The Insurgence/Zero Down/Princess/Midnight Idols @The Sunset 6/23/12

Last Saturday night Seattle radio station KISW 99.9fm and their "Loud and Local" program hosted by Jolene sponsored a show at The Sunset Tavern along with Digital Warfare Records headlined by Seattle hardcore thrash band The Insurgence. The lineup also included Zero Down, Princess and Midnight Idols.

Before I get into the show, I have to applaud Jolene and the gang over at Loud and Local on KISW for putting together another killer lineup for a night of metal and thrash in sleepy little Ballard. They just know who rocks in this city and always deliver the goods when it come to showcasing some of this areas best live bands.

The show started at 10pm, I got there slightly before that and pretty quickly came to the conclusion this was going to be a rowdy one. As I caught a quick smoke outside before heading in, a large group made up of maybe 30 people came barreling down the street, dressed in their Insurgence gear looking a bit suspect ready for some chaos and The Insurgence. 

First up was Seattle metal band Midnight Idols. I have to admit, I've never seen so many people in the bar for the first band up in a long time. Midnight Idols tore through about a 30 minute set of their self proclaimed "quality purveyors of true heavy metal" warming the crowd up and leaving them wanting more. Midnight Idols is what's right about local metal and delivered a tight, high energy set that was the perfect start for the coming madness. These dudes sound reminds me of a time when Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were running amok and ruling the planet. Awesome band, highly recommend checking them out!

Next up was a band I was really looking forward to seeing, Princess. I'm not sure how to describe their sound. It's kinda metal, kinda punk a little heavy, fast, sounds like Henry Rollings molesting Sonic Youth or somethin' like that, they RULE!! By the time Princess took the stage the place was fully packed, shoulder to shoulder. Andrew Chapman (vocals) led the band through a 30 minute set at times jumping off the stage into the crowd and making everyone there part of the show. I love the originality and quirkiness of this band not to mention the fact that they flat out rock and put on a hell of a live show, again do yourself a favor and check out Princess!

By the time Princess finished up their set the vibe in The Sunset was that of a powder keg. You could just feel the energy and anticipation swelling. Zero Down was up next. I've seen this band several times in the last few months and every show is the same, I leave feeling that whatever I paid to get in to see them was well worth it, and in fact I probably still owe them some money on the way out. What a fucking great hard rock, metal band Zero Down is. Luckily they are from these parts of the woods and we get to see them fairly often. As soon as they took the stage the crowd pushed forward and the first formation of a mosh pit appeared. Dudes played for about 40 minutes loud n' fast and seemingly holding up a lit match to the powder keg fuse. Zero Down is a party every time they play and are one of the reasons, we do what we do at this magazine and love it.

I went out to catch a smoke after their set to see Jibo (vocals) of The Insurgence walking around chatting with different groups of people getting folks fired up for their set and asking "you all ready, this shit is about to go down!" That's why I REALLY like this this fucking band. Just the attitude, the fire, the passion, the confidence, they know or at least should know they are the biggest, baddest mofo's in Seattle right now, no the west coast, the planet, hands down. 

The Insurgence hit the stage around 12:30 like a sledgehammer to your skull. The mosh pit started immediately and never stopped till the bands last song around 1am. It was electric, like a really big band playing a really small place. Video camera's were everywhere, flashes from still camera's every couple of seconds, Jibo encouraging crowds participation directing the few stragglers on the outside of the pit to join the chaos. The Insurgence blew the roof off The Sunset to the point of making the owner of the place a little unconformable and out of The Sunset's Ballard comfort zone. Somewhere around the second song, the owner (that's how he introduced himself) walked around the floor near the stage telling people to turn their cameras off or "get out." He told me the same thing, I asked why, and was told,"because I own this place!" Fucking lame. Talk about sucking the energy out of a room. A few people continued to shoot some pictures of The Insurgence including their own photographer and they were in fact, kicked out. Later I heard the owner told someone it was illegal to take pictures in his bar, or some bullshit like that. We sat there all night drinking their over priced beer and eating their shitty pizza waiting for The Insurgence to come on and they are kicking people out for taking pictures? Fucking Joke. That's how good The Insurgence were on this night, to rowdy, to loud, to different for video or pictures in the mild mannered Sunset Tavern, what else can I say, that about sums up their show. They blew into The Sunset like a twister, shook the floor beams, rattled the walls, rocked the fuck out of everybody and left. I needed a show like this! Every band that played killed it and I wish a few more bands in this city would get out there and shake shit up and make some REAL noise like this line-up did tonight! 


Thank you KISW, Digital Warfare Records all the bands and Satan for this one-we all owe ya !

BTW if your in Ballard and want to see a metal, thrash or hardcore show, just go to The 2 Bit. The beer is affordable, the staff is cool, they have a covered smoking area and is it's a real music venue where you have the freedom to shoot some pics of your favorite bands without being hassled. 

Mick

BHM

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SEATTLE’S NOT DEAD (PT. TWO)

The Rathouse's front porch circa 1992- L to R: TV Kenly (Officer Down), Scott Marquardt (Officer Down), Julian Gibson (D.C. Beggars), Adrian Garver (D.C. Beggars), Steve 'Hoagie' Gero (D.C. Beggars), Astrella Norell (Officer Down), Carla Sindle (D.C. Beggars), Fred Speakman (Officer Down), Bradley Stevens (Officer Down)

(Picture: © Dan Halligan/ 10 Things Jesus Wants You To Know)

SEATTLE’S NOT DEAD’: THE FORGOTTEN SEATTLE HARDCORE PUNK SCENE (PT. TWO)

(An Emerald City Fairy Tale by Fred Speakman)

PART TWO: "Happily Ever After Means Eternal Hell" (1990-1996)

"...And I-hi, hoe-whoa, I'm still alive, yarrrrll!" ("Alive" by Pearl Jam; from 'Ten')
 
When Seattle turned the page from the 80s to the 90s. I remember feeling like the end was definitely near, even though most of our lives were very young. The change was so abrupt and shocking to me that I had to ignore the significance of living in one of the most popular cities in America...by getting completely shitfaced almost everyday. Starbucks Coffee was getting really big, Microsoft was gaining power to unleash worldwide insanity upon us all, and Soundgarden had just signed with A&M Records. This news was exciting to some of the glamorous booty-swirling chicks and chicksters in this town, especially those who bought anything/everything that SubPop put out...but for those of us who wanted to continue to play loud, abrasive and fast punk fused with speed metal, we ignored this new Seattle yarl rock, and continued to punish our own and each other's eardrums, each other's braincells, with our unpolished, immature brand of insanity, while exclaiming "FUCK SUB POP !!!" (and that was only a small lot of us). SubPop was not saving my life by any means.

This is not to say that everything that came out on SubPop was bad, or that most of us didn't secretly like Soundgarden (one of my top ten desert island discs is definitely "BadMotorFinger"). I would rather have listened to Mudhoney, or The Fastbacks, than Alice In Chains at the time. We also realized that that a phenomenon was beginning in Seattle that would change the face of popular music forever. Time has proven, as with all fads, that it was a brief shining moment that still has a minty aftertaste and obviously has influenced enough terrible bands on a global level to be considered significant enough. Seattle contributed an overwhelming mass of radioactive sludge that contaminated the airwaves. As for I and most of my peers past and present, we did our best to ignore this pest called 'grunge', and listened to bands like Celtic Frost, Slayer, Poison Idea, Napalm Death, Christ On Parade, Deicide, Morbid Angel, and........Neurosis (more on them later).

Jerry from Christ On A Crutch

Maybe you've noticed that a lot of the aforementioned bands are of the punk or speed metal genre. See, most of us punkers here in Seattle were really heshers at heart, and we were still sort of stuck on the crossover phase of punk metal that started in the mid-80's. Mix shitty generic beer in with some of the most mind-numbingly potent marijuana in the United States, add louder-than-fuck hardcore punk metal dirge...and you've got a recipe for one of the heaviest mind fogs, only akin to the natives of the Pacific Northwest region. Not enough rain for yah? Wanna make a sunny day cloudy? It's easy...Hang out with a bunch of NW heshers. Make sure one of them is 21 or older to buy beer…and please stop spilling the bong, dude!! The bong water is seeping through the cracks in the floor, and the rats in the basement are drinking it!!

Bands like Aspirin Feast, Fitz Of Depression, NMF, Model Citizens, The Derelicts, Three Legged Dog, Christ On A Crutch, Dumt, Date Rape, Whipped, T.F.L., Positive Greed, Morphius, and North American Bison were slogging it out at all ages halls all over the region. My band Last Gasp were kind of known as the young local nut-balls of the scene. In the middle of it all, you had characters like Orin (mentioned in Part One), who was like a compulsive-lying drug-dealing punk rock Godfather to most of us young punks. If you had Orin on your side, things were ok and skinheads would probably not fuck with you. Hey man, I mean, he hung out with El Duce and shit. There was a sweet side to Orin...a big baby type of deal...and a really scary side to Orin too. Only those who had to deal with this bad side know. To those who did...my heart goes out to you.

Duane and Ian from The Derelicts

1991: By this time, the Jesters of Chaos had broken up, and Aspirin Feast just imploded like a toxic punk rock zit. All ages punk shows were getting harder to put on, because kids didn't want to behave, and alcohol is not exactly a mellow psychedelic. Last Gasp was ending it's patience with one another, and we too, by the end of 1991 had broken up in sad circumstances. Our lead singer Ajax had lost the will to be creative with us. Our bass player John started playing drums in a band called Sick And Wrong, known for their front-woman 'Mr. Wendy', who wore a strap-on flatulent penis. Chris the drummer and I joined up with Robert Jenkins (Hells Smells), TV Kenly, Scott Marquardt, Brad Stevens, and Astrella Norell, our ages ranging from '19' to '50', in a seminal noise experiment called Officer Down. Looking back from a personal perspective, Officer Down just might have packed one hundred years of continuous drug and alcohol abuse for one person, into two years among seven people.


Meeting the people mentioned above introduced me to a much wider social circle than before. This scene combined a select few from the upper echelon of Seattle rock royalty (Kim Thayil and Soundgarden), Jesse Bernstein (who sadly commited suicide two months after Officer Down was formed, halting the ongoing production of TV and Robert's never-released cinematic masterpiece "Gorefest"), Richard Peterson (yes, Richard Peterson, the notable Seattle musician and Johnny Mathis super-fan), and people from new bands like 7 Year Bitch, DC Beggars, Alcohol Funnycar, and of course The Gits. A whole flux of people, many in their mid to late twenties, had flocked from the Midwest to Seattle. Two notable areas of interest were Chicago obviously, and Antioch University in Ohio. Also, many Evergreen College alumni were involved in this scene. A lot of these people that I met were artists of a higher caliber than just playing in punk bands. For a brief moment, most of the newer bands sounded more sophisticated than the hardcore bands. Even Officer Down had it's moments. Hands down, I considered The Gits to be the best out of us all back then.

Carla from D.C. Beggars

Now, this is the point when everything seemed to get the most negative, at least for me. The fast, fun speed and energy of punk rock dwindled until it sat like a pile of shit in the middle of a rendering plant. Sure, some bands continued on playing with the same energy...bands like The Gits and the DC Beggars played semi-fast and made it sound fun and soulful at the same time. 7 Year Bitch took Selene Vigil's poetry and set it to mid-tempo polyrhythmic punk in a fully-realized original form that sounded like themselves and no one else. It was good to finally see local bands that sounded very different from one another.

Officer Down went the other way- a way that I detested from the beginning. Chris added sheet metal alongside his normal drum kit. Our band was so off-key at times, and possibly this could have been because everyone was always really fucked up. Sometimes, we practiced on acid, and things would get really weird...discordant, flat, and bitter. However, there were times when we played and things would just snap right into place. Smiles all around. During those times, we sort of sounded like Romeo Void on heroin. Other friends of ours from other bands were doing the same thing: playing slow industrial bottom-heavy, sawtooth-grinding metal and utilizing multimedia presentations simultaneously, like ChristDriver, formed by Eric Greenwalt after Subvert (from Tacoma) broke up.

One half of Aspirin Feast went on to form Laceration, a band that followed suit when all of the Napalm Death-influenced bands slowed down too. Bands like TCHKUNG! kickstarted the whole new Northwest industrial mud dance. This, in my opinion, was a step backwards into territory being previously explored by the forefathers of Grunge, and then maybe continuously explored too much, because most of us were too fucking STONED to pick our feet up out of the mud puddle.

If I sound obnoxiously bitter, it's because I am. Everyone's favorite band at the time, Neurosis, took most of my friends down into the dirt, rather than up in the sky to find a way to escape from the planet Earth. These were the gardeners of the punk scene, in my opinion, even though they are mighty talented at what they do, and have gone through hell like the rest of us to get to that point. I'm not knocking them...my tastes are not for everybody and to each their own...but I would say that almost everyone in my band and a lot of people that I knew wanted to get on this band's jock at the time. Our practice space became a noise club, where ten hour-plus industrial jams became the norm (and two members of Neurosis once participated in one of these jams…it's on some videotape sitting in a box in my closet as we speak). No songs were ever written from these jams...but you had people beating on anything they could find; four or five guitarists, all playing completely separate parts with different time signatures, maybe three tone-deaf bass players, three or four people screaming incoherently into rusty microphones. Truly, this was music of the mentally tortured. I took part in maybe two of these jams, but ceased very quickly to be a part of these ear-splitting fuck-off fests. If only the Nazis would have allowed drum circles in their concentration camps...

All in all, I would say that we got to play some pretty cool shows, went on tour, met some great people. Other great bands, like Zulu Chainsaw, formed around this time. 1991 zoomed into 1992 like a blackout drinking binge. 1992 was the year that Jeffro from the Jesters Of Chaos died in a motorcycle crash, which hit very close to home for all of us who knew him. I can't say enough about how cool that guy was. Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch died that year too. Officer Down heard the news while we were on tour. This kind of dampened our already dark souls even more. Even still, one of our favorite local punk bands, our friends Christ On A Crutch, broke up around this time.

7 Year Bitch, 1992

Officer Down consisted of five guys and two women. In my life so far up until then, I had only played music with guys. Here I was, in a scene with many feminine human beings at the height of the whole Olympia Washington Bikini Kill riot girl era aftermath. I felt a very strong competitive force from all of the women around me, and this is while I wasn't even trying to compete with them at all. It was sometimes intimidating for me to be around, since I was about 7 years younger than most of the girls in my scene. Sometimes, along with a serious chip that I had to automatically carry on my shoulder (more akin to a Cheeto than a poker chip), I felt that anything that I had to prove musically seemed to be turned on a deaf ear in favor of an unspoken resentment from women towards men at that time.  Having to deal with the chip on their shoulders was not my cup of tea. My attitude was, "I don't care if you're a girl or a guy…if you can't play or sing, then I don't want to even talk to you and this is a waste of my time". So, occasionally I felt resentment coming from certain über-women, and I was forced to talk to the hand on many occasions. I was pissed and confused because of this. I had just left my childhood home, grew up with and rebelled against strong dominant female figures in my family, and I didn't need a bunch of drunk surrogate punk rock mommies with tattoos and piercings bossing me around. I wasn't bossing them around and didn't deserve to be a statistic, or painted into a corner. Alas, I understand that this all had to happen in it's own special way. I realize that this was a very important time in the history of music and humanity in general. Some of these women were trying to find their place just as much as I was trying to find mine.

This is not to say that I was more mature than any of the older women or the men that I hung around at the time anyway. In fact, I was so immature, that I just simply couldn't handle the normal dynamics of highly creative women who were a bit older than me. I was constantly blacking out drunk and pissing everyone off in Officer Down. I did some very "punk rock" things not worth mentioning…ok, they were mostly things, like accidentally projectile vomiting across some punk rock woman's Capitol Hill apartment kitchen at a party I was never invited to and never would be again, and therefore pushed out a back door into a huge mud puddle to continue my vomiting…things like attempting to do a striptease in front of a lesbian bar called The Wild Rose before the usual babysitters had to drag my blacked-out drunk ass away…things like inviting Nazi skinheads to drink with us in our van before the show when I was already blacked out, and threatened the security of my whole band…lots of things like that. Harmless stuff really. But I hate Nazis. And I love lesbians. And I love gay men. And I love cheeseburgers. Fuck you. Ok, I'm done now.

Meanwhile, Nirvana had cracked the punk code wide open, and nothing was left to the imagination anymore. Our little community was being rocked by bands at the Lake Union Pub. Tim from Aspirin Feast formed Chicken, started a little label called Pot Pie Records, and hosted many shows at the Lake Union Pub, a scuzz-hole known for it's serious drug activity and great spur-of-the-moment punk shows. Other places to play were The Off Ramp, RockCandy, The Weathered Wall, and The Crocodile Cafe. SubPop was still putting out pretty good local music by bands like The Fastbacks, Dickless, The Supersuckers, and Mudhoney. Empty Records put out good vinyl by bands like Gas Huffer, The Derelicts…and even The Gits. We were all influenced by a really good 7 inch single they put out called "Spear And Magic Helmet" on Empty. It is still my favorite song that they ever put out.

Mia, from The Gits, 1992

Many people from the Ohio contingent (The Gits etc.) all lived on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Some of those folks, like Mia Zapata and Julian Gibson of the DC Beggars lived in a house on 19th and Denny that they christened "The Rathouse". The Gits and The D.C. Beggars started Rathouse Records to put out music made by their mutual friends' bands. Officer Down's only 7 inch came out on that collective label. Out of all the bands in our scene, The Gits were the powerhouse that was gaining the most momentum, along with Seven Year Bitch. Steve, Matt, Andy and Mia put out an LP on C/Z Records, Daniel House's label, and started doing quite well. With all of the other popular Seattle gutter punk drizzling in one ear, out the other and into the gutter filled with dead punk rock overshadowed by Grunge, it was nice to see one of our favorite bands start doing well. The Gits were one of the most popular local bands and live acts in Seattle in 1992 going into 1993. They went on tour in Europe and the US. They were even being courted by major labels. They probably would have followed Nirvana to influence budding male and female rock musicians alike on a global basis. I always dreamed that they would be huge. Most of us did. 

Everything changed for the worst on the morning of July 7, 1993.

Mia Zapata was found raped and murdered on Capitol Hill. This was the morning after a usual night spent hanging out with her friends at The Comet, a bar on Pike Street. TV Kenly, one of our lead singers, was the last one of our friends to see her alive, and did all that she could to try and talk Mia into staying the night at her apartment or catching a cab rather than walking. Mia, a tough independent spirit who took no shit and asked no quarter, refused. The way she was murdered was insane, very cruel, and immediately unreal to everyone. I went to her funeral along with the rest of my bandmates, because Robert said we should all go, but I felt like I didn't really have the right to be there. Within two weeks, every male within our community was a prime suspect. The remaining Gits hired detectives to find Mia's killer. Immediately, anyone connected or close to Mia was interviewed at least once or twice by detectives. I was one of the people interviewed, at The Comet, while being recorded, along with everyone else in Officer Down, the whole Rathouse crew, Mia's close friends, and the usual suspects. This made most of us question our existence, and made the process of continuing to make any kind of music very confusing and sad.

Mia was definitely one of a kind. She could also get crazy when she was drunk. We all had some good times that revolved around Mia. What a talented force to be reckoned with. She inspired all of us to be better than we were musically, as she was one of the more truly talented people among us. One of the last conversations that I had with her was at a party two days before she died. The pep talk that she gave me was a stern warning that she felt that I was more talented than the music that I was playing at the time, and that I should follow my heart more. It still chills me that she gave me that talk. I will never forget her interest in my artistic welfare, and how much pride it gave me to go on, when I really didn't have much at the time. Her talk helped me get through the 90's more than she will ever know. I was blessed to be one of her acquaintances for the two years that I knew her.

They found Mia's killer in 2003 and sentenced him to 36 years in prison. Hopefully this is long enough, that if he ever gets out alive, he'll be too old to ever kill again.

During that whole time, our leader and mentor Robert Jenkins was accused as a main suspect due to his romantic relationship with Mia over most of the two years of Officer Down's existence. All of the media coverage about Robert being a suspect affected him very badly, and made our band a real bummer to be in at the time. Everyone seemed guilty for no reason. I even caught myself wondering if I was responsible just because I was a man. Then, about a month later, Robert thought up some plan where all of us were going to sell mushrooms grown in horse shit to fund the recording of our new album. The other plan was to dress up in army fatigue uniforms with all of us holding guns so as to avenge Mia's murder. This image was supposed to go on the cover. I couldn't tell if Robert was joking, as he was prone to time and time again with a twisted ironic sense of embracing the worst scenario possible. If this was a joke or not, I wanted no part of it regardless. We were supposedly going to call the album "Purveyors Of Justice" or some bullshit like that. I had reached my limit, and was the first to quit the band by the end of the summer. Chris followed suit a week later.

Jason and Slim from The Vaccines

After that experience, I went back to listening to plain old rock and roll. I formed a few projects for about a year, got kicked out of bars and parties a lot, and by 1994, I eventually joined as a replacement guitarist in a long-time running prog-punk band from Tacoma called My Name. This enabled me to continue playing shows regionally. The Seattle hardcore punk scene was still kicking ass and taking names by 1994-95, even after the terrible sadness surrounding Kurt Cobain's suicide and Mia's murder. The Lake Union Pub was still having shows. Bands like Bristle, Monster Truck Driver, Whorehouse Of Representatives, Shug, Bone Cellar, The Piss Drunks, Inhumane, Patchouli Sewer, 66 Saints, The Kent 3, The Vaccines, and the faster-meaner-than-shit ZEKE played there, and all were doing very well on D.I.Y. terms. 

ZEKE

By 1996, I stopped keeping track of a lot of the old people, since the past was so painful. That year ushered in the newer Seattle bands making it worldwide, like The Presidents of The U.S.A.'s popularity peak that same year, along with the Foo Fighters gaining massive attention (including Nate Mendel, previously with Christ On A Crutch, on bass). As for me, My Name auditioned for Capitol Records in 1995 and Interscope in 1996, with Hollywood muscle backing us up…but the stars were not aligned enough for us to sail the cosmic battleship to stardom. The same thing happened another excellent band from Tacoma called Seaweed. Needless to say, I gained a newfound respect for bands like Pearl Jam. In many ways, they had it much tougher than us. It's not easy to be rich and famous from what I hear. Our goals pretty much changed, especially after going through what our music community had to endure through the tragedies. These tragedies happen in all walks of life, but  these same issues can be sensationalized beyond belief in a music community, since it is all based on entertainment in one way or another.

A lot of us grew up, and just disappeared, or you would see us hanging out at the punk rock baseball league games that people starting organizing in the early 90s. You'd see us in the stands drinking a lot of Schmidt Beer in cans. Lots of people that I knew got into heroin. Nothing new…pretty pathetic. Some musicians get into music to get into heroin, so I'm not sure what to think about that. My first real girlfriend from high school, later Ajax's girlfriend Jennifer Justus, became addicted, along with our friend Shannon McNamara. Jennifer was eventually murdered in the late 90s by a serial killer who picked up prostitutes. She was found in the woods along I-90 near North Bend WA. Shannon cleaned up for a while and became Legs McNeil's girlfriend in New York. We later learned that tragedy struck after she relapsed and died from a fatal flesh-eating bacterial infection while using a bad needle.

Someone someday will write part three and part four of this series, with all of the bands that rocked the Storeroom Tavern, Uncle Rocky's, the Rebar, Chicago's next to the Key Arena, the China Club, etc...but the real future of Seattle's hardcore punk scene is a little place next to the Space Needle called The Funhouse. This might be the only place left in town where you can intimately see the crux of the new and old punk and crust core bands from America and Europe coming to visit on reunion tours…and sometimes you might get the chance to witness the pushing, shoving and circle dancing part of punk that was so fun and funny in the first place. You'll find all the hillbilly punks hanging out at Slim's Last Chance Chili, the Nu Metal crowd (all ages or 21+) down at El Corazon or Studio 7, stoner bands at The Comet, bigger National acts at Neumo's and The Crocodile, a straight up mix of all kinds of bands in Ballard (The Sunset, The Tractor), the Skylark in West Seattle, and don't forget Darrell's up in Shoreline. As for most all ages hardcore punk rock shows (whatever that description might entail), it's not looking too good around here. Maybe this will change. The Misfits logo will always look cool on a hoodie...and so our future generations will always latch onto classic punk with spike-gloved hands. Hey kids...keep forming bands!! (Ha ha….like I'm some kind of armchair authority on the subject…)

Lonnie from Bristle

After getting back from a tour one time in 2001, as I was walking through the Greenlake area, I ran into Orin...the Seattle punk rock king...twelve years after I met him originally. He always talked like a toothless pirate, which was always endearing. "HEY FREDDIE, WHA'S UP? HOW YOU DOIN' BUDDY?", "Doing good...just got back from a tour.", "AH YEAH? HEY MAN, SO DID I. I WAS ROADYING FOR TINA TURNER.". I assumed that Orin was lying out of the few teeth that he had left...OR WAS HE?

Three days later, Orin and Pete of Seismic Sound died in a van crash. They both were coming back from an out-of-town show when whoever was driving (most likely Orin) fell asleep and and crashed into an embankment. The equipment in the back crushed Pete to death on contact. Bleeding from massive internal injuries, Orin climbed out to the highway to flag down help, and then died on the scene. I feel like the all-but-forgotten Seattle hardcore punk rock scene died along with him that night...but I am sure that there are existing argumentative contenders for this sort challenge. Prove me wrong, and keep it real. Punk's not dead…it's just back at the bottom of the pile, where it belongs.

**Very sad to say, Robert Jenkins, my former bandmate/ guitar partner in Officer Down, a Vietnam veteran, a hero to many, a great artist with an abstract mind and a master of all things absurd, died on his birthday December 29, 2011. I'll miss you Robert. Thanks for believing and telling me that I was some sort of a genius, even when I could never live up to it. In the words of Robert Jenkins, aka Buzz Gundersun, "Party or die!!".



**END NOTE: Also, this article, along with Part One, was originally written by me in 2008 as a disjointed, drunken, rambling MySpace blog with many misspellings and incoherent sentences. I have re-evaluated and edited and/or added some parts to make the story tell itself more cohesively for the year of 2012. Believe me, this version is better than the one it used to be. Thanks to Dan Halligan for use of the pictures. Cheers!  



About the author:
FRED SPEAKMAN has been a local gigging Seattle guitarist/ keyboardist for the past 23 years since the age of 17. He has been a member of bands: Last Gasp, Officer Down, My Name, Disaster Piece, The Droo Church, Horrible, Zero Down, Midnight Idols, The Beltholes, The Shivering Denizens, The Riffbrokers and about 10 other bands and even more side projects that he cannot remember the names of right now. As of this writing, he is in a band called Gold Records, another one called The Rags, and after 23 years, he is still a member of the original line-up of Last Gasp. He lives in Seattle WA.



Photo's by Dan Halligan   
 

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’SEATTLE’S NOT DEAD’/ PT 1

’SEATTLE’S NOT DEAD’

THE FORGOTTEN SEATTLE HARDCORE PUNK SCENE'

(An Emerald City Fairy Tale by Fred Speakman)

PART ONE (1983-1990): "Drunkenness and Desperation"

"Mine's a tale that can't be told...My freedom, I hold dear...Of year's ago, and days of old, where magic filled the air..."
(Led Zeppelin- "Ramble On" )

...Or, where beer and puke filled the air. Maybe a parking lot outside of an all-ages club like Washington Hall in the Central District was the scene…or something like that, I can't remember. All I remember is that some independent towing guy put a wheel-lock on my girlfriend's used car. Out of all of the cars in the lot that were parked illegally, he had to pick on hers. I was drunk, seventeen, and was supposed to be inside in 5 minutes to play guitar with my band, Last Gasp. My girlfriend started yelling at the towing guy and threw her 40 ouncer his way, causing it to shatter in the parking lot, insuring that no one would be able to drive out of there without getting a flat tire. Some big toothless lug/door bouncer/drug dealer named Orin came over and threatened the towing guy, and I was able to talk him down to half of the price to release it. I payed the guy all the drinking money that I had left...and went in and played the show- drunk off of my ass. Typical everyday shit.

Yeah, those were the days, or whatever I can remember about them, or heard about through my older friends. The local sleaze-bag hardcore punk rock scene in Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia started around the early-to-mid 80s, along with a combined infusion of bands and people from the Tri-Cities WA, Spokane WA, and Boise Idaho. Once the whole SST thing filtered up from California, along with issues of Maximum RockNRoll, Flipside, and those shitty Doug Moody Mystic compilations, I was done for. You may have had the same experience as I had. If it made you jump out of your skin like it did for me, then you were done for and you never looked back. It was the oft-overlooked junkie stepbrother of what became the basis of the burgeoning popular-and-publicized Seattle Scene of the late 80s-early 90s. In the early 80's, when I got tired of Ozzy and Judas Priest singing ballads on their new albums, I turned to chaos and my life would never be the same.

I was still in middle school when I saw this whole thing take shape. I wanted to be a musician, and with my sense of humor, I was naturally attracted to the dark side. All it took was one viewing of "Decline of the Western Civilization" at the Neptune Theatre, and I was fucked for life. Those were also the days when you could take one trip down to Second Time Around on the 'Ave' (University Ave. in Seattle), and you could buy yourself a $100 piece-of-shit guitar, a warped vinyl copy of some second-pressing punk record (DI, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, Dead Hippie, etc.), a used leather jacket that some idiot sold for dope money, and maybe a Black Flag bumper sticker. One stop shopping. Pretty cool, eh? Down the street, you had Cellophane Square. We avoided Tower Records most of the time, unless you wanted to buy an Iron Maiden record or something. There was Time Travelers downtown, and Fallout Records and Skateboards on Olive St. near the Broadway District. Penny Lane…Rubato Records…Golden Oldies…yawn yawn, the list goes on.

You had a few radio stations to listen to…KCMU FM (now KEXP), KYYX FM, KJET AM. The local publication The Rocket was promoting bands like The Young Fresh Fellows, The Allies, Mondo Vita, The New Age Urban Squirrels, Uncle Bonzai, etc. This constituted what was a kind of a punkadelic college vibe...or basically, just good time rock and roll made by people who were influenced by the best and weirdest parts of pop-rock culture from the last two decades. You also had the experimental/ improvisational music crowd, influenced by Captain Beefheart, John Cage, Killing Joke, P.I.L., and the like. Many people in that crowd fused all of the aforementioned with rock, punk and/or metal, and went on to make what most outsiders know as 'The Seattle Sound'. There was also the local creditable hip hop scene, with Sir Mix-A-Lot, Kid Sensation, etc. There was the mostly-suburban metal scene (Band names have been omitted to protect the innocent...ok? Props to Jeff Gilbert of KCMU's 'BRAINPAIN' fame. Ask him about the Northwest metal scene sometime, or Google him). Hell, there was probably a music scene going on in the underground tunnels of Seattle's Chinatown for all I know...but if The Rocket didn't cover it, nobody knew about it.  

Sometime around 1982-1984, many Northwest kids like me who were already into heavy metal started seeing the possibility of fast hardcore punk being worthy of a listen. Punk Rock awareness first happened to me, when a twisted family member gave me a recorded cassette copy of "In God We Trust, Inc." by The Dead Kennedys in 1982, which blew my mind with it's obnoxiousness. I started playing guitar, skateboarding, and was introduced to Fallout Records and Skateboards. Here is where I bought my precious copies of the "Not So Quiet On The Western Front" compilation on Alternative Tentacles Records, and the "P.E.A.C.E." compilation, put out by MDC's record label 'R Radical Records'. Fallout is where I discovered Black Flag and every other SST Records band that the label had to offer. SST came off like a punk rock Microsoft because they pretty much monopolized the record collections of little buck-toothed, crew-cut punkers all over the USA. The Minutemen influenced me personally to no end. Pretty soon, skateboarding started to seem ridiculous, and that is when I realized that most of my friends were jocks disguised as punk rock wanna-bes on wheels. Most of these kids went on to play sports in high school. I became a bonafide and proud punk rock nerd. Sell the skateboard...buy more records!!

Around the same time Kurt Cobain was still growing up in Aberdeen smoking pot, getting arrested and sleeping under bridges and stuff, the teenagers of Seattle were wreaking havoc and breaking ordinances on Seattle city streets, either at all-ages teen clubs like 'Skoochie's', or at punk rock shows. Most shows around '84 and '85 seemed to be put on at legion halls, where small-time promoters would rent the hall, and invite about 5 bands, and no one would get paid. These shows were often shut down by the fire department. There was a club in Chinatown that ran under the monikers of Gorilla Gardens, Omni Room and Rock Theatre, overseen by a sleaze-bag slumlord dude named Tony Chu. Bands were never payed very good there. The club would get shut down and reopened as often as every day. Tony Chu eventually moved the club to the Fremont district, which was the site of the Circle Jerks riot in the winter of '85. The fire marshall shut the show down about three songs into the Circle Jerks set, when they were playing "Killing For Jesus". Most of the audience did not like this very much, and they started throwing bottles. Cops came running into the entrance, one way in, one way out, and starting smashing punker's heads with billy clubs. A full-scale riot started, with people smashing things, starting fires in garbage dumpsters. The climax was when a bunch of people tipped a cop car over. I was still too young to go to this show and it was on a school night. My parents and I watched it all on the news that night. I wanted to run out of the house, and go down and see it live!

That's when I decided that I needed to play in a punk rock band, because I was missing too many good shows that older people told me about due to my age and my parental situation…shows at places like Community World Theater in Tacoma and the short-lived UCT Hall in Seattle. Still, I was going and seeing the 'safe' shows at the Hub Ballroom. I saw The Young Fresh Fellows open up for The Meat Puppets there once. I saw The Fallouts open for a Beatles cover band at Lincoln Arts Center. I saw Hüsker Dü play their last show in Seattle there. But these weren't the dangerous shows that I wanted to see...I wanted to see people SLAMDANCE!!! It was young kids like me that constituted the future of Seattle hardcore punk rock...poor, lower middle-class kids from fucked-up backgrounds, raised on MTV, drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure. There was more than this out there somewhere. We just had to grow up to find it.  

Local bands like The Dehuminizers (straight from the "Kill Lou Guzzo" controversy) and The Accused were out on tours, playing fast, belligerent punk rock with stuttered beats, inspired by bands like D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). I put an ad in the Rocket as "Punk guitar player wants to form a band...". Back then, Seattle was still a much-smaller music community, and people were much more friendlier too. I must of had about 30 people call me in the first week. One of them was Steve Roy, brother of Shannon McConnell of The Fallouts. I jammed with Steve, a phenomenal drummer, for a couple of years, mostly Hüsker Dü and Clash covers. We used to watch The Fallouts practice in their basement near their house in Wallingford. Steve and I were also lucky enough to be allowed to watch The Fallouts record their EP "Here I Come" at Reciprocal Studios in Ballard, with a pre-grunge Jack Endino at the board.  

Another person who answered my ad was a guy named Erick Erickson (not the Eric Erickson of 'Squirrels' fame, but the one who drew the cover of the first Dehuminizers 7 inch). I jammed with him for a while, but I think that I was too young and weird for him, and didn't fit into his peer group, as he was about to graduate from high school, and I was still in 8th grade. He did turn me onto bands like Bad Brains, The Vandals, and The Angry Samoans, who became one of my favorite bands, and played a hand in influencing my musical tastes for the next few years upon entering the 9th grade. Other influential things like alcohol, pot, LSD, and various nose drugs played a hand in my future around this time too.  

There was a church in Ballard on 24th Ave. NW, near my friend and future band-mate Chris Tretton's house. There was a hardly-functional multi-track studio in this place, and it also served as a rehearsal studio for bands. I formed a short-lived band pathetically named 'Nuns In Bondage' in the winter of 1986. We would get drunk and try to practice, until one of the guys who ran it, Walter, would come and kick us out so Crisis Party could practice. We used to come down with 40 ouncers of Mickey's and watch Crisis Party practice. Their drummer at the time was Erik Erickson, the guy from the Rocket ad. The other guy who ran this place with Walter was Gordon Raphael, a really nice guy, who went on to produce the first two Strokes records. They also used to throw parties, and bands like The Accused would play there. These would get shut down by the cops very quick. Someone set fire to the church a couple of years later.

I spent high school playing music, and sometime I and my friends would hang out on The Ave to buy drugs and have adults buy alcohol for us. Characters with names like Jimbo, Leggo, and Chuck, would walk up and down the street, whispering, "Acid? Acid? Acid? Acid?..." to passers-by. Fake skinheads who wouldn't know a real skinhead from Telly Savalas terrorized many of the street punks. There was also a local skateboard gang called "The Bopo Boys" who hung out, and eventually merged with the Jaks. These were kids who were either authentic runaways from fucked-up households, or suburban transplants who wanted to run away from their rich daddy and mommy's estates, and be poor. They were affectionately known as 'Ave Rats'. After my friend Chris ran away from home in 1988, he became an Ave Rat, and I spent most of my time hanging out down there with him, until my curfew was up. This is where I became aware of local punk bands much scarier, filthier, and drunker/druggier than the ones I was used to. Many people in these bands who either lived near the Ave in real apartments or were living on the street would congregate at a church up the street every Friday night for "Teen Feed", a volunteer program put on by the church to help the homeless. The food wasn't bad, and we would eat for free so that we'd have beer money for later. 1988 and 1989 were two years full of hanging around, underage drinking, and Teen Feed.

Around this era in 1989, I saw Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Tad at The Moore Theater. At the time, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. I thought that Mudhoney were a MC5 Stooges rip-off (it never occurred to me at the time that they were actually just paying tribute to the bands that they liked), watched Tad eat an egg salad sandwich that someone threw up on stage, and watched as Kurt Cobain suffered through obvious electrical difficulties in his guitar circuitry. I had a flash in the middle of their set, where I was actually drawn in, and I had a feeling that they were probably going to be as famous as Hüsker Dü. Didn't matter! I decided then and there that I was going to denounce everything that Sub Pop stood for...a dumb-ass stupid fucking hype machine. Also, there had been a show on local television called Bombshelter Videos that played mostly Sub Pop and SST videos. I knew that Soundgarden were good, but I just 'didn't want to know' because I was against anything that seemed to be leaning towards the mainstream. I had a punk rock code to live by. All of my personal envy for one of Seattle's greatest times in music history would eventually subside into respect and admiration, but for now- I needed to FUCK SHIT UP!!  

This is around the same time that I joined up with a band called Last Gasp. The other people in this band were all mutual friends of mine, and we would party and hang out with our acquaintances in The Jesters of Chaos at their house in Wallingford. They had a 7 inch vinyl EP out, and had been together for the last five years or so. They were gods to us. It was through this scene that I joined my first real gigging band Last Gasp, with my friend Chris (later known as Diamond C from 'The Midnight Idols'), John Bort (later known as Johnny Abortion from 'Sick And Wrong' who put out a one-off 7 inch EP out on Sub Pop), and our insanely energetic front-man Ajax Wood. We started playing a lot of shows.

We played our first show at The Party Hall in the CD, which eventually turned into the first version of The Twilight Exit. This was in the summer of 1989, and I was still in high school with a mouth full of braces. The lineup was us, Subvert (from Tacoma), and The Accused, who we looked up to. Shit, they were on the same label as the Circle Jerks at the time. Subvert were Tacoma's gutterpunk darlings, with Eric singing, Shawn on guitar, Jerry on bass, and John on drums. They were one of the first D.I.Y. hardcore punk bands from the Northwest besides The Accused that put out a 12 inch vinyl record in Europe, and that was the big time to us. This was a time when even major labels were still mostly putting out vinyl. At the Party Hall, I saw the Treepeople play there, a talented band that later went on to form Built To Spill. I watched bald straight edge boys bounce on trampolines and shoot each other with baby powder and stuff. Really, an interesting and important time in the history of rock and roll.

Natasha's out in Bremerton, notorious for the GBH ferry riot show, was one of the places that we played regularly for shows. It was a rent-able hall, and cops would usually show up and fuck everything up. I saw and played so many shows there, but I was so drunk on Lucky stubbies that I cannot remember most of them. I remember getting on the ferry, but I would never remember coming back. We played there one time, on a Sunday night, opening up for Agnostic Front and The Derelicts, also friends of ours (briefly on Sub Pop). Lori of Spooky Voodoo Productions (later starting Infinite Productions) put the show on. She paid us $10.00 and a half rack of Henry Weinhard Light...IN CANS!!! Back then, we were pissed off, but nowadays, after playing so many shows like this, I realize that it was probably due to the fact that there was not a very good turnout, and Agnostic Front probably had a pretty big guarantee. Nevertheless, back in Seattle, we were becoming rock stars and everyone knew who we were when we walked down the street…so we had to start wearing sunglasses.

(Just kidding…thought that maybe this article would be interesting if I included a lie…)

We also started playing shows at the Washington Hall. They had a fold-able stage that was usually pretty steady, but one of the first shows that I saw there was Poison Idea. The stage creaked and moaned under their combined weight. Pig Champion at one point had to sit down because his side was teetering so bad that it was about to collapse. What a fucking blast these times were. You could walk out to Poison Idea's touring band and drink beer with them. They were nice guys with IQs way higher than you would expect. Washington Hall also was ready to kick skinhead ass if necessary. Orin, king of the scene, and some of his buddies stacked about thirty 2X4s against the door, in case any neo-baldies wanted to fuck with us dirtbags. I saw Neurosis play at Washington Hall too.

A notable ex-Tri-Cities band in this scene that we played with in Seattle more times than I could count, was Aspirin Feast. Mike Fisher, their insane lead singer, was probably about the scariest front man besides David Yow that I have ever seen. Tim, their guitarist, was one of my first local guitar idols. Jim on bass was a complete nutcase, and Joe the drummer was famous for being the crazy mohawked guy on a long-running Washington State Lottery commercial. Through them, we met one of the coolest hardcore punk bands of all time, Christ On A Crutch, who originally hailed from DC, then came to the Tri-Cities (also previous home to Aspirin Feast and many others), then moved to Tacoma, and finally Seattle. We played so many shows and parties with them. Their guitarist/singer, Jerry Brady, became my mentor of everything that was guitar. He introduced me to Thin Lizzy, and made me think twice about how much good music there is out there besides hardcore punk. Their singer Glenn could drink more whiskey than anybody I've ever seen. Their bass player Nate Mendel eventually went onto play with Sunny Day Real Estate, and finally found fortune with the Foo Fighters. Eric Akre was their drummer who hailed from the Tri-Cities, along with his talented sister and vocalist Carrie Akre (Hammerbox, Goodness). C.O.A.C. would probably go down in history for coining the most punk rock album title that anyone had ever come up with in my opinion: "Crime Pays When Pigs Die".

Ron from a straightedge band called Brotherhood put out our first 7 inch, called "Drunkeness and Desperation" on his label Overkill Records in the spring of 1990. We felt like rock stars. We took a little road trip with Christ On A Crutch down to the Tri-Cites (Richland, Kennewick, Pasco WA) right about this time. We crashed in a hotel room that Orin and Jerry from Subvert were sharing. At the show, Orin broke the padlock on the legion hall's liquor storage cabinet. He loaded all of the bottles of booze into the C.O.A.C. van (affectionately known as the "Christburger"). We took off afterwards, and went to some party at some girl's house, while her parents were out of town. Our bass player somehow broke the toilet, cut his hand in the process, and bled all over the bathroom until it looked like a scene out of "Helter Skelter" We were kicked out of the party, and somehow got back to the hotel. Sometime in the night, our drummer Chris and Jerry from Subvert threw beer bottles into the pool (shallow end) and ruined anyone's chances of swimming. The next day, the manager knocked on the door, came in and saw that about 10 people were crashing on the floor. One wall by Orin's bed was covered in green and red loogies. She said "You have thirty minutes to get out of here, or I am calling the cops." Someone also took a dump in the bathtub, which we found out a couple of days later when we made the Tri-Cities Herald due to the liquor theft and the motel vandalism. That was probably the best press that Last Gasp ever got, besides the negative review in Maximum RockNRoll.

Things were starting to get really weird in Seattle, what with this new yarl-filled rock coming out of long-haired bands with shirtless lead singers. I saw it coming, and I started running. Us punk rock idiot fuckups never wanted to famous, and we never wanted to be buried by hair and yarl yarl yarl. The worst was yet to come. We ignored it by consuming copious amounts of shitty beer, and screaming words at the top of our lungs that no one really cared to hear. Soon, within our confined little scene, the music would eventually slow down too, with people starting getting all tribal and dreadlocky, and the simple aesthetic of D.I.Y. hardcore punk, dead to most other localities in the U.S. by 1986, would be infected by a new virus called 'grunge'. The only cure for the infection would be death.  

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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Gettin Loud n Local With Jolene

Gettin Loud n Local With Jolene

Featuring all Pacific Northwest rock is something we have in common with one of our favorite radio shows on the dial. KISW’s Loud and Local on Seattle’s 99.9 FM hosted by the always rockin’ Jolene features and supports local music exclusively from the Puget Sound area. Talking with musicians and bands around town about local radio support, it becomes pretty evident  the role Jolene plays in the Seattle music scene, how popular Loud and Local has become and how appreciative the bands are to have Jolene on their side.

Jolene also features KISW’s “cockfight’s” Loud and Local version which pairs up local artists, plays a song from each then has the listeners vote on which song they liked the best, the band receiving the most votes moving on to the next round. Jolene explains, it’s not really a competition, more of a way to get the local artists music out there and at the same time giving the listeners and fans a chance to interact with each-other and the bands. Nobody really loses, each band gets their music played on air-in front of KISW’s large listener base and everyone wins.

Here’s our interview with KISW’s Jolene. April and Tracey caught up with Jolene at the Zero Down CD release show at The Sunset Tavern.


So how did your Loud and Local show come about?


I actually wasn't the first one to originate it. KISW has always had local shows or shows that showcase local artists for decades now, I took it over in March of 2006 and it’s just been phenomenal. I make the joke that it’s my “pro-bono” stuff but it’s what really replenishes me as somebody that loves music.

How do you pick your featured artists?


 You know what-my biggest thing is I want to be really fair with everybody. There’s no playing favorites, I want to provide something for like, if you like the more mainstream sound-here’s a band for this, if you like more metal, here’s this, if you like something that's more punk leaning, here’s this, if you like something that’s more vintage metal, here’s this. I try to provide a selection of all those things.


What do you like best about the Seattle music scene?


 The camaraderie. It’s the best! It means so much and it’s the way everyone supports one and other. When I’ve done the 9:00 cockfight Loud and Local version, when I play two bands, say one is from Tacoma and one is from Seattle and there’s some similarities there, after the cockfight they end up booking a show together and their fan bases get a chance to cross pollinate. I’ve seen it happen and think that’s pretty cool.


What are a few of your most memorable highlights to date working at KISW, bands or musicians you hung out with, shows, ect?

Where to begin! Chatting up or interviewing: Bruce Dickenson, Rob Halford, Lemmy, Ozzy, Soundgarden n’ AIC guys.  There have been many a good times over the last 7.5 years.  Some of the most magical have been little shows with great friends.  Seeing bands within the local scene get really get tight and become families with one another always sends me over the moon!   


Are there a few local bands you can think of off the top of your head that maybe not a lot of people have heard locally or nationally but you love and feel they have the potential bust out someday soon?


 Sure, in no particular order.  Reignwolf, Sweetkiss Mamma, Mico De Noche, The Mothership, Girl On Fire, Christian Mistress, Elks Blood, Jason Kertson, Sandrider, Hobosexual, Palooka, Countdown To Armageddon.  Just to name a few great locals to check out.

 
I would personally like to see some of that bands that have gone on to big things from this area start to bringing along some of the local smaller bands on tours, or shared show dates to help kind of "give back" to the music scene here. Soundgarden bringing out, maybe All Bets on Death, ect. What are your thoughts on that subject, are the bigger bands still active or active enough with our music scene here in Seattle?


Of course it would be great! Queensryche took out Windowpane, Supersuckers taking out The Spittin’ Cobras.  If it’s our big local guys, awesome.  But getting out on tours with larger scale bands is always huge, local or not.


Talking to a lot of people out at shows and in the music community, Loud and Local is definitely one of the more talked about and popular radio shows right now. Are there any plans or thoughts on expanding the shows role on KISW or even putting it on in more of a prime time slot?


 For now I work with what I got.  The beauty of this day and age is that the show is posted online within 24 hrs of it airing.  You can listen to it whenever you like.  I’ve got podcasts that go back, way back!   http://www2.kisw.com//listen/category/Loud+and+Local


If a local band or musician wants to submit music to Loud and Local how do they go about that and do you have any advice for getting some radio airplay?


Follow the directions to submit.  Send a note with track suggestions and list which songs have profanity.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a slick press pack or just a CD with a letter attached….,.follow the directions! Have I said follow the directions enough?  It’s kind of an issue! Then allow a few weeks and follow up with an email. Jolene!@kisw.com.  Be patient for I wear many hats here at KISW.

Here’s the link! ! http://www.kisw.com/pages/5801985.php

Thank you for the chat Blackhole Magazine you are doing some damn fine work!

Cheers,
Jolene