I was having lunch with my dad yesterday and he asked me, “Hey, I saw some famous professional skateboarder passed away the other day? Did you know who he was?” He was referring to Keith Hufnagel, pro skateboarder and founder of streetwear apparel brand Huf who passed away at age 46 after a two and a half year battle with brain cancer. The day his death was announced, I was reminiscing with some friends and it came as no surprise that more than one of them misremembered the skateboard team he rode for in the 90’s as Zoo York. The reason for the error was pretty apparent: Hufnagel may have joined his first pro team, Real Skateboards, after moving to California in 1992, but he was born and raised in NYC and his skating style, no matter where he was in the world, reflected an 80’s upbringing skating gritty, imperfect spots in the Five Boroughs and Long Island. As a skater growing up in the suburbs outside New York during the same time, the sleek West Coast terrain I saw being skated in Thrasher and TransWorld and in videos was a far cry from my reality: cracked sidewalks, ancient pavement and very few skateparks (and none that were free). Before the Zoo York team’s debut video in the late 90’s Hufnagel was one of just a few “true NYC” street skaters us East Coast kids had to look up to. In 1990 at age 15 I was still entertaining the possibility that one day I’d be good enough to go pro and seeing Huf destroying spots in San Francisco, San Diego and LA had me dreaming of being able to move there to skate some day. I probably wouldn’t have admitted this back then but thanks to Thrasher, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll and skate videos like H-Street’s “Hocus Pocus” the skate and punk scenes seemed not only more intertwined on the West Coast, but just more fun, more positive than where I lived. For some reason I thought things were different, more…chill on the West Coast. It just seemed like being into punk and skating was a lot more acceptable there.
The summer of my sophomore year in high school I was thrilled to hear that my parents were planning a family trip to San Diego. (I was less thrilled to hear that we’d be traveling with my family dentist, but that’s another story.) Seeing as there wasn’t much of an interent in 1993 I did my best to come up with a list of punk and skateboarding-related destinations to hit while in San Diego. (I seem to remember the purchase of a “Sex Wax” t-shirt was high on my list). I don’t remember the names of the record stores I managed to make it to but I definitely remember some of the records I bought: “There’s A Dyke In the Pit” comp 7″ on Outpunk, the Ne’er Do Wells 7″ on Lookout! and the “Where Are They Now File” bootleg comp 7″ with my favorite Nomeansno song ever. The thing I remember the most though was the first day I left the house we were staying at which was just a block or two from the beach and a few skate shops. Walking down the street beneath the palm trees and seeing the gleaming, perfectly square red-painted curbs and 1000% skate-able low concrete ledges separating the sidewalks and homes, I had goosebumps. I didn’t even have the courage to hop on my board and start skating, I just needed to take it all in. Then, as I approached a large intersection right across the street from the entrance to the beach, as I waited for the light to change I heard an unmistakable sound every skater recognizes: urethane wheels rolling on pavement. Across the street I saw a kid probably 2-3 years older than me wearing huge Kris Markovich style pants, a backwards baseball hat and a size XXXXL t-shirt just going for it, pushing like there was no tomorrow, flying down the sidewalk like he was shooting through space. I was in awe of the first Cali skater I had ever seen. Then, as he approached the intersection at full speed and the sidewalk in front of him sloped downwards into the incline leading to the street, the front wheels of his board hit the seam in between two sidewalk panels forcing the board to a complete stop, sending the skater forward into the air, past the edge of the sidewalk, and into the middle of the intersection where his body made another unmistakable sound every skater knows: raw meat and bones hitting pavement at full speed. His body didn’t even skid forward with momentum as you would expect. He just ::THWAP:: hit the pavement and stayed there, motionless. I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, I guess the sidewalks in California suck too.”
Just a year later a friend of mine told me about a “hardcore” label from San Diego called Gravity Records and played me records by Heroin, Unwound and Antioch Arrow. I was already a fan of Born Against and Huggy Bear via other channels and I was told they too had records on Gravity. By the time I figured out how to find records on Gravity I learned they were already dozens of releases deep and I was completely overwhelmed. I was also extremely frustrated to realize that all of these bands and records were happening during the week I spent in San Diego a year prior and I was too busy walking around in circles trying to get up the nerve to step onto the skateboard I was carrying around and discussing whether it was ethical to sell “This Is Not A Fugazi T-Shirt” shirts with uninterested record store employees. I blew it.
If Discogs is accurate, Gravity Records released almost twenty records in the years 1991-1994. A very prolific number for a label that was releasing a mutant strain of post-hardcore unfamiliar to most people outside of San Diego and a few other pockets across the country. I think it’s safe to say that anyone reading this blog will agree that it was during this time when the term “emo” first reared it’s ugly blue-black dyed Romulan haired head and was used to describe post-hardcore acts influenced by DC bands like Rites of Spring , Embrace and even Nation of Ulysses in sound, style and stage antics. “Emo” as it was known then even mutated a bit before eventually somehow hitching a ride on a bus headed out on the Warped Tour and before you knew it “emo” went from Second Story Window and Indian Summer to Saves the Day to My Chemical Romance and Paramore. If you were to tell me in 1993 that “emo” would eventually be some kind of Halloween costume hybrid of Japanese anime and “Nightmare Before Christmas” characters I would have probably…nodded politely and walked away.
Looking back at the Gravity catalog I can honestly say there’s a handful of releases that changed my life during my teen years in one way or another and when some of the West Coast bands on Gravity and Ebullition and Repercussion and the like came through the East Coast on tour my mind was blown even more. By that time plenty of bands and labels with similar sensibilities had popped up in various East Coast cities and it was suddenly no longer just a trend but a “scene” of sorts. A strain of hardcore completely removed from tough guy bullshit and actually a little vulnerable and self-aware. I could definitely relate more to some scrawny kid with his hair dyed black and horn rimmed glasses than I could with a guy with tattoos and a varsity jacket that could bench press a Marshall amp. The hardcore of Gravity and Gern Blandsten was lo-fi, messy and raw while the hardcore of Revelation and Victory became more and more clean, seamless and precise as metal became more and more of an influence. Of course, to say a lot of the “emo” hardcore I loved when I was 17 doesn’t hold up now would be an understatement. Even though what’s passed for “emo” the past 20 years has barely any connection to the music that popularized the term originally (save for some questionable haircuts and bad poetry), revisiting some of that music now that I’m in my 40’s I find myself interested in aspects of it I don’t think I had any perspective of when I was a teenager. For instance: Gravity Records #16 The Fucking Angels/Vicious Ginks split LP from 1995.
The Fucking Angels/Vicious Ginks LP took me by surprise because what I was not expecting from Gravity was a record with two bands that sounded more like Slant 6 and The Makers (respectively) than the feedback-laden chaotic hardcore they were usually serving up. Aesthetically, however, both bands fit perfectly into the same world as Heroin and the like stylistically. Vicious Ginks were (in my mind) a garage band with emo hardcore style. Kindred spirits like One-Eyed Richard & the Goddamn Liars (who were on the same label as Honeywell and would eventually morph into Los Cincos) and Austin, TX’s Carbomb shared the same lo-fidelity, chaotic garage punk sound that wasn’t too far removed from Nation of Ulysses. “Garage rock” had a completely different meaning in the 90’s and if you didn’t play your cards right, delving into the world of garage could lead you to a room full of guys dressed like Fonzie with very serious opinions on “authenticity”. The garage element of a band like Vicious Ginks probably wasn’t very appealing to someone satisfied with the 300th Sonics reenactment to sign to Estrus that year. And now, in 2020, when the garage “scene” is pretty much just a shadow of what it was back then, the music of a band like Vicious Ginks is (in my opinion) far more enjoyable (and much less dated) than their older, more authentic garage contemporaries. What I find even more enjoyable a listen is the somewhat mysterious one-sided LP by The Lames that was released on San Diego label Negative Records in or around 1992-93. While the album title and liner notes of the Lames LP would lead you to believe it’s a document of recordings made by the band in 1974 and 1975, the recordings were actually contemporary at the time. The Lames was a short-lived San Diego band which included four members who would all go on to play in Vicious Ginks. If Vicious Ginks sound like a well-studied but immaturely recorded garage band, The Lames’ musical point of reference is much less clear. Out of context, the songs on The Lames LP are pretty close to the noisy bedroom pop of the K Records variety with slightly nasally-punk vocals and primitive drumming. The closest The Lames ever get to “garage” is a blues riffs here and there. Some riffs are clearly born out of surf rock-influenced punk bands like the Dead Kennedys but the swirls of noise and phone booth-recorded drums drown out any possibility of the band ever sounding slick in any way. While I’d love to ask someone in the band what they were listening to, what they were “going for” when they recorded these songs, I also think whatever their answer would be would detract from my fantasy of these kids thinking they sound like the Swell Maps or Screamin’ Mee-Mees or The Urinals. It’s San Diego in the 90’s after all, maybe their parents were “cool” in the 70’s and the Lames kids grew up listenin’ to the Nuggets comps and Hasil Adkins? I guess I don’t want to know after all. The DIY/lo-fi/bedroom punk/whatever you wanna call it joyful pop chaos of The Lames makes as much sense now as it probably did then. There’s nothing on the LP that sounds dated because it doesn’t sound of any particular time. You could tell me this was recorded yesterday and I wouldn’t flinch. The final track on the record, “John Henery” (sic) is a straightforward reading of the folk tale by the lead singer over a lumbering instrumental that sounds like it could be Unwound sound checking in 1995. That “John Henry” is a folk story that’s been told hundreds and thousands of times in just as many ways by just as many people, it’s a fitting way to end a record that while timeless in some ways, also paints a picture of a time and place and a little scene in San Diego whose narrative was probably very different for the people that lived it than it was for those that watched from afar, like myself. Vicious Ginks was really exciting to me back then because they made me think that’s what San Diego sounded like at the time. Being even farther removed from that time and having a little more perspective on it makes a record like the Lames even more exciting and makes me wonder what on earth was going through those kids’ heads when they recorded it. Some internet digging makes it seem like The Lames LP doesn’t pop up for sale that much and seeing as there were only 200 pressed in the early 90’s to begin with, that makes sense. The Vicious Ginks records still look pretty available and there’s even a more detailed story of both bands right here, exactly where you’d expect it to be: on Italian Facebook.
I looked and looked and couldn’t find The Lames LP online. I’ll update the post with a rip soon…. In the meantime:
