![]() ![]() We spray-painted our names everywhere, and got in fights, and got chased by jocks, and we ran from cops. Why was Boston so aggro and militant about straight edge? I don’t know – maybe because Boston is a tough freakin’ town! We had tough guys in our crew. He had a fucking manifesto! No other kid in America had a manifesto! He wrote a manifesto, “The Choice,” that was published in Glen E. He was the focus.Īl had massive X’s on the back of his hands, and he wore the jacket with “The Straight Edge” in big letters on the back. He knew all the guys in all the other scenes, and he was the ringleader in Boston. He was one of the guys who organized and led the charge. He has a competitive and aggressive personality, and I’m sure there was a degree of one-upmanship in him.Īl had his own gravitational pull. ![]() Al was and is a very strong, directed, and creative person. The only reason I can give for why straight edge took off like it did in Boston is Al Barile. As they say in the gym, “Every day the weights are the same the only thing different is you.” A lot of the guys played competitive sports before they found hardcore, or at least lifted weights. If some touring band came in with a new Marshall amp, the next month we would have four full stacks. If some new wave band put up a hundred flyers for their show, SSD would put up a thousand. We ran with that, because everything that the Boston Crew did, we did full-on. There were also shows at Media Workshop and Gallery East.īoston has always had this flinty, old-school work ethic. The Rathskeller, or the Rat, had one or two shows before the bouncers beat up all the kids for slam dancing, and the club stopped having hardcore shows. After summer camp, the first or second SSD show happened. I was working at Newbury Comics everything was punk when I left for summer camp, and everything was hardcore when I came back. I missed the infamous first Black Flag show in Boston at the Paradise, since I was away at summer camp. They were the first band that were really getting out there and doing it, especially in terms of being a straight edge band.īoston was just like every other city in America in 1981 Black Flag came to town and the entire world shifted. They should be recognized as the bedrock of the Boston hardcore scene. SS Decontrol stood for “Society System Decontrol,” and they were already a band by the time I moved from D.C. He always had a way of getting into every show. The first time I laid eyes on Springa was at an Elvis Costello show in 1979, when he was probably twelve years old. He was a scenester in Boston we would see him at shows all the time. When it wasn’t working out with Joe, we decided to ask David Spring, AKA Springa, to be our singer. I think that’s how we got our drummer Chris Foley as well. I’m pretty sure we got Joe Mueller as a vocalist through an ad we put in the Boston Phoenix. Joe Mueller was the original singer for SS Decontrol, before they ended up getting Springa to sing. The first SS Decontrol practices went on in my grandmother’s house. It starts with one and you hope to get two, and hope to get three, and then just hope that the numbers grow.Ĭatherine Goldman, AKA Katie the Cleaning Lady After that trip, I was resolute in making sure that I set an example in all facets of my life. SS Decontrol was already going by the time we went on that trip to New York. We exchanged phone numbers and pretty quickly got together and started fumbling around. I was a bass player trying to do the same thing. When Al and I bumped into each other again the second time the Dead Kennedys played in Boston, he said he was a guitar player trying to get a band together. I felt that if they didn’t want to deliver the message, I would. ![]() My feeling was that it was a very important thing. I didn’t live there, and I can’t be sure, but my impression was that only a few people there didn’t drink or take drugs. Straight edge was never a movement with D.C., which people don’t understand. I know he believed in straight edge on a personal level, but whether he wanted it to be what it is today – I don’t think that was ever his intention. I respect Ian immensely, and I was always kind of surprised that he didn’t embrace the subject. We were all isolated, so we were always looking for kids in other cities to share this with. Al wrote me a letter very early on saying how much he loved the Teen Idles and Minor Threat, and that he was down for straight edge. ![]()
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