Early on in the first chapter of the 2014 book NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980-1990 by Tony Rettman there’s a quote from Reagan Youth guitarist “Paul Cripple” that reads:
When I hear the term “mainstream punk” these days, I have to laugh. “Mainstream punk” is a bigger oxymoron than “jumbo shrimp.” How can punk be mainstream? It’s like saying “the good Nazis.” Back then, punk meant that you didn’t care about the arena rock bullshit, you just wanted to play in front of stinky, crusty people – and it still means that today.
Now, with all due respect to Mr.Cripple, who I can only assume was speaking to the author around the time the book was published in the early half of the first decade of this century, some 20+ years after the period the book covers, but his observation of what “punk meant” “back then”, sounds a lot like reading what a 25 year old Pitchfork “journalist” thinks it was like for the average American teen to hear Nirvana for the first time and decide they were “into grunge”, another “genre” that didn’t really exist until it had been suspiciously evaluated, hastily judged and lazily summarized by the mainstream media. The “second wave” of almost any subculture always seems to get it at least a little wrong and the long list of things the “second wave” of punks got wrong (according to those that were “there” for the first wave) could fill a book. In fact, it does. Several books. People can’t stop writing books about this shit. And I read most of ’em for some reason.
The reason I pulled this book out was because I got to reminiscing about my teenage hardcore years after Sam McPheeters made reference (via Instagram) to the seemingly endless number of quick-witted wiseacres who feel the need to bring up the infamous Born Against vs. Sick Of It All WNYU radio debate from 1991 with him every four years when Americans are subjected to a new round of televised Presidential debates. The details of that debate and its aftermath from McPheeter’s perspective, as outlined in his book Mutations, do a pretty good job of summing up the dichotomy of 80’s hardcore as I see it: on one side you have Sick Of It All’s terrifying Koller brothers, Pete and Lou, along with their label representative Steve Martin of In-Effect Records, and on the other side you have McPheeters (born in Ohio, raised in Albany, NY) and his Born Against bandmate Adam Nathanson (from Richmond, VA) along with Charles Maggio, vocalist of NJ “metalcore” band Rorschach. I will lazily summarize the debate as Sick Of It All’s “We’re from the streets. We’re just fighting to survive. Music is all we have. Fuck you for criticizing the way we’ve chosen to conduct our business.” versus Born Against’s “Hardcore is a way of life for kids like us! When you guys conduct your business the way you have been you risk commercializing our culture and inviting in outsiders who will ruin everything we’ve worked so hard for!” How the debate ends is irrelevant here. Buy and read McPheeter’s book for the whole story. The point is, it’s almost amazing there was a literal scheduled debate between these two parties as they sort of perfectly illustrate the “problem” within hardcore as many people saw it from the East Coast to the West Coast and everywhere in between: outsiders who didn’t “get it”. Presumably, what they didn’t “get” was the definition of hardcore and code of conduct/ethics as seen by each individual party in their own VERY specific way. The enemy of pretty much any subculture is often outsiders who aren’t willing to adapt to that subculture’s existing code of conduct/ethics and either force the native participants of the subculture to adapt to their own perception of how things “should be” through sheer physical force or (more often than not) financial means. If a local venue forces you and your friends’ band out and you’re a poor working class kid who had to beg, borrow or steal just to have a musical instrument, your options are pretty limited if you want to continue to participate in hardcore. If you’re a kid from the suburbs who had a choice of instrument to play in your band, money to rent a van to drive your band to the venue in the city or even your own car, money to print up t-shirts and records to sell, if the venue forces you and your friends/ band out, you can just take your money elsewhere, to the next venue in the city or suburbs, or even rent out a space and a PA yourself and literally create your own venue with your own rules and code of conduct/ethics. If the latter happens, you can be sure some of the less financially prosperous bands and fans will be willing to put aside their own ethics, maybe temporarily, to get their foot in the door of your venue/scene but ultimately you can expect the “hardcore reality” of their do-or-die mentality to rear its ugly head and make it clear who’s really in charge here.
Seeing the vast number of iterations of “hardcore” that materialized post-1980 all over the world begs the question: was hardcore ever really a tough, working-class youth movement to begin with, and if it wasn’t, how did participants “decide” it was? Was it less “deciding” and more being “convinced” by tough, working-class kids who were used to fighting for what they believed? It’s always been funny to me that one record that’s often pointed at by music scholars as stylistically “the first hardcore record” is by a band called “The Middle Class”. The definition of “punk” to four white teenagers from Santa Ana, California in 1978, and its definition according to to four African-American men in Washington, DC the same year who called themselves “Bad Brains”, probably share some similarities, sure, but just as their social realities differed, so did their approaches to punk and their very different trajectories of style and eventual involvement in particular sub-genres of punk. At the risk of making a bold observation here: it seems like “punk” and whatever it was initially manifested itself among various types of young people in urban areas, hardcore punk materialized much more quietly in the same areas, was picked up just as quietly by suburban youths and then made its way back into those urban areas riding shotgun in the cars the suburban kids parents bought for them. Stylistically hardcore became so specific so fast compared to punk rock, it was virtually unmistakable anywhere it appeared in the world in the 1980’s whether it was upper, middle or lower-class communities. Unlike punk rock, hardcore pretty much existed as a set of rules and style from the get go and those rules were passionately enforced by its participants in a way the “original” punks never bothered to. In fact, many would argue it wasn’t even “punk” at all to enforce or even acknowledge a set of rules. Hardcore virtually depended on it. The working-class kids in Sick Of It All and the suburban interlopers in Born Against were equally as passionate in defending (enforcing?) their respective definitions of hardcore punk but were ultimately on opposite sides of an argument that was inevitably going to be settled by who had the most to lose in the form of income, reputation or teeth.
So who the hell is Artacus Eaght? Well, good question. And my follow-up question to that is, “If you have a scene that’s been hyper-analyzed and discussed for decades and even has a 384 book and multiple documentaries dedicated to it, why is it so hard to find any information on a band from College Point, Queens, NY who self-released a very good hardcore punk cassette and vinyl LP in 1985, less than one year after Agnostic Front released Victim In Pain, and one year before the Cro-Mags released Age of Quarrel?” Stylistically, Artacus Eaght fits right in with the aforementioned bands with a sound that leans ever so slightly towards West Coast acts like Ill Repute and some of the Mystic Records roster at the time. Lyrically, they couldn’t be more similar to bands like Agnostic Front who, at the time, were often criticized for right-leaning sentiments towards social issues. On the song “Murderers” Artacus Eaght’s unnamed vocalist proclaims:
I know you think you’re vicious waving a gun/But have you ever tried that act when it was just one on one?/I wanna know who the fuck you think you are to wanna watch somebody else die/People say he’s got a problem society must try to help him/But I say you’re shit.
Of the very few references to Artacus Eaght on the interent that exist, the most significant might be an archived review of a cassette release by them (which shares the same title as the LP, so perhaps it’s just a cassette copy of the LP sent in for review? A pre-release?) from Maximumrocknroll issue #17 from September of 1984. The reviewer, MRR founder and idealogical despot Tim Yohannan, reviews the cassette thusly:
Attempting to extract the wickedness from society without crushing that society” is ARTACUS EAGHT’s credo. They do this by thrashing and noising their way through a variety of subjects. This mission isn’t too melodic or artistic, but then these demons need a good whuppin’ anyway. – TY
It was also in a 1984 issue of Maximumrocknroll when Yohannan went after Agnostic Front in its pages, proclaiming, “the N.Y. Skins apparently have embraced the British National Front’s racist and nationalist attitudes.” Yohannan, an avowed leftist, was very vocal about his own idealistic view of what “punk” meant and his view that the principal leaders of the NYHC scene in the 1980’s, including Agnostic Front, directly contradicted his definition of punk through both words and actions. In another issue of Maximumrocknroll from March of 1985 Yohannan wrote, “If it’s just ‘good sounding’ music you want, then punk is no alternative at all. For me, what makes punk different is the intelligence and commitment behind it.” So why was Agnostic Front wrong and Artacus Eaght able to get a “pass” from Yohannan? Or did he eventually change his mind a year after reviewing the “Mission Impossible” cassette? And what about these “intelligent” and “committed” punks Yohannan aligned himself with? Were they stinky and crusty enough to also get a pass from fellow Professor of Punk Ideology Paul Cripple? Was it “punk” to even really care?
Perhaps I’m (literally) reading too much into a very short review from 1984 that I only know exists because I was scouring the internet for information on a mysterious hardcore record from Queens, NY in 1985. But maybe I’m not? Between Yohannan and Born Against and Sick Of It All and Agnostic Front, we’re talking some pretty strong personalities with some pretty strong opinions on a subject, hardcore punk, that seemed to mean life or death to all involved (at least at the time.) I’m sure there are a handful of people out there, many within a mile or two from my apartment in Brooklyn, who could shed some light on Artacus Eaght, who they were, how they were received, and maybe why no one has bothered to bring them up in any of the books, films or articles on NYHC that have been produced in the past 2+ decades. The lyrics to the songs on the LP appear plain as day on the back of the wonderfully DIY handmade sleeve that houses the record, so there’s no way Yohannan could’ve ignored them (unless they weren’t included with the cassette?). So why did they fit his definition of hardcore punk? Why was Agnostic Front the enemy and not Artacus Eaght, who clearly had more in common with their Lower East Side-raised brothers than they did with a former Yippie like Yohannan? In a scene with such rich history and fans with a seemingly insatiable appetite for the minutiae of every single aspect of it, why don’t we know more about Artacus Eaght?
Normally I wouldn’t write about a record without being able to provide at least a sample of what it sounds like, if for no other reason than to be able to give some perspective to you, the reader. MP3s of the entire cassette/LP (assuming they’re the same thing) are available for download on Soulseek if you’re the kinda person who knows how to use that platform. I personally can’t get the latest Mac version to work at all so unfortunately I am currently unable to provide. If anyone has an upload or wants to throw a song or two on Youtube, I will happily update this post with the link. Thanks.
