In The Meantime, A Preview Of What’s To Come.The next issue of The Ghent Decontrol will be a special about NYHC: interviews with some of the protagonists of the New York scene of the 80s and early 90s (the days when CBGBs still was cool), reprints, quotes, stories… There will be 60+ pages spend on delivering you all you ever wanted to know about Citizen’s Arrest, Rest In Pieces, Absolution, Warzone, Altercation, Cro-Mags, The Psychos and Token Entry.
Here is a little teaser of some of the things that will be in the zine and I hope you will be interested enough to order the zine once it is out. I won’t be featuring the interviews online whatsoever, if you want to read more you will have to buy the zine and will have to look at ink instead of pixels. I hope you still can do that…
These are excerpts from interviews with Absolution’s Gavin Van Vlack (originally appeared in Making A Scene by Bri Hurley), Citizen’s Arrest’s Patrick Winter and Rest In Pieces’ Armand Mandji. If you like this stuff, keep in mind: there’s a lot more where that came from!
ABSOLUTION:
“Skinheads talk about anti-homosexuality when their girls look pretty similar to them. I used to think that it was cool and cute. I went out with skinhead girls. I don’t find the English fashion fitting for a woman. It makes them look like men. This sounds rather chauvinistic, but it does. I don’t find it attractive. The oxblood boots, and the Fred Perry shirt, and the stay-press pants, and the Friar Tuck haircut. I think it kinda loses, to tell you the truth. But I don’t like wimpy women either. I don’t like weak people in general.”
CITIZEN'S ARREST:
"CBGB’s for me wasn’t always the most fun place to see or play a show. It has a great reputation and all mainly because it’s in NYC and has been home to some legendary acts. Some of the Sunday hardcore shows were pretty scary. There were some real bad elements that got into the place during the mid to late 80’s. Kids who were really illegal aliens who just came to start fights and all. You would go into the pit to try and get a mosh move in and there’d be a schmuck that couldn’t speak English running around with a chain hitting people with it or taking cheap shots at people. The bass player of Our Gang got punched by one of these losers right in the face for no reason. I think it was because he had long hair at the time. Some of the bouncers there were good and some were real dicks and would do fucked up things like punch people in the face. I used to go every week like a religion. Often times we wouldn’t even pay. I would pay if I felt it was worth it but a lot of times we’d share each other’s hand stamp by licking our hands and pressing it on someone else’s. There were some great shows there even still. When Chain Of Strength played there way back it was great because they weren’t that popular yet so the place wasn’t that crowded but you could feel the Californian energy. The best thing I ever saw at CBGB’s was when Absolution played. First off, when Absolution came out their demo was the hottest and best demo around. It was as long as an album and was the most original thing you’d ever heard. Amidst the youth crew bands and angry style bands Absolution was just like “Fuck it! We’re unclassifiable but we blow everybody away…” And they did! So anyhow, during their set at CBGB’s the microphone just went out and Djinji, the singer, just kept singing without a mike. And you could still hear him and you just respected how he didn’t care. They loved what they were doing and they were going to do it no matter what. Also, if I remember correctly, Gavin, the guitar player, went after the board guy after the set. Gavin was a great guy, but you knew never to mess with him. Absolution was the best band around back then in my opinion and if you haven’t heard them you are missing out on a lot."
REST IN PIECES:
"That record represents a strange time. I wasn’t opposed to putting some distance between Rest In Pieces and the hardcore scene because I wanted more musical freedom than the scene normally allowed. Adding slide guitar was a shameless effort to show how influenced we were by bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rose Tattoo – and neither band was fashionable to anyone in the scene. We did ‘I Got the Fire’, a cover of Iron Maiden covering Montrose. Like I said, it was a strange time. We really wanted to make Rest In Pieces different than the rest of the hardcore scene and we liked being the odd man out. A lot of our fans that would come out of the woodwork to see us at CB’s appreciated that aspect. We would see a lot of faces that wouldn’t normally show up to generic hardcore matinees. Regarding the record, I like to describe it as a recorded experiment gone wrong, that was made public. It didn’t sound like us and the sound was watered down. I tried to sing too much when I should have approached the vocals exactly like My Rage. It could have been a thousand times better."
