CORRECTION APPENDED

Pop Quiz: How do you know you’re no longer a punk rock venue?



A) You make $2 million a year on branded t-shirts sold at Hot Topic stores across the country.

B) Sirius Satellite Radio broadcasts your shows.

C) Due to rent problems you’re forced to move out of Manhattan...to Vegas.

D) All of the above.

The mainstream media continues to lament legendary New York City punk club CBGB’s overdue demise, as if anyone even peripherally involved with underground music still cares about a venue that stopped booking punk shows in 1990.

CBGB’s long, torturous decline has not provided the “other music for uplifting gormandizers” that it awkwardly totes at the end of its name, at least not since it earned the dubious honor of being a focal point for youth crew, violence-driven New York hardcore.

Meanwhile, documentary filmmaker Paul Rachman is flooring critics with “American Hardcore,” a movie which credits hardcore music for single-handedly saving rock and roll, and winning the Cold War to boot (all those anti-Reagan moshes really spurred the Gipper on to greatness). Bear in mind that Rachman started his own “punk rock film festival” called Slamdance, which he abandoned as soon as he could finagle “Hardcore” into Sundance. [CORRECTION APPENDED. See below.] 

Not that this sort of conditional independence is anything new in the hardcore scene: Minor Threat’s Lyle Preslar became an A&R representative for Atlantic Records; Henry Rollins hosted a car-battling show on The Learning Channel, among countless other questionable endeavors. Not to play the sell-out card, but do these people really need any more attention, or money?

The only explanation available for this current wave of hazy reminiscence is that few people really know what this whole hardcore shtick is about. The closest to an explanation that we’ll get is incoherent, self-important grandstanding that insists that if you weren’t there, you can’t possibly understand the scene.

The film manages to portray even the level-headed Ian MacKaye (founder of Dischord Records, and member of Minor Threat and Fugazi), as an off-the-wall fanatic. The Minutemen—subjects of their own excellent documentary “We Jam Econo”—are the only band whose importance equals their portrayal in “American Hardcore,” but their folksy, jazzy punk sounds could hardly be called “hardcore” in the first place.

The do-it-yourself music scene is in many ways as marginalized today as it was in the early 1980s. While “Hardcore” is right to point out that bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat laid the groundwork for the distributed national network of underground musicians that persists to this day, misplaced scene nostalgia (two points for anyone who can name more than five good bands on SST Records) comes at the expense of real support for today’s struggling bands.

Some of the most dynamic, earnest, and thoughtful hardcore is being made right now—check out the Daniel Striped Tiger show at WHRB on Oct. 20 for proof. While the historic importance of 1980s hardcore to underground music is profound, the suggestion that the “Golden Days” are gone and that hardcore music will never be the same is characteristic of the punk rock orthodoxy’s attitude that is killing the scene today.

The indie rock scene that followed in hardcore’s wake brought a new accessibility to a previously confrontational subculture, and it didn’t take long for the money to follow. Today, sophisticated delivery mechanisms like “as-hip-as-thou” promoters, trendy CMJ (College Music Journal) festivals in NYC, Pitchfork Media, and a whole heavenly host of scene architecture means that it’s easier than ever for patch-toting suburbanites to stay “scene.”

But there’s a world of difference between DIY and CMJ, and whether it’s Matador or Mercury that writes the checks, legendary producer Steve Albini (most famous for his work with the Pixies and Nirvana) still hits the head on the music biz nail with his 1993 article on “The Problem with Music,” a rigorous analysis of the economics of “alternative” music that ends with the notorious words “some of your friends are probably already this fucked.”

This past week, musicians and volunteers from all over New England have been hard at work on the N.E.S.T. festival (the North East Sticks Together). With over 35 events at venues all over Boston, including tomorrow’s Punk Rock Flea Market at Mass Art, a scene favorite since 2002 which features “some of the best DIY crafts, used records, vegan snacks, and random junk in Boston.” For more information, see www.nest2006.com.

But even though we’re living in a post-hardcore paradise of underground organization—one that’s allowed artists as diverse as Moby and the Beastie Boys to continue making revolutionary rock and roll music for all these years—the N.E.S.T. bands are still playing at hole-in-the-wall clubs in Somerville and Allston and charging $10+ a ticket for 18+ shows. If those prices seem low to you, it’s going to take more than “American Hardcore” to change your outlook.

Why? Because despite the Herculean efforts of Mr. Rollins and Co., the general public still doesn’t care much for all-ages venues hosting weird bands. If you’re still curious about what today’s underground looks like, head on over to Allston or Chinatown, not to Las Vegas.

—Evan L. Hanlon contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Columnist Will B. Payne can be reached at payne@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

An Oct. 20 Arts column, "A Farewell to 'Hardcore' Scene," included a misleading description of filmmaker Paul Rachman's involvement in the Slamdance Film Festival, which he founded in 1994. Rachman did screen his 2006 film "American Hardcore" at the Sundance Film Festival, rather than at the concurrent Slamdance. However, Rachman still serves as the East Coast director of Slamdance.