Honk if you love hardcore

Some stuff I've been listening to and a new novel update

Rad records, hometown heroes, and blasts from the past

While many of these bands are new to me, they may not be new to you. Feel free to share your memories and point me to the good stuff. Have you been listening to something that’s got its hooks in you and won’t let go? Share it in the comments! I’ve been promising this for a while so here goes…

When I was presenting Do What You Want in Barcelona last month, I met a musician named Marc who told me about a post-punk band he’d been a member of in the ‘90s called Childhood. The band was part of the Barcelona indie music scene and even played with Fugazi in 1995. I told Marc I would check it out and instead of pointing me to the Bandcamp page below he went out of his way to drop off some records at our hotel, including the recent-ish Alfa & Omega, which collects some of the bands early releases. Beautiful.

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon Excel but they’re a thrash metal band from Venice, California, that played up and down the SoCal coast throughout the late ’80s and were on the edge of so many different styles. In some songs you can hear the funk metal that would come to define RHCP and other songs are straight up hardcore. Guitarist Adam Seigel lays down sick riff after sick riff. Some believe that Metallica flat out stole “Enter Sandman” from them, which came out two years after the release of “Tapping into the Emotional Void.” You decide.

Bad Trip is another band I stumbled open. I was trying to think of a name for a fictional hardcore band that was active in the early ’90s for my novel and landed on Bad Trip. My first thought was, “Someone has to have taken this name already.” Lo and behold I was right. The name had been taken by hardcore band that was active in the early ’90s. (I swear, sometimes it feels like this novel is writing me. More on that below…) In any case, I really loved what I heard from this band from Queens and after reading this comprehensive interview in No Echo, the hardcore enthusiast’s bible, I’m ready to go on a deeper dive into their catalog. Here’s an excerpt:

“We did a tour of Europe in the fall of 1992. Unfortunately, the record wasn't out yet, so very few people at the shows knew any of our songs. Doesn't matter. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. We had some of the worst experiences you could imagine, straight out of Spinal Tap and worse—including van crashes, Nazi skinhead attacks, fights, cancelled shows, getting deported, some of the most lowdown squats in Europe, lost a lot of money. But we had some amazing positive experiences, including so many memorable shows. The crowds were so much fun. We were one of the earlier American bands to play Poland, and they were so excited to see any American punk band.”

Speaking of Poland, when I was camped out at NNNW HQ in Nowy Tart, my host turned me on to all kinds of cool music. Two of the bands that really stood out were Polish hardcore legends Dezerter and French political punkers La Fraction. I have no idea what they’re saying, but I could listen to this record all day…

One band I missed out on seeing while I was in Europe was the French band Turquoise. If you didn’t get your copy of the Circle Jerks/Descendents split with each band covering the other’s tunes, you blew it. The records are sold out and they’re not streaming online, but it rules. However, it’s not too late to pick up the new album by Chula Vista’s Take Offense. It’s called T.O.tality and they’re on tour now. I’ve been listening to a lot of End It in preparation of the Drain show in LA next month and I’m low-key obsessed with “The Comeback.”

I’m heading to Las Vegas tomorrow for two very different reasons: to see Dead & Company at the Sphere and to see Devo one last time at Punk Rock Bowling. (Devo isn’t disbanding, but they are no longer touring.) I’ll have a lot to say about both performances in the days and weeks ahead, but can you guess which one I’m looking forward to? Seeing the Ramones was my punk rock baptism, but listening to Devo primed the pump for a lifetime of listening to music outside the mainstream. I mean look at these guys…

Black Van

I hit a milestone on my novel-in-progress yesterday when I finished Part II. I’ve been working on Part II since December of last year. I thought it was going to be about 15,000 words and take me no more than a month to write, but it ended up being nearly three times that long—about 175 pages. Since I’ve been posting updates on my progress fairly regularly, I thought I’d share the working title with you: Black Van.

Why Black Van? The story is about a musician who disappears on the way to a show in the California desert in 1993 and the only thing that’s recovered is his van. Thirty years later, the musician’s best friend, a punk rock zine writer who’s had a string of bad years, tries to solve the mystery. The novel is about a lot of things: sex, drugs, and death by overdose are some of the main attractions. It’s a little shaggy, a little vision questy, and tackles what it means to be a punk in post-Nirvana America—both then and now.

Black Van is the working title. I like working titles that remind me what the book is about every time I open the file. For example, the working title of Forest of Fortune was The Haunted Casino. That was a little too Nancy Drew for what I was going for, but the working title served as a constant reminder that I was writing a ghost story. Black Van is a psychic reminder not to crawl too far up my own ass or wander too far from the story. Black Van is a mystery.

Last weekend I had the honor of reading at Small Press Nite, a great reading series in San Diego run by Kevin Kearney and held at The Book Catapult. I read the opening pages of the novel and a scene from the end of the first chapter. The response was terrific and provided some validation that I’m on to something good. I told Seth (Hi Seth!) at Book Catapult earlier in the week that compared to Part I, Part II had been struggle, and he suggested that maybe the reading would provide me with the momentum to finish Part II. That’s exactly what happened.

Good timing or something else? Honestly, I don’t know anymore. There have been so many weird coincidences during the writing of this book I’m not sure what to think anymore. I’ve already mentioned the strange synchronicity with the city of Norco in Riverside County, but check this out: At the end of Part I, the narrator is getting ready to drive to Las Vegas to go to the Punk Rock Museum to check on a clue to his friend’s disappearance. Now, as I get ready to start Part III, guess where I’m heading tomorrow?

I’ve been to Punk Rock Bowling more times than I can count so this isn’t that unusual, but I had no plans to go this year until my brother invited me to see Dead & Company a few months ago. Coincidence? Life imitating art? Spooky action at a distance? I’m not going to question it. I’m just going to lean into it. What can I say? If I see you in Las Vegas this weekend, you might end up in the novel.

Gratitude

Thank you for reading Message from the Underworld. If you’re reading these words, I appreciate you. If you recently became a paid subscriber to Message from the Underworld or renewed your subscription, you have my deepest gratitude. I have one last video for you that Luke O’Neil recommended in last week’s Welcome to Hell World. The excellently named Norwegian band Heave Blood & Die. There are newer tracks, but I like this video a lot.

If you’re new-ish here and you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get Orca Alert! on Sunday. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, and killer whales.