high."

I mean, they're everywhere. On every kind of music.

Everybody was just saying, "Get high, get high, get high."

You know, whether it was like Eric Clapton singing about cocaine

or Lou Reed singing about heroin. Or anybody.

Everything was just about getting high. Have a good time, get high.

But a lot of kids were like...

I think they were looking for someone to not say that.

Straight Edge was once again a--a great feeling

of, "I'm not going to make those same mistakes other people made."

Or at least, "I'm not going to be..."

You know, "I hate the people around me so much

"that I'm going to be the exact opposite of who they are."

It spoke to a whole generation of kids who had just seen the '70s.

You know, and they'd seen kids in high school

getting stoned three times a day

and, you know, just becoming wasties at a very, you know, tragically early age.

To find out that across the country there's these kids

who didn't drink, didn't do drugs

and didn't really think that was a cool thing to do,

and--and actually made a--a point of mentioning it

a lot in the music, we identified with that.

We were kids and we were fucking pricks.

Smart, hostile and sober.

See, I remember seeing the Bad Brains, and HR took me aside.

He said, "Ian, man, we just went out on tour, man,

"and there are kids all over the country, man, they want to know.

"You gotta go out and tell them.

"They're asking me about you guys, man, you gotta go out there."

Said, "You opened this up, man, you gotta finish it."

It was like the straight-edge thing.

I was like, "God damn, well, fuck. That's-- That's heavy."

The influence of Minor Threat carried onto Boston, SSD.

I think what Boston did to Minor Threat, like...

Minor Threat had a very...

It was a kind of a safe way of--of, you know, telling people not to drink.

But when it got-- when it got filtered up north to Boston,

it got a little eviler.

I figured out that, you know, was about time to get something going.

The city, it's like, it's just become too dry

and all the, uh, new-wave faggots and all the new-romantic bullshit

was going on, and whereas like the scene we have built now and created,

is an underground and is based... As far as its base,

we built, there is no partying.

I mean, no one drinks and no one smokes at the shows.

If they do, they better do it behind our backs.

It doesn't hurt that we had, like, Al Barile

as our, you know, master of ceremonies,

you know, and he's a freaking tank.

He was like a quarterback. You know, he was the one calling the shots.

Calling, you know, like, "Okay, you guys, you drinking over there?

"You from Norwood. You're okay. Come on in. You're welcome, all right."

I have a lot of pride in Boston. I like, you know, the sports thing.

That comes back to my-- to my jock... Whatever that thing said in that thing.

Hockey jock. The hockey jock mentality.

Al's a hockey player.

He put down his hockey stick, he picked up a guitar.

And that's-- And that's it.

You know? Go, team, go!

And he approaches guitar that way

and I always thought I would see him in front of his Marshall going...

You remember this. He'd be going...

(GRUNTING) "Do you think this speaker's broken?

"I think it's this one." And he'd have his head in the fucking...

And we'd be on the other side of the room, like, "Al, shut up! Shut up!"

And I'm sure it's because he worked at GE all day in the machine shop

with like grinders and buffing wheels and milling machines going,

and, you know, he was probably used to that sound.

And to me, that's what his guitar was like.

Yes, yes, yes,

yes, yes, yes.

Al was always having equipment problems and the PA was always shutting down.

But when you're a young kid, I mean, that was cool.

It was like, "The fucking equipment is malfunctioning. They're too powerful.

"They can't handle the great SSD."

* I've kept it bottled up for years

* Instead of fighting or shedding tears

* Now it's time to let go

* My boiling point's about to show

* I don't know if I'll lose control

* Of my mind, my body, or soul

* Boiling point Boiling over

* Boiling point Now it's over *

I think there's a tone of seriousness

with that band that didn't exist with a lot of other punk rock bands.

It wasn't a fun band.

SSD was a movement. They were more than a band.

They were definitely a movement.

They, uh, had an aura about them and an image about them.

The fans were dedicated.

Now we had music in our area. We had Boston hardcore punk rock.

It was almost like a call to arms, you know.

He went on that radio program and said, you know, "We're starting a scene."

If they're starting a scene, I want to be in that scene.

Who is it? WOMAN: Springer.

Oh, my goodness.

This suddenly becomes very interesting. Yeah.

James J? Lethal?

(ALL LAUGHING) I think we should open with Decontrol.

Then into the Drug Fools then the Police.

Not Police Beat but Police. That's the first set list right there. Ever.

(DRUMS PLAYING)

Okay, here it is, Hardcore Punk Gallery East. There it is, this is the first show.

Let's go. That's the first one, why don't you talk about that.

That's the first one. MAN: Yeah, this is it.

That's the first one, see it was called Hardcore Punk,

it wasn't even the name of a band.

Don't be wearing anybody else's. We got our own shirt.

Fucking beautiful, isn't it?

Look at them all, look at them all.

Holy shit. "Liberty or Give us Death."

That was a really good show.

Me and most of my friends came from broken homes.

So we were pissed off,

but we didn't really know what we were pissed off about.

Just that, you know, life sucks, and we're stuck here

in Braintree, Massachusetts.

Some kids will write Gang Green on the wall at school or something, and...

We'd appreciate it and shit. And just when we'd get back...

And then underneath it, someone will write "sucks" underneath it, right?

And then someone else scratches out "sucks"

and puts "is excellent" or "is number one,"

and then someone puts two zeros behind the one.

One hundred, you know. It happens every time, you know.

* Kill a commie, kill a commie...

* Kill a commie, kill a commie...

* Kill a commie, kill a commie...

* Kill a commie, kill a commie...

The whole Gang Green experience for us was this continuous...

It was not an act.

You know, what you got on stage, you pretty much got everywhere we went,

and imagine how tiring that gets.

Because you're drunk all the time, and you're running from the law frequently,

'cause you're making trouble everywhere you go.

I wanted to call the band Gang Green, but no one else liked the name.

So, they liked Jerry's Kids better, I don't know.

* Got a feeling that I... That I don't belong here

* And I know it's true

* I don't belong here

* And neither do you

DYS was the Department Of Youth Services,

um, which is the organization in Massachusetts which locks up the juvenile delinquents.

* The numbers shock you

* It's the truth

* A mini-army

* Of angry youth

* Wolfpack! Don't give us any shit.

* Wolfpack! Or you're gonna get hit

* Wolfpack! It's a unity ideal

* Wolfpack! Better believe it's real

* Fucking proud to be a...

I think one of the classic clashes of the generation was

the Negative FX show where they were playing with Mission of Burma's final show.

So you've got in the same ballroom in front of a thousand people,

you've got Choke and Negative FX and the entire Boston crew

and you've got five hundred Mission of Burma fans.

And within two songs, it degenerates into a riot.

MAN: Might makes right. Might makes right.

We ain't gonna stop. Fuck you!

(BASS AND GUITAR START PLAYING)

* Might makes right Might makes right

* Might makes right Might makes right

CASELLA: Negative FX's career was so short. Six flyers, five shows, one album.

Eighteen songs.

Boston and DC were always like this, and didn't like New York.

And then, you know, there we are in the middle

and they were always coming to our shows, to the shows.

When we went to New York it was war.

It was like, pull up in front of the Rock Hotel in Al's black van.

Everybody gets out. You know, we've got black "X"s

on the back of our hands with Sharpies.

The first time they came down, we were like,

"Oh, cool, SSD, blah, blah," and they were all kind of nice.

They were all cool. They were all timid, you know.

Second time they came down, they tried to come down

with a little bit of hard rock attitude. I guess they heard DC kind of did whatever.

Third time they came down, they got housed.

And we sent them home fucking... We sent them back to the suburbs fucking

rethinking their whole shit, like, you know,

"Don't fucking come to New York and fuck with us man,

"we're used to fucking fighting with, like, crazy fucking Puerto Ricans,

"who, like, stab people, attack us with fucking guns, bats,

"fucking hockey sticks and everything else."

H.R.: It was the jungle.

And you were in Lower East Side, and, you know, there were the Hells Angels,

there were the hippies, and then there were these rockers,

who just had to be acknowledged.

(VICTIM IN PAIN PLAYING)

* Why am I going insane?

* Why am I the one to blame?

We weren't rich kids pretending to be punks.

FLANAGAN: I fucking slept in fucking squats at night

with my fucking pit bull, Lucifer, in bed with me

so the rats wouldn't fucking run across me,

you know, and my fucking door was held up with a chain.

We were just doing what we were doing, and didn't know...

I didn't know, what the fuck was I documenting?

Me getting fucking dusted at a show? You know...

The kids in New York were like, "Wow, we suck!"

"We don't have money. We're not smart.

"We're not good-looking. We're hung up on everything.

"We're all fucked up on drugs." You know, so it's kind of like,

we really worked hard to, like, put New York on the map

for New York, as a scene.

After doing intense research and really going into the club scene,

we found out, from reliable sources, that the best thing we should do

was go to New York.

When the Bad Brains came to town, they changed the face of music overnight.

* Step forward now, no need to hide

* We can't lose with Jah on our side

* Oh, bring the walls down

* Bring 'em down, bring 'em down *

Jerry Williams, he invited us to his rehearsal spot and recording studio,

and said, "You know, you cats can live here.

"If you need a place to, uh, record, please feel free."

WILLIAMS: 171 Avenue A. It was an abandoned glass shop.

We cleaned out the glass store and, uh, built a stage at one end,

and, uh, a glass-enclosed booth at the other end,

and, uh, started rehearsing there,

and started having illegal weekend gigs there.

That was like the beginning of the scene in New York, kind of like, when we came.

You know, that was the--the haven. That was the place.

And everybody would hang out and we'd play music.

Sometimes there would even be concerts that we would do, you know.

And I was there when the Bad Brains recorded that whole first album.

I was up all night, till 5:00, 6:00 in the morning through all those sessions,

'cause I was living at 171 A with the Bad Brains

while they were recording the album.

Being in the-- in the booth... "The booth," it was a box.

In the box with--with Jerry and Harley and John Joseph and the Bad Brains

when they first listened to their final mixes of the ROIR cassette.

Then it was even a big thing.

And never mind the sound that they got out of the room,

if you listen to that recording.

You know, bands spend how much, $100,000 now on a recording

and they can't get it right on Pro Tools?

These guys were recording four tracks, in, like, an empty storefront.

You know, and it came out amazing.

The Big Takeover. The beginning of that song.

The intensity of that build-up. That fucking quiet...

(IMITATING GUITAR PLAYING)

And just... And you just fucking... You're just waiting for it to fucking...

Just let it go, you know, just waiting for that, like...

And it's on!

* No one dared to show for that shower

* When nobody turned out to be clean

* Was not even touched by the water

* Just another Nazi scheme

* The big takeover, yeah.

* The big takeover

This is a lost tape. LA '82.

We was with Greg and them, they took us to this rehearsal spot

in the studio, that's where it was!

MAN: Now you remember.

And they took us to this studio, right,

and what tripped me out about the shit was that

it was a lot of heavy metal motherfuckers in there, right?

And they was like...

I was playing the pinball machine in the spot and it was like, we just in LA,

you know, I was like, they said we could record or practice in this spot, right.

So I remember, I was tripping because the heavy metal dudes was coming out,

practicing their shit and their little dances and their walks and shit.

Like it was really a metal workshop spot. And I was tripping on that.

(INSTRUMENTAL PART PLAYING)

The Beastie Boys surfaced as a joke band. They worshipped the Bad Brains,

and they called themselves the Beastie Boys because the initials were B.B.

They, just like everyone else,

were as excited, uh, by the Bad Brains

and the emerging hardcore scene as anyone else,

but, uh, they were kids.

They were 15, 16 years old at that time and they didn't really have the musical chops

to imitate what they heard going on.

So they said, "Well, we're going to have fun, we're going to have fun with it."

And, uh they're still having fun with it, you know,

they're having fun with--with music of all kinds.

But originally it was...

They wanted to have fun with hardcore punk rock, you know.

I started Agnostic Front about three years ago. Uh...

I wanted a band to speak of social unrest,

political aspects to it...

He is New York hardcore. Vinnie Stigma is New York hardcore. Hands down.

You know, in a funny way, Vinnie Stigma has an incredible mind.

All the out of town bands used to stay at my house.

Because I was the only one with an apartment down here near CBGB's.

You know, I was the only one with a phone.

You know... The closest clean bathroom to CB's.

Yeah, right.

In a-- In a larger city, where there's a scene going on,

it's like there's this stream of energy going, right?

There is a bunch of other bands, be they punk or whatever,

and all you have to kind of do is jump into that stream and get wet.

In the middle of the Midwest, you have to dig the fucking well.

There's no stream.

So you have to dig and you have to dig and you have to dig until you find water.

And that's it, there's nobody, absolutely nobody to help you.

There's nobody putting on shows. There's no people managing bands.

Doing this stuff. So it is... The work ethic had to be really high.

Really deep down I wanted to be a part of it. You know what I mean?

It's a-- It's a weird thing. Like you go and listen to these records,

you get all pumped up about them and you want to be in the scene

but you're like not in that, you know, your band is not that band.

In Raleigh, we didn't have that many places to play.

We'd run out of Kiwanis Clubs and VFW halls,

but luckily, the one club in town, The Brewery,

would let us rent the place out for $200

on Sundays, and do these little Sunday matinees. Sort of like CBGB's.

Man, we had everybody.

We had Black Flag. We had Suicidal. We had Cro-Mags.

We had Battalion of Saints. We had DOA.

Plus we could always do our, like, local shows.

Austin, Texas was a great little scene. It was 35 bands there.

And then there was a little scene in Houston. And you're in like a vacuum.

It's like you're a thousand miles from anywhere.

(I REMEMBE PLAYING)

I remember getting intimidated and busted at age 13 by the police.

I remember my friend Tate Bryan being shot in the back in Tampa, Florida

for his first-offense burglary.

I remember the police firing into crowds and killing children

because they were the wrong color.

I remember the narcs in my high school trying to set me up for a big fall.

I remember the police bringing dogs into our school and then sniffing away my rights.

The police is the Klan, is the Mafia and they're all in the police state.

And they're out for me, and soon they're gonna be out to get you!

So you better get going if you know what's good for ya!

And take your stand!

CASELLA: MDC was a record... When we brought that record home,

these hairs on the back of your neck just stood up.

It was, uh, so, so extreme.

That's what we did have in common with the Minor Threats and the SS Decontrols

and the Zero Defects and the Articles of Faiths and the DOAs and the Fears,

was this pumped-up adrenalin that we can't just sit back and go,

* Hey, ho, let's go Hey, ho, let's go *

And we were feeling "Dead cops, dead cops, dead cops!"

You know, the adrenalin that was in the hardcore movement was exciting.

We kind of, like, took it up a notch.

A lot of the skinheads on the East Coast were like, "Oh, yeah, we're down with MDC.

"Yeah, we're fucking hardcore. Yeah, fucking skinheads, hate the cops."

And then big Dave would be like "Oh, yeah, really? Well, I'm a fag!"

And they would be like... Just totally, totally blown away.

He was like, "Yeah, last night the guitar player took a shit on me

"over at this guy's house."

Everyone's just like,

their hero just kind of, like, wasn't a hero to them anymore.

I wore a dress everywhere, with bad makeup, without shaving.

I played homocore shows. There was just part of me that liked to say,

"I'm not trying to fit in. I'm not trying to be one of the crew,

"you know, one of the boys in the pit."

My punk thing has gone beyond that.

I'm the queerest person here. I'm the weirdest person here.

* I hate myself

* I hate myself

At one point we thought we would move to LA

because they had a happening scene out there

and we thought maybe we could be part of this, you know, out there.

We did a little tour out to the West Coast and we stopped in LA

and we got out of the truck on Hollywood and Vine and looked around and we're like,

"Man, let's get the hell out of here." We actually went to San Francisco.

STEVE DePACE: There was a handful of bands in San Francisco

and a handful of bands in LA

and those were the bands that started this whole thing.

The Mabuhay Gardens was the clubhouse.

And everybody met at the clubhouse every night, seven nights a week.

And there was always three bands playing.

We all knew each other, and we all played shows together,

and we were the San Francisco scene.

There seemed to be two approaches bands would take in hardcore.

One was, "What is the thing that the kids are going to like,

"and how are they going to respond positively to our band,

"and what can we do to make that happen?"

And then there was the other school of thought,

which was just like, "Fuck with the crowd, get them pissed off."

(THE WAY OF THE WORLD PLAYING)

* There are eyes that cannot see

* And fingers that cannot touch

* That's the Way of the World

* There are dreams left empty and blank

* And legs that have ceased to walk

* That's the Way of the World *

We were known as the band that you loved to hate.

The crowd hated us, really. I mean, because we weren't doing what fit the mold.

...really hated about when punk rock first started

and we were coming out being so slow.

They thought we were, like, a fucking target or something.

You know, "Oh, these guys are..." You know. I hated that at first.

Right in the face! Fuck that shit!

I was reading an NME where there was this cat named Moby

who, um, claimed he had been an original singer in Flipper,

at least according to the article. That's what it said.

I sang with Flipper when I was 16. 'Cause Will Shatter had been thrown in jail.

I knew the lyrics to all the songs, so I said, "I'll..."

So for two days I was Flipper's, you know, half Bruce Loose and myself.

* Apartment walls, halls are small

* Government building site much too small

* These tiny boxes won't let me out

* These tiny boxes are too remote

* It's a screaming mess

* Not television's city dream

* Your robot's eyes gleam

* In my future dream

* Yeah, hey!

This is really weird. They've got punk rock in Canada.

Because people's impression of Canada was like, well,

a lot of trees, a lot of mountains, a lot of snow, lumberjacks.

That kind of thing. Snowmobiles.

And, like, how could they have punk rock from there?

We had one big show up there. It was us, Black Flag and 7 Seconds.

And it was called Hardcore '81. So that was the first time

anybody really used that term.

They coined that term. They started the music.

You know, they were-- they were phenomenal.

Musically phenomenal, ideologically cool... MULLIN: Yeah.

...and freaking Canadians!

(ELECTRIC GUITAR SOLOING)

There wasn't a lot of small labels

when we started putting out records, so there wasn't much of a model for it.

SST had that quintessential

LA hardcore, DIY aesthetic and ethic.

SST Records originally,

uh, stood for Solid State Transmitters.

We had one storage place

and it was where Greg's electronic stuff was all thrown in.

And it was only $100 a month.

And it was one room with a bathroom and a shower.

So we just took corners of the floor in there.

CORBIN: I did all the mail order business at the time,

so I actually slept underneath my... You know, my mail order stuff.

So, you know, it was basically just about work.

We got, um, $5 a day, which we called "the dough,"

which we distributed to everyone and that's, basically, you would,

you know, this is what you would buy your food with, this $5.

There got to be a point where, like, you'd have, like, two quarters

and you'd go get a candy bar.

And you'd shop at 7-Eleven, like, "Okay, a Three Musketeers has like

"half a gram more than a Snickers bar does. Okay."

And you'd have to clean the chocolate off your mouth,

'cause you'd walk into SST and, like,

"You've got, did you get food?"

And you're like, "Uh, yeah..."

I mean, we were broke!

ROESSLER: One day I get a call from Henry

and he says, "Black Flag is looking for a bass player,"

and I said, "That's cool."

You know, they were my favorite band at the time, you know.

Henry and I had had a little thing and it was over, and like I said,

when he called to say, "Do you wanna play?"

He was very clear there was not going to be anything.

And I was like, "Yeah, I get it, we're not going to be anything."

So there was no... That was explicitly stated,

which was fine, you know, it was fine for both of us.

But I think there was a moment when it got a little uncomfortable

which was when I saw the cover of the Slip It In record.

We had done our first recording and I saw the cover of the Slip It In record,

which was, in my opinion, sort of

making fun of women or putting women in a certain place,

and I suddenly felt like...

"But..." You know what I mean? It was like, "What am I doing here?

"I mean, if you guys hate women, why..." You know what I mean?

It wasn't like, "God damn it, how dare you?"

It was like, "But if you don't like girls, why am I here?" You know, it was like,

I felt inadequate because I felt that that reflected how they viewed women.

This is called "Slip It In." Hey!

I never really noticed that I was a girl and everybody else was a guy.

Uh, there were actually women in the scene. They tended towards being

the, uh, record-keepers. The women were generally behind a camera

or they were running a fanzine.

I'm going to say that there weren't a lot of women onstage,

but there were a good chunk of women in the audience

and you got to know each other pretty quickly.

And you certainly hung out with all the guys.

Nothing got you less respect from these boys

than, you know, showing your tits.

(LAUGHS) Which is not the case nowadays, I don't think.

I think all those boys would be happy to see someone's tits.

MAN: Take off your panties, now!

I want to see some cunt in there.

Oh, the Nig Heist.

Well, the Nig Heist is a name I came up with, squatting, you know, on Hollywood Blvd.,

in rundown hotel rooms.

And one of my good friends at the time was a black guy and...

Eugene, and so, you know, we smoked cigarettes, and then he would

come up and steal one of my cigarettes and he would say, "Nig Heist."

Now, we are the Nig Heist and we wanna fuck your girlfriend.

Last night we played DC and we had live sex happen on stage.

This little skinhead about 14 let me stick my fucking cock in his butt,

and it was tremendous.

You guys should give me a hand for that, come on.

A nice big round of applause for me sticking it into a nice little skinhead's butt.

Mugger is an incredible guy. Mugger's a runaway

who ends up being a roadie for Black Flag. Then the accountant for SST.

Then puts himself through college, he's a CPA now.

It was all through working.

Greg and Chuck gave me a 25% membership

in, uh, SST.

I wanted a certain type of artist,

and we disagreed about that and they basically just bought me out.

I took all the money that they gave me and I invested in technology

and other types of ventures

that was very productive for me.

And basically, you know, I'm independently wealthy at this time

from that investment, from SST. So, that's my story.

* People, let me tell you 'bout my best friend

* He's a warm-hearted person who loved me till the end

* People, let me tell you 'bout... *

The whole myth of California being laid-back and mellow

is pretty laughable.

If you-- If you grew up in the punk scene in Hollywood in the early '80s,

it was anything but mellow.

It was violent, you know, there was always a fight, every night.

There was some action going on.

Just every fucking night we had to fucking throw down with somebody, you know.

In 1980 I wanted to get something together.

So I came up with, uh, Los Angeles Death Squad.

Which is LADS.

There was LADS, there was FFF, there was Circle One.

With Tom Macias, rest in peace.

What are considered today to be the punk rock gangs,

pretty much were gangs, um,

in the-- in the sense of Crips, Bloods, White Fence, things like that.

They weren't as well defined. Um...

You know, they--they weren't like little drug cartels, or anything.

Nobody carried Uzis, you know. It wasn't that type of a gang,

but it was definitely a social clique of people who knew each other, hung out,

and protected each other.

MAN: John Macias, singer of Circle One,

who were contemporaries, really, at the same time as Suicidal Tendencies.

He had his gang, The Family.

Here he is just about to, you know, to take one up with this fellow here,

I mean, you can see the fear in this guy's eyes.

And I mean, this guy was really scared. Rollins was scared shitless of this guy.

* They'll turn up if I run and hide

* They're looking for me and I know why *

If a cop car drove by a punk show, it was no big deal.

And if one or two drove by, it was nothing.

But when six pull up and park, it would always turn into a riot.

If there was a small incident they'd come on strong

and they'd look to take control

with, you know, 30 or 40 squad cars and a helicopter.

Hundreds of angry punk rockers rioted in Huntington, California Saturday.

The rioters were angered at the overbooking of a suburban Los Angeles concert hall

designed to accommodate 450 people.

As many as 200 people were turned away from the hall.

The punk rock fans went on an hour-long rampage.

The rioters are reported to have done $25,000 damage to businesses

and a church before officers managed to quell the disturbance.

Forty-one people, most of them juveniles, were arrested and 10 law officers were hurt.

The cops always started it.

It's not like a bunch of kids go up to armed, uniformed men and go, "Come on!"

They know what happens.

The cop... I mean, they would try and pull me into it.

I'll never forget some LA storm trooper cop walking up to me and saying,

"Did you just call me a motherfucker?"

I'm like, "Oh," I was trembling, because I just know that the guy,

cat and mouse, the guy can take me into jail any time he wants,

(STAMMERING) and I was like... And he's like, you know,

"What's the matter, you a fucking faggot?" I'm like, "No."

I'm like... This is a cop. I don't know what to do.

MAN: Cops would just march in and just shut the show down.

They would literally form a line at the front of the stage,

I remember seeing kids lying on the floor that had already been beaten up so badly

they couldn't move, and I could just remember cops standing over them

swinging their batons, beating the hell out of them.

I mean, this was years before Rodney King.

People were trying to walk to their cars, they would beat you.

And try and chase you down the street.

They'd smash... People were driving, they'd bust the window,

and grab them out of the car and start beating them. It was like a war.

It was an ass-kicking. Lining up and then wading into kids and beating them.

It was fucked up. It was so fucked up.

Our crime was that we seemed different.

And I think a police mentality

or you know, ultra-establishment mentality

is to stamp out something that's different.

You don't analyze it and look at why it's different, you just stamp it out.

I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

...that I will faithfully execute...

...that I will faithfully execute...

...the office of President of the United States.

...the office of President of the United States.

And will to the best of my ability...

And will to the best of my ability...

...preserve, protect and defend...

...preserve, protect and defend...

...the Constitution of the United States.

...the Constitution of the United States.

So help you God.

So help me God.

DICTOR: When Reagan won the first time was almost like unbelievable.

Something could be... How could this be?

Then the second time he won, it was very disillusioning for myself.

Those first four years of punk rock for me, '80 to '84, was all this hope,

and then after that, it got cynical, and punk rock fragmented

into many, many, many different scenes.

A lot of the people who had started this local music scene

in 1979 and '80, had become a little bit disillusioned.

You know, the baby was no longer cute.

'85, '86 was a total decline of the punk rock scene.

And then everybody who started the scenes all left it, one by one by one by one.

I came in in August of '81.

And I'd say by the end of '85,

it was over.

These people were not like sheep.

They were not like heavy metal sheep that would go see their band,

their spandex-pants band, over and over again.

If you... They could turn on you.

And chances are, in the three-year period that you're into it,

they are going to get disinterested.

Or your time was up, whichever is first.

So basically, the time was up.

You might think like, "Well, yeah, but you really checked out on hardcore."

I never fucking checked out. Hardcore checked out, not me.

For me, the violence was stupid. It just became stupid

and I saw my own role in the stupidity.

In 1984, I remember it was a Minutemen show,

it was the last time I've punched somebody.

A guy hit my brother and I punched him and I thought,

"That's the end of that. I'm done."

And I just didn't... I felt like the violence had become too central.

And it was clearly alienating to most people.

It was ridiculous. So I thought like, "I'm out. I'm out of this."

And a lot of my friends were out of it, too. They were like,

"We're just not... This sucks." It was a bummer.

I think that was kind of the end

of that era of hardcore.

(PLAYING GIMME GIMME GIMME)

* Gimme gimme gimme I need some more

* Gimme gimme gimme Don't ask what for

* Sitting here like a loaded gun waiting to go off

* I've got nothing to do but shoot my mouth off

* Gimme gimme gimme Give me some more

* Gimme gimme gimme Don't ask what for *

The last-ever Black Flag show that I acknowledge

happened in 1986 in Detroit at Graystone, it's a hall.

Weeks later, I'm in DC visiting friends and family,

and Greg called me at my mom's house,

where I was kind of camping out, and he said,

"I'm just calling to tell you that I quit Black Flag."

I go, "But it's your band."

He goes, "Well, I quit." I went, "Okay."

And that was it.

I decided in 1986, it's like, "You know, it's a good time to stop now."

Black Flag was left without

the culture around it.

It was back to where we started.

* I love, I love I Jah

* I love, I love I Jah

* I love, I love I Jah

The Bad Brains, who had also recently become Rastafarians, uh,

hit their spiritual crisis.

It's like, "Are we going to be real Rastafarians and play reggae music,

"or are we gonna

"follow out what we've been doing for the past few years,

"this--this incredible style of music that we've created.

"Are we gonna swing with it?"

And I don't think they ever really answered that question.

And all of a sudden there'd be these four dudes up there playing reggae.

And I just remember a couple of times just being like, "You know, that's cool

"but it's not what I paid for and I'm done with it, you know."

The Bad Brains, kind of, to me got pigeonholed as that fireplug band

that you can never trust them,

you know what I mean? You can't do shows with them,

and so on and so on and so on. And all the horror stories.

And you know, it's just once you disappoint people,

especially people that are really short-attention-span people,

then you're kind of at a loss for words.

The thing that hangs over the band is, is, uh,

is it has to do with HR, who he is,

and his vision and his ability to be as deep as he is

and to be as engaging as he is, and also there is a personal element to that,

that's totally self destructive. He's like a Crowleyan character.

He's a real character in his generation. He's a real somebody.

He's a myth. He's a living legend. And he is. And he thinks that way.

I love the guy, you know.

I've seen him mess up a lot of deals.

You know, this band really could have been out there,

but, uh, I kind of understand his conflict.

The first wave of Boston hardcore

as, um, like, the foundations,

and the structure of the house...

And then all of a sudden, like '84 or '85,

all of us started putting pretty weird curtains on the house.

And like, you know,

it--it gave the house a little bit of a different look.

The name of the band is DYS. We've been together for about three years.

And we used to be a hardcore punk rock band,

now just a hard rock 'n' roll band.

So next year Gang Green is on Roadrunner Records.

They've got a new record coming out, You Got It,

and it has a crossover sound into metal,

and you know Gang Green's is a big rock band

and they're going to get this big skateboard staging

and they bought the amps from Megadeth you know.

They bought like 18 cabinets from Megadeth,

you know, and six of them work.

But you wanted this big thing and Gang Green was going to be

this big, rock, skateboard, you know, entity.

Which they should be, which they are, they're great.

It was like Spinal Tap, it was hilarious.

I think we used the whole set once on the tour.

But we carried it, you know.

We played in LA, and there was a kid kneeling on the stage

with his shirt off and he was... Tears were pouring down his face,

and he was going, "Play something fast. Play something fast, please!"

And, like, people were hurling shit at us. And it was, you know,

it was obvious that, you know, the love affair was over.

'84, '85, was really when...

New York, being the--the late bloomers of hardcore,

was when New York finally got a voice of their own.

* Don't tread on me

* Don't tread on me

* Don't tread on me

* Don't tread on me

What the Cro-Mags did was, uh,

present that Bad Brains approach,

uh, through the lifestyle

of the streets of--of New York, you know.

And that's where the tattoos and the rough edge come from.

I mean, they--they were street kids, basically.

People try to often give Cro-Mags credit for being a definitive hardcore band,

and, you know, I graciously accept that, but I don't 100% agree.

In a way we were, and in a way we weren't, because

as far as I'm concerned, the Cro-Mags really

came to be towards the end of the first wave of hardcore.

So, in a way, we kind of wrapped

all the most powerful aspects of all of those early years.

Hardcore, definitely, it was like a pebble that had a ripple effect.

But ironically, it never got recognized

by, um, by like mainstream... By the mainstream world. But it influenced it.

You always say, "I wish I knew now what I knew then." But not in this instance.

Because, like, it was so groundbreaking, it was so new and fresh, you know.

And like, and when it ended, it just fucking kind of went like... It just ended.

Like one day it was like they turned the TV set off

and, like, you kind of just, you know, walked through another door

and that door was never, ever, ever going to be opened again.

SCIARAPPA: It was incredibly radical.

It was unbelievably exciting. It was right from the start, super important.

Even though no one else in the world thought it was important,

you sort of knew it was as important as any other musical movement that was going on.

And this was at a young age, you know, that you got a grip on, that this was it.

You know, we didn't really think we were going to overthrow the world.

It wasn't like the hippies thinking they were going to levitate the Pentagon.

Or we certainly didn't think that we were going to get Reagan out of office

or anything like that.

But you know, for what we were it was kind of a united little scene.

What we did was great.

Not like I'm saying it was qualitatively great, that we were great.

What it was, was great.

What all of the bands did. New York, DC, you know, Detroit,

Chicago, you know, LA obviously,

you know, San Diego, OC, you know, all those scenes.

It was great and it was hard to do but everybody accomplished a lot,

considering the odds were stacked against them so heavily

in a music and political and social world.

There wasn't any organized Left in the United States in the '80s.

There was hardcore.

And again, you know, as limited as it was

it was a manifestation of a communalist aspect,

of, uh, openness to humanity, of a disdain for authority,

that's-- that's in the best traditions of radicalism.

So, if you're looking for radicalism in the 1980s, you should look at hardcore.

There'll be another musical revolution, and it will be intense and energetic

and the kids will go nuts over it, but it won't be hardcore.

I think every generation has their own way of, uh, expressing themselves,

and each version of punk rock,

whether it be, you know, spiky green mohawks

or, um, you know, berets and cigarettes

such as the Beats during the '50s, or hippies in the '60s,

each version of this kind of expression will continue to manifest itself,

probably every 15 or 20 years with every new generation.

Thank God.

It was a great, wonderful, almost innocent time.

And it's such a sad reflection what I see going on now with punk rock.

But that's just because I'm jealous 'cause they're all young and having all the fun.

I'm old and bitter. Broken.

We looked forward to going on the road because at least we got hospitality

and we got fed

and we got to do shows and have a great time, but it wasn't none of this shit,

all these fucking, like, spoiled little fucking brats that are on MTV

now with their fucking buses and all this bullshit,

and they're calling that shit punk. That ain't fucking punk.

You know, they're driving their fucking tour bus

on the highway that--that we paved.

I will actually be the first punk, or whatever, person that says, "Punk is dead!"

It was over a long time ago. It's over, okay?

Go home. Your cage is clean.

(NERVOUS BREAKDOW PLAYING)

* I'm about to have a nervous breakdown

* My head really hurts

* If I don't find a way out of here

* I'm gonna go berserk 'cause

* I'm crazy and I'm hurt

* Head on my shoulders

* It's going... Berserk!

* I hear the same old talk talk talk The same old lines

* Don't do me that today

* Yeah, if you know what's good for you, you'll get out of my way

* 'Cause I'm crazy and I'm hurt

* Head on my shoulders

* Going... Berserk!

* I won't apologize

* For acting out of line

* You see the way I am

* You leave anytime you can 'cause

* I'm crazy and I'm hurt

* Head on my shoulders

* Going... Berserk!

* Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!

* I don't care what you fuckin' do!

* I don't care what you fuckin' say!

* I'm so sick of everything

* I just want to... Die!

(HA HA PLAYING)

* Isn't life a blast?

* It's just like living in the past

* We go downtown to do our shopping

* And we work in Suburbia

* But I say

* Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

* He he he he he he he Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

* Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

* He he he he he he he Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

* "What is there to do?" she said

* He said, "Come on, baby, and I'll show you a good time"

* So they went on down to one of those cheap motels

* And they got all gushy and wet Well, I say

* Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

* He he he he he he he Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

* Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

* He he he he he he he Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

* And I say Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

* He he he he he he he Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

* Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

* He he he he he he he Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *