The first time I ever saw a Born Against record was at Rhymes Records in New Haven, CT in 1991. I was 15 or 16. It was on a new release rack next to “Steady Diet of Nothing” by Fugazi, which is what I had come to buy. I was sure the BA record was “punk” but everything about it just confused me, including the “Mark Twain” byline on the back cover. One of the song titles had the word “fuck” in it so it seemed sorta promising but I still put it back because I had no idea what it was. The shop owner told me I was making a mistake buying the Fugazi record instead of Born Against and I probably just politely nodded and smiled and said, “Uhhh, ok thanks.” in the hopes that the conversation would end so I could leave. On a previous visit to this store the same clerk had happily sold me Skrewdriver’s “White Rider” LP which had been recommended by an older acquaintance who I realized (after I got home and played it) was fucking with me. I wasn’t ready to take any more recommendations from these mutants. Especially when it was a record called “Nine Patriotic Hymns For Children” with a huge American flag on the cover.
Fast forward to a few weeks later and I’m at Trash American Style in Danbury, CT and pretty much the same thing happens. Luckily they also had a few Born Against 7″s that looked much more promising so I bought those instead and was assured by Malcolm or whoever rang me up that I had made a wise decision. They were correct.
From that point on I bought anything that Sam McPheeter’s name was on, anything he released on his label and pretty much anything that he endorsed by proxy. I was already a Maximum R&R reader by the time I discovered his music but I can’t remember when I realized that the singer of BA was the guy from the very weird column. I did learn of McPheeter’s tendency to (in more modern terms) “troll” a lot of people who I had previously thought intellectually invincible, like the guys in Sick of It All and the entire NYHC scene. This was my type of punk/hardcore hero. When I was 12 and just getting into punk rock, Jello Biafra was who I looked up to. By the time I started going to shows and got laughed at by the sXe/HC elites of the Tri-State Hardcore Alliance for wearing a Dead Kennedys shirt, I was left confused and without an obnoxious shit-stirrer to look up to. McPheeters fit that bill, and his music and writing made me feel smarter than the people around me who were still debating the coolness of Hare Krishna beaded necklaces and Earth Crisis lyrics. Along with Born Against, Vermiform and NY/NJ labels like Gern Blandsten and Wardance, I was also just learning more about what was happening on the west coast with labels like Gravity, Ebullition, Vinyl Communications, etc. It was like a whole new world had opened up and I no longer had to pretend to care how many pressings of the Turning Point 7″ there were. These labels weren’t releasing just “serious” hardcore and punk, they were releasing stuff that was interesting, challenging, weird, unpretentious, fun. I had found some back issues of McPheeters “controversial” zine Dear Jesus and I was elated when he followed it up with the broadsheet format Error. I first learned about conceptual artist Chris Burden in Error and McPheeter’s article both horrified and enthralled me. A few years after it was published I pestered some poor soul in the arts department at some random midwestern university to sell me a VHS copy of Burden’s films for less than the $500 “academic price” listed on the school website. His email response said something like “OK, look, just give me your address and I’ll send you a copy. Just don’t tell anyone I did this.” (I still have it and as promised I never made anyone a copy despite numerous requests after I bragged about it).
McPheeters moved to Providence, RI right around the same time a group of friends and ex-roommates of mine from my college years also moved there. My friends settled down in an industrial loft space about 20 yards away from the building that would become Fort Thunder. I visited my friends and the Fort often and seeing McPheeters output with Men’s Recovery Project as well as Vermiform releasing many of the artists in the Providence scene (the “Fruited Other Surfaces” comp is still a favorite of mine) was pretty amazing to experience in real time. His spoken word split 5″ with Catholic Church where he performs Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech is still one of my favorite releases from that time mainly because of how much it annoyed and confused a few people I knew. I even remember hearing a rumor that when McPheeters and his label were unfairly evicted from the quasi-legal space he was occupying in Providence he had punched holes in the walls and inserted several cans worth of Vienna sausages to piss off the landlord. God I hope that’s true. Please don’t tell me if it’s not.
Another favorite McPheeters project was his earlier 1995 collaboration with San Diego’s Tit Wrench “Ok You Homos, Out of the Car”. The 7″ is a great listen on its own and McPheeter’s vocals on a few songs are similar to the more straightforward punk rock tracks he made with Men’s Recovery Project. The real Easter egg here though is the CD single version of the same release which contains no less than 99 tracks that stretch the 7″ release into an almost 1 hour length album. I first discovered this when I popped the CD in to play at the record store I was working at and I thought the machine was broken. (Also, the fact that a few tracks are literally just the sound of CD skipping didn’t help either) I am very pleased to report that entire release is available on Spotify.
I recently got to digging out old issues of Error and Dear Jesus and various records after reading McPheeter’s book “Mutations: The Many Strange Faces of Hardcore Punk.” I actually started this blog right around the time I was halfway through the book and I had to laugh as I never really tried writing before and I could already sense a lot of my weaknesses, and McPheeters writes pretty much exactly how I wish I could write. Whether he’d like to hear it or not, McPheeters is still a hero of mine for no other reason than he helped make hardcore and punk “fun” for me at a time when it had started to make me feel unwelcome. Reading “Mutations” I was reminded of the same sense of humor that had initially drawn me in, even though it’s probably a little less acerbic and/or antagonistic as it once was. McPheeters has been pretty open of his own distaste for many of his words and actions during the periods when I first discovered his music and writing. Regardless, for me it doesn’t discount the fact that he was one of a handful of people I admired who made me realize the strict rules of “hardcore punk” were not only made to be broken, the people who made the rules and tried to enforce them should be humiliated, bullied, laughed at and ultimately ignored and left to their own miserable devices while the rest of us enjoyed ourselves. Maybe that’s a simplistic way of putting it, but that’s pretty much how simple it seemed to me back then.
Buy “Mutations” direct from the publisher Rare Bird
Follow Sam McPheeters on Instagram and try to convince him to give an IG Live conversation with Adam from BA another go
