I was Straight Edge for years, even before I knew what Straight Edge was. Growing up in a hick town where I had classmates in middle school who were getting drunk and high on a regular basis, I was repelled by the very notion of drinking beer. It seemed like the jock/redneck/asshole thing to do. Add to that, being a huge Alice Cooper fan and knowing about his deep struggles with alcohol, I just didn't want anything to do with a drug/drinking scene. So after Sick of it All pointed me towards Minor Threat and I heard the song "Straight Edge" (not to mention already being a Rollins Band fan), I felt like I had found my niche within my tribe (punk rock). As I said in the last installment, this was the 90s and I had no internet to help me track down more bands, it was all trial and error with the occasional assist from a knowledgable record store clerk or an older friend.
At the time, there just wasn't that much around, as far as I knew, but bands like Judge and Slapshot were out there doing a second wave SxE thing, while older bands were becoming Emo/Emo-core/post-hardcore (some of which led me backwards, like Quicksand, who was formed by members of Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today), and the third wave of the more militant side of SxE, like Earth Crisis, hadn't quite happened yet. (Before I drag you down a fucking rabbit-hole of hazy history, let me recommend Tony Rettman's amazing book, Straight Edge; A Clear Headed Hardcore Punk History Book. Lots of great stories and insights from the bands themselves.)
Let's get in the TARDIS and jump to1997. I was scheduled to do a spoken word show in May with Priscilla Grimm. (She and I had met earlier in 96 after my first book, Destroying Lives For Fun and Profit came out. I had become aware of her when I caught a dry reading of her play, Definition of a Grrrl. We ran in some adjacent circles and met at an open mic and quickly became friends.) The show was at the Lucy Parson's Center, back when it was still in Cambridge. I had fallen in love with Boston the previous year while on a road trip, and got LPC and Revolution Books to carry my book-zines. Without much money between us, we drove from Knoxville TN to Cambridge MA, did a show, and ran back to K-Town in about 48 hours. There were plenty of 'issues' on that jaunt and not many people showed up, but those who did were mainly members of The August Spies and one or two members of Toxic Narcotic. Priscilla had a friend among them and we stayed at The August Spies' house. They took us to The Rat (RIP) and out for Chinese food. At one point we stopped off at a park to smoke weed, which I declined, and we wound up running from the cops. So, despite my insane girlfriend, who had insisted on coming along and then had a mental break from reality, and behaved like a psycho, it was a good weekend.
What does any of that have to do with Slapshot's Sudden Death Overtime? Absolutely nothing. Except, it was that trip where I hit a record store in Cambridge and found that album, along with the Flesh Eaters' Forever Came Today and the Drag Strip Riot double LP. I'd say, that store, Looney Tunes was actually a big reason for wanting to move up north to begin with. I'd get light-headed going through the racks of vinyl and CDs. I bought a Black Flag VHS bootleg on my first trip. That time I was excited to find that Slapshot album, because I already loved The Mighty Mighty Bosstones cover of "What's At Stake."
By the time we got home, I had less than an hour to take a shower and get to work. I dropped the records on my shelf and took off on no sleep, running on pure anger, anxiety, and caffeine. (My version of straight edge didn't include abstaining from caffeine pills, because they were over-the-counter and found naturally in coffee and tea. It was only later that it was pointed out that I abused No-Doz, White Crosses, and .357 Magnums like an addict. Fine, whatever.) 10 hours later I staggered home, happy to find my girlfriend not there. I'd been awake around 24 hours at that point and still couldn't sleep, so I got out my records. Flesh Eaters were fucking brilliant. I listened to both before I put on Slapshot. In my sleepless delirium, I was stomping around my apartment with joy, blasting that shit in the middle of the night.
Slapshot formed in 1985, a virtual super-group made up of members Terminally Ill, Negative FX, and DYS. Their line up chained almost with each album with Jack "Choke" Kelly being the sole original member as of their last recording in 2012. They had a built in reputation and I'd say lived up to it on pretty much every release.
I loved the beefy, two-guitar sound of Sudden Death Overtime. It leaned towards metal, without being crossover, and I liked Jack "Choke" Kelly's vocals. Between Sick of it All and Slapshot, I established a particular taste for the late 80s/early90s hardcore. Later bands were sometimes too metal and earlier bands simply weren't as good as Black Flag, Minor Threat, or Bad Brains.
The album opens with "What's At Stake," a mid-tempo stomper with a great bass sound (courtesy of Jamie Sciarrapa, formerly of SS Decontrol, whose iconic "Police Beat" was also covered by The Bosstones). After that warm up, the band puts the pedal to the floor with "Firewalker," which took aim at televangelism, a popular target for punk and metal bands at the time (see also Suicidal Tendencies' "Send Me Your Money") "Dealing With Pennies" is pretty straight forward, classic hardcore, while "Transmission," slows back down to a mosh ready mid-tempo. "Something To Prove" brings back the tempo and "Nation of Hate" is a good anti-racism song with the best guitar solo on the album. "Punk's Dead, You're Next," is a great anti-conformity song and then "Say Goodbye" is one of my favorite Slapshot songs. And as far I'm concerned the album could have ended right there. It's not that "War on Drugs," "Get Me Out," or "Change" are bad songs, but for me, every time I play this album, it goes from the strength of "Say Goodbye" to beating a dead horse in half a track. Then there's the album's closer, a cover of Jefferson Airplane's overrated "White Rabbit." The only version of that song I like is The Damned's. Otherwise I can completely do without it.
Eight great songs out of 12 (14, if you get the newer CD with two live tracks) isn't bad at all. The album still sounds as good as ever and remains my favorite Slapshot album. I don't think the band is currently active, as it's been eight years since their last album, the "I Believe" EP (Taang! Records).
These days, actually for more than twenty years, I find Straight Edge to be full-on cringeworthy as a sub-genre of punk. I remember going to shows at the Mercury Theater in Market Square and seeing a lone kid with X's on the back of his hands get a boot party from some crust punks. When the poor kid complained to the bouncer, the bouncer told him he shouldn't have come in there with those X's. The next year, things flipped and it was younger SxE kids causing all the violence at shows. Militant SxE bands started popping up, and news of violence spread across the country. To me, it wasn't punk, it was pure fascism. I wanted nothing to do it. I was 20 the last time I took a fat Sharpie and drew X's on my hands. It couldn't be a badge of honor if it was something that was going to violently infringe on people's right to be themselves. I still love a lot of those albums though, they still hold good memories for me, even if the stance has been corrupted.
Ok lets roll back the clock almost 30 years to 1992. I was sixteen and still transitioning from metal to punk and looking for anything to satisfy that itch I got from bands like The Damned, Ramones, and Black Flag. I had just found The Exploited's Live in Washington DC, Social Distortion's Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, Descendants' Liveage, and Bad Religion's Generator. All great. This was pre-internet, of course, and it being East Tennessee and not even Knoxville, it was hard to track things down and know what to get next-so occasionally I found a dud, but more often than not I was getting what I needed. At that point I didn't really know what differentiated "punk" from "hardcore," but I got a lesson the night I scanned through the cassette racks at some chain record store in the Oak Ridge mall and found We Stand Alone by Sick of it All. It sure sounded punk.
The album was an EP, released the previous year and was my introduction to New York Hardcore and for me, to this day, I hold it up as the gold standard of NYHC. It absolutely set me on fire the first time I listened to it on my walkman. It was my skateboarding soundtrack and got me looking for Minor Threat with their incredible cover of "Betray." I'd drive around Kingston, just letting the tape flip over and over. It was hard time for me emotionally and spiritually and the mix of positivity and aggression was good medicine to help me keep my head up. "We Stand Alone" would always electrify me, make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Here it is once again, tales of conformity
By the ones who would be king
We never set out to impress anyone
It's just an outlet, our chance to be heard
At first you said we hated too much
Now you say we just can't hate enough
Now you're screaming that we've changed
We've grown up but our beliefs are still the same
It's still an outlet for anger and strife
But one more thing, it's also our life
(We) We don't need any help (stand alone)
Our beliefs are strong enough to (stand alone)
Our desire's burning deep, in our hearts
It's in ourheads, it's in our souls
(We) We defy your fucking lies (stand alone)
You question our beliefs (stand alone)
Our desire's burning deep, in our hearts
It's in our heads, it's in our souls (stand alone)
The band was formed in 1986, in Queens NY, by high school friends Lou and Pete Koller, Rich Cipriano, and Armand Majidi (the latter two replacing Mark McNeely and David Lamb before the band recorded their self-titled debut album in 1987 for Revelation Records). They played Saturday Matinee shows at the legendary CBGBs and would go on to be one of the biggest, most important, and longest running of all the NYHC bands. Still together and releasing new music to this day. I never owned their original 7", but I went out and found their 1989 debut full length, Blood, Sweat, and No Tears and the second full length, 92's Just Look Around. Through freshmen year of college I listened to a ton of hardcore and straight edge hardcore, and while I found a lot of bands I loved, more often than not, I was getting two or three songs from an album worth adding to a mix tape and the rest being pale imitations of better bands. And no one, not Slapshot, Warzone, Agnostic Front, Earth Crisis, whoever, knocked me out the way Sick of it All did. The only band I listened to/obsessed over more was Black Flag. Now at 44, SOIA and Flag remain two of my favorite bands and still get me fired up when I'm having a shitty day.
Sick of it All's latest album is 2018's Wake the Sleeping Dragon, and the band hasn't lost a step. I'd say the last ten or so years, the band has gotten even better than their "commercial break through" era Scratch the Surface and Built to Last. Not many bands have that kind of staying power. Last year they were on tour with another band I dearly love, Napalm Death, but sadly I was too broke to go. (I'm not sure if this would have been the first time those two toured together since the 1991 New Titans on the Block Tour which also included Sepultura and Sacred Reich. Can you fucking imagine that lineup in 1991? If I had a time machine...)
It's alive! ALIVE! Kids of the Black Hole; A Punksploitation
Anthology is live! Featuring Paul Lubaczewski (I Never Eat...Cheesesteak),
Jeremy Lowe (Daily Grindhouse, The Modern Rippers), Chris Hallock (Diabolique,
Boston Underground Film Fest), Sarah Miner, and myself (Neon Sabbath, Motel On
Fire, etc). With another gorgeous cover by Stephanie Murr!
There was just something special about channel surfing and
coming across Class of 1984 or Repo Man on cable. How many times have you
rented Suburbia and Return of the Living Dead? Do you have The Green Room and
The Ranger on Blu-ray? For some of us, Punksploitation holds a special place in
our hearts. Especially for those of us who came from the sticks or small towns
where there was no punk scene and our only connection was the music and the
movies. St Rooster Books is proud to present five tales inspired by
Punksploitation; “Urchins” by Chris Hallock, “Black Thunder” by Sarah Miner, “I
Love Livin’ in the City” by Paul Lubaczewski, “Skate or Die” by Jeremy Lowe,
and “What We Do is Secret” by Tim Murr. The stories run the gamut from B-movie
sci-fi, to weird, to funny, to splatter, to straight horror. All are written
from a place of love for punk rock and the movies it inspired.
What do you do when your family becomes your prison? Tim
Murr, the author of Neon Sabbath, Motel on Fire, and City Long Suffering, takes
you to a small town in East Tennessee, where a young family move into a home
where a predatory spirit lies in wait with generations of tragic secrets
pulsating just under the surface. THE GRAY MAN is Murr's most personal work to
date and also his most horrifying.
My new novella, The Gray Man, is now live on both e and
paperback formats, fiends! Featuring a gorgeous cover by Stephanie Murr, who
also did the covers for Motel on Fire, Neon Sabbath, Conspiracy of Birds, and
To Be One With You.
Becky Narron from Deadman's Tome Publishing said The Gray
Man is "a wild, tense ride you won't forget...brilliantly written..."
When I was a kid, my favorite toys were Masters of the Universe. I had a pretty good collection for a poor kid. One Christmas, my dad even got me Castle Greyskull. I have to say, though, I hated the name 'He-Man.' I didn't get it, such a dumb name. And the cartoon? Fuck that cartoon, I always hated it. Fortunately, I discovered a movie called The Beastmaster (1982). The Beastmaster was a fantasy epic that contained some really scary scenes, featuring humanoid bat creatures, and followed a lone warrior that traveled with a falcon, a panther, and two ferrets-all of whom he could communicate with. After I saw The Beastmaster, my He-Man figure lost his armor/bandoleer thing and Skeletor's giant black panther lost his armor, and He-Man was from then on The Beastmaster and all my MOTU stories became Beastmaster stories.
I had no idea, then that the director of The Beastmaster would wind up having a much more profound influence on me as a writer. Don Coscarelli wrote and directed the film, but more importantly, he wrote and directed the horror classic Phantasm.
I was well into my obsession with the big slasher franchises of the 80s when I rented Phantasm one Fangoria that month (July 1988) so I felt like I should get to it. I watched it on a Saturday afternoon and I can honestly say I had no idea if I liked it or not. It certainly filled me with dread, but I was also confused. I felt like I missed something. I let it go for a while, waiting for the sequel to make it to VHS, which, from reading Fango, sounded really cool. And hey, it was!
weekend. The second film had been the cover feature in Phantasm II built on the first film in a really interesting way and inspired me to re-rent the first film again. This time it made more sense. Taken together with the third film, Lord of the Dead and the fourth, Oblivion, the Phantasm franchise presented worlds within worlds. Layers of reality, dreams and hallucinations becoming corporeal, misdirection, and no rules to govern the universe. Phantasm 1-4 are a slow burn end of the world about a kid named Mike (Michael Baldwin) growing up in the twilight years of Earth as an entity known only as 'The Tall Man' (Angus Scrimm, RIP) plunders grave yards across the country, creating slaves for inter-dimensional world conquering. Teaming up, first with his older brother Jody (Bill Thornberry) and later with Jody's friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister), Mike becomes a man between 1 and 2, becoming a hardened soldier in the war against the dead. As does Reggie, who we first meet as a mild mannered ice cream man and soon becomes a four barrel shotgun toting bad ass. Phantasm was as out of step with Jason and Freddy in the 80s as Clive Barker's Hellraiser. Surprisingly, there was only one attempt to expand on the Phantasm universe outside of the films and that was in Stephen Romano's (Eibon Press, Fulci Comics)single issue comic.
In 2002, Coscarelli returned to the director's chair with one of the best horror films of the last three decades, Bubba Ho-Tep. Based on a story by Joe Lansdale (Hap and Leonard), Bubba Ho-Tep was a wild and off-beat concept inside an emotional and down beat story about a seventy year old Elvis Presley living out his last days under an assumed name in a Texas retirement home that's being menaced by a soul sucking mummy. Elvis was played by Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) and Ossie Davis played John F Kennedy. I don't know if anyone was prepared for how smart, exciting, cool, and quirky Bubba Ho-Tep was. I've had to watch it annually and it hasn't diminished a bit from repeated viewings.
Coscarelli's next film (after shooting two episodes of Showtime's Masters of Horror) was an adaptation of the David Wong novel John Dies At The End (2012). I was fortunate to catch the film at the Nevermore Film Festival in Durham NC. I had been obsessing over the trailer leading up to the fest and my god it did not disappoint! The story centers on best friends, David and John, who have been exposed to a drug called Soy Sauce that opens doors to other worlds. Similar to Phantasm, dreams and hallucinations could become physical threats, as monsters from the multi-verse spill into our world, with nothing but a couple of numb skulls standing between them and our world. Hilarious, gross, and smart, Coscarelli boiled the sprawling novel down to a fast paced, action heavy thrill ride. It also featured an amazing animated sequence from David Hartman, who would go on to direct the fifth Phantasm film, RaVager (which I fully love).
Going back to Bubba Ho-Tep, that movie dropped at a time in my life that I would call my 'wilderness period.' I had been struggling as a writer since mid '98 to write...anything. Before I graduated high school in '94, I had moved on from Stephen King and Clive Barker to Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs and the horror and sci-fi elements in my writing started taking a back seat to more character dramas and political content. I got into Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr and almost never picked up a horror novel. In 1996, I went to see Scream with my friend Jase on opening night. I still rented horror movies on a regular basis, but that night with Scream I misunderstood wes Craven's intentions and felt like I was being made fun of for being a horror fan. Scream opened the flood gates for the late 90's teen horror deluge and it felt like horror slipped right out of my life completely. But when Bubba Ho-Tep came out I was reminded of how much horror meant to me and that was the beginning of me finding my way back into writing new material. I went back to the Phantasm films (as well as Argento's films that were finally becoming available in uncut versions from Anchor Bay) and in 2011 I completed my first novella, Conspiracy of Birds-a story where reality and time were slippery and dreams and hallucinations had physical ramifications. Just last month I released my latest collection of short stories, and the closing tale, "The Jennings Point Story," owes a lot to my love of Coscarelli's work.
Coscarelli is coming to Syracuse in October with his new autobiography, True Indie along with a double feature of the remastered Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep. I'm ridiculously excited and will be bring my Phantasm II issue of Fangoria and my special edition Anchor Bay DVD of Phantasm to get signed. Here's hoping we get the Ho-Tep sequel Bubba Nosferatu soon!
St Rooster Books is proud to announce our next anthology and this one is near and dear to our hearts, Punksploitation! We are looking for crime, horror, and sci-fi (or any combination of the three) themed short stories that fall in to that sub-genre. What is Punksploitation, some of you may ask? Check out films like Return of the Living Dead, Suburbia, Class of 1984, Green Room, or Repo Man.
The title Kids of the Black Hole comes from a song by the OC hardcore band The Adolescents. Just this past June bass player and only constant band member Steve Soto passed away. I’m naming the book after their song as a small tribute to him.
I’m going to say up front, if you’re a guy and you send me a rape revenge story, it’s highly unlikely you’re getting in. Let’s just not go there. Sexist, racist, and/or homophobic stories are not welcome. Certain terms/phrases may be excusable, if say your story is set in 1980, a less ‘woke’ ‘PC’ time, but use sensitivity. If someone uses a homophobic slur, I want to know their head will explode by the end of your story. I guess a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, What Would Jello Do?
Word count: 3,000 to 5,000 words. If longer, inquire with a synopsis of your story beforehand.
Original fiction only; no reprints.
Payment: half cent per word and a contributor copy.
For generations, the Sanford family have lived on the rural outskirts of Elders Keep. But now, Lucas Brock and his pregnant wife, Jude, have chosen to make their home among them as the first outsiders to settle onto Wednesday Ridge in a century. With the arrival of new blood, the horrific secrets the Sanfords have been hiding are coming to light. There's something on the ridge, something that should not exist. It is ancient. It is ravenous. And on the ridge, everything is prey.
It takes a lot to unsettle me these days. I have my buttons. I have particular stories I still choose to avoid. But to actually give me that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I used to get as a kid and could see Jason Vorhees sneaking up on a camp counsellor and she's totally unaware-that dread, as a horror noobie, for what is about to befall this person if he/she doesn't turn around and run-it's so rare to feel that these days.
Well, my buddy Jeffery X Martin once again gave that feeling back to me. He did it previously with Black Friday and Hunting Witches. His newest book, The Ridge, (which drops on July 27th) had me sick with dread less than a quarter way through, and it wasn't just the Southern folk horror aspects, that are a hallmark of his work. What got me first was the story of a couple about to have their first baby. In a sense, it's a bit of a fish out of water story. Two people from the city, the husband a college professor, moving out to the country-which is about as familiar to them as the plains of Mars, and the wife being left alone with the weirdo neighbors and all the strangeness that goes along with living in the hills. Lucas and Jude love each other, they are happy together, but I can tell you from first hand experience, moving into a new area, far from friends and family, while pregnant will cause tempers to flare, will bring on stress and anxiety, and if it's only the two of you there with no one else to really talk to-all of that will come out and be directed at one another. Regardless of whether or not the love is still there, you feel trapped in an emotional bubble and the threat of it popping is ever present. That's the heart, the engine, that drives The Ridge.
I have heard it said by many people, any good horror story must still be a good drama if you take the horror elements away. So, in the case of The Ridge, done. Five stars. Two thumbs up. What about the horror elements though? X knows how to scare you. He knows how to dig in, make your skin crawl, make you hold the book away from you just a little more...He can paint a vivid landscape of despair in your brain that's hard to wash away. Violence that rolls by slowly, so you don't mis an ounce of the pain. You feel that bone shatter and you sit with it for as long as the character has to. I think of Dennis Etchison, Stephen King in his prime, maybe a little HP Lovecraft (minus all the "cyclopean towers"), Books of Blood era Clive Barker. X is building a body of work with his Elders Keep stories that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the giants rather than just stand on their shoulders.
I tell ya, X has been inspiring me to work harder, do better, and be more since our bar days back in Knoxville, Tennessee more than twenty years ago. To see the artist he is today is nothing short of awe-inspiring. If you don't know him, I feel bad for you, but you can remedy that by following him on Twitter @JefferyXMartin and like his Facebook page. And order The Ridgetoday!
