Hardcore Architecture

May 13, 2015 9:03 AM

"Hardcore Architecture explores the relationship between the architecture of living spaces and the history of underground American hardcore bands in the 1980s."
posted by Sokka shot first (18 comments total)

Thanks for sharing this! I wasn't expecting it to be this fascinating. I wish they had historical Street View since I suspect some of these houses were teardowns.
posted by town of cats at 9:06 AM on May 13, 2015

yeah, hard core was nothing if not classless ... as long as you were hardcore. With the caveat that it was the guys (they were mostly guys) who came from rich families being more likely to die of a heroin overdose. They could afford the shit.
posted by philip-random at 9:20 AM on May 13, 2015

It's quite likely that a lot of these houses looked quite different back in the 80s. In the London, Ontario hardcore scene c. 87-88 there were two band houses where we 16 year-old punks used to hang out with the OG punks and skinheads. The Condo Christ house was a crappy little bungalow that looks like it's actually been replaced by condos, and the Spurm Count house was a formerly grand Victorian that was half ruined - e.g. one room upstairs had no roof over it, just a flapping tarp. Now it's an expressway. Wretched places, and a wretched way to live (apart from a few runaways us kids had clean, weathertight houses to go home to of which I'm sure we were all thankful), but it was a a pretty friendly scene, with a few notorious, skinheaded exceptions.
posted by Flashman at 10:01 AM on May 13, 2015

This is great.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:02 AM on May 13, 2015

Awesome post, and it led me to track down that Pussy Galore full-album cover of Exile on Main Street, which I have to say is terribly glorious.
posted by Huck500 at 10:33 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love how arbitrary yet enticing this is.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:46 AM on May 13, 2015

Coffin Break!
posted by intermod at 10:58 AM on May 13, 2015

One of the reasons i could never embrace the American 'hardcore' scene was the sense that these were just bored, entitled middle class kids with adrenaline to burn, rather than disaffected, marginalized youth with a message.
Nothing about this dissuades me from that opinion.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:05 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

OHenryPacey: I think you're basically right about a lot of the fan-base for hardcore, and definitely about the later waves of hardcore that spread out across the country in the late 80s early 90s. But the heart of the early hardcore scenes that inspired the fans and suburban copy cat acts (it was definitely mostly a suburban scene at a certain point--Suburban Voice, one of the big hardcore zines, admitted as much in its name) seemed like it was working class urban, with hardcore cropping up in working class parts of D.C., Brooklyn, and Boston, then sort of spreading from those areas to the suburbs. That's the impression I got as a kid anyway.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:44 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

It is possible to be a bored, entitled middle class kid with adrenaline to burn, and be a disaffected, marginalized youth with a message. The bands I would go see and hang out with sang about nuclear war, Ronald Reagan, Nicaragua, the PMRC, Margaret Thatcher, nuclear war, native rights, the environment, and nuclear war. My friends and I were in a very earnest organization called 'Students United for Nuclear Sanity' formed by one of our elders; we'd go to marches for nuclear disarmament and against clearcut logging. The preps, jocks, headbangers etc didn't bother to learn or give a shit about any of this stuff but we sure did.
posted by Flashman at 11:49 AM on May 13, 2015 [10 favorites]

OMG these are My People.
posted by axoplasm at 1:56 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Youtube is getting one helluva workout right now. Born Without a Face!
posted by NoMich at 2:12 PM on May 13, 2015

The same for the UK hardcore scene would be all red brick terraced houses, back to backs or 1930's semis.
posted by asok at 3:39 PM on May 13, 2015

Huh I thought Cringer was from the Bay.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:36 PM on May 13, 2015

The same for the UK hardcore scene would be all red brick terraced houses, back to backs or 1930's semis.

I don't know what any of those words mean. But I want to see them.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:36 PM on May 13, 2015

Oh god this is fantastic. And one of the buildings is a couple of blocks away from where I live now.
posted by bibliogrrl at 5:59 PM on May 13, 2015

Huh, didn't expect to see Oshkosh here! I learned some really neat history about the architecture when I was visiting Oshkosh in April - unlike a lot of shrinking midwestern cities, since it's also a college town with a growing population of undergrads, there was a simple solution to all the gorgeous Victorian homes sitting empty, which is that they've been bought up by landlords and rented as 3-9(!) bedroom student residences. My guess is that it explains a few of the midwestern groups living in really large and historic houses.

All of this may be obvious to anyone but a clueless city kid like me, of course, it's just hard to comprehend how cheap square footage is elsewhere in the world.

DC 20011 still has a pretty active hardcore scene, which is awesome.
posted by capricorn at 6:31 PM on May 13, 2015

This was unexpectedly interesting. I ordered more than a few tapes, 7"s, and LPs out of MRR in about that era (maybe a year later than the issues the photos are referencing). It was a really basic process -- send a few dollars and maybe some stamps to some random address, and usually a package wrapped in an unreasonable amount of tape would arrive a few weeks later. I never really thought about it at the time, but quite a few suburban moms must have laughed to see letters arriving addressed to "Fuckstick Records" or whatever goofy name some teenager thought was cool.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:08 PM on May 13, 2015