Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #225-best shows I ever missed.
If you've ever met me you know I'm the guy who won't shut up about some hardcore show I went to back in the day or my favorite record or whatever. The cats who work with me at Extreme Noise are sick of hearing these stories and told me to write a book or whatever based on my punk rock adventures. I don't know about writing a book but just off the top of my head here are some great shows I DIDN'T see back in the day.

Turn back the clock to fall of 1983. Young Felix Von is a freshman at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, a suburb of Washington DC. I hear from the other punk kids at school that Minor Threat and the Big Boys are playing that weekend at the Landsburgh cultural center. I'd never been to a show at Landsburgh or the Wilson Center yet, just shows at the University of Maryland and places like the Ontario Theater and Smith Hall. For some reason places like Space 2 and the Wilson Center seemed so underground and intimidating, I wanted to go with some friends rather than just show up alone. Anyway, I made attempts to get a ride. I seem to remember actually waiting on my porch for hours for a ride that never showed up. I asked my mom if I could take the bus and she said no. She wasn't into me going downtown by myself to some place that wasn't a "real" venue listed in the paper with a phone number or anything. I contemplated climbing out my window after my mom thought I was asleep (something I did do to go make out with girls) but just gave up and spent the evening reading MRR or something instead. Little did I know that would turn out to be Minor Threat's last show. Whenever I tell people I grew up in DC in the 80's they always ask me if I saw Minor Threat. I had one chance and missed it. In hindsight I should have snuck out that night and gone to the show Minor Threat and the Big Boys were two of the great bands of the 80's and I never saw either. But at the time they weren't yet legendary just some bands that were playing. Now almost 20 years later they are surrounded by myth and I curse myself for not being bolder.

In 84 or 85 I went to see Government Issue, Husker Du and Negative Approach at the Newton Theatre. This place was on Michigan Ave near the Catholic University Metro station, which was a short bike ride from my house. I rode my bike down and ripped it up in the pit during GI. After the bike ride and the mosh I was thirsty and I walked to 7-11 and got a Big Gulp. When I got back I hung around out front for a while. I sort of noticed that another out of town band was playing but didn't pay any attention, I was mostly into DC bands and British bands at the time. I came back in watched a few Husker Du songs and left. Husker Du was staring to do that "new day rising" sort of stuff which sounded really lame to me. I rode home before it got dark out. So there I missed my chance to see Negative Approach. At the time I'd never heard them. I would buy their 7" and LP soon after and kick myself for not seeing them, but what did I know. I was so fired up on DC hardcore I didn't think anyone from Michigan could rock. Boy was I wrong.

I missed the State from Ann Arbor when they played at the Hall of Nations because I was doing something stupid with my girlfriend's family. Why didn't I cook up an excuse to get out of that?

Rock Against Reagan 1984. MDC, DRI, BGK, the Dead Kennedys and tons of other bands. Probably one of the biggest hardcore shows ever in DC. There were flyers all over town for this and Tom Lyle kept announcing it on his radio show, of which I was a loyal listener. I missed this show for the most stupid reason on earth. I Felix Von, was at Boy Scout Camp that week. This is so lame to have to admit to the readers of MRR but I was learning how to tie knots and shit at camp. I don't regret being a Boy Scout no matter how square it might have been. In fact, the patriotic stuff aside, Boy Scouts was a very positive thing for me. I learned lots of skills, self-reliance, improvisation, and got to experience the outdoors a lot more than most urban kids ever do. In fact the whole "be prepared" thing has been sort of a motto for me in preparing punk tours. However, I'm bitter to this day about missing RAR for Boy Scout camp. I quit scouts a few months later.

I went to see the Bad Brains with Void and Iron Cross and I wanna say Black Market Baby too. Anyway, the subway stopped running at midnight and I had no ride so I had to leave before Void played and before the Bad Brains even showed up. I heard they didn't arrive until 1 or 2 in the morning. This is why all the shows I book start early. In order to be able to see Wilson Center shows that Gordon booked I had to arrange rides, since none of my friends were old enough to drive this usually meant having my mom pick up my punk friends and me. We would all ride in the back of her pickup up truck with a boombox blasting some gnarly hardcore. This still didn't save us from being ridiculed by the older punks at shows for having my mom pick us up.

I remember Battalion of Saints playing at some bar in College Park but not being able to get in because I wasn't 18 yet. They even tried to sneak me in but I got busted and thrown out. I didn't go see the Misfits because I heard that show was 18 and over (it wasn't). I also missed the Ramones and Motorhead circa 84 because the shows were over 18 as well. Just when I was about to turn 18, DC raised the drinking age to 21, fuck, three more years! This is part of why I only book all ages gigs.

I went to see Discharge but they had broken up after their fans pelted them with bottles in Detroit for playing "grave new world" material. In 1987 I went to see Celtic Frost, but they "postponed" the show. I went to the rescheduled show, but they cancelled. Fucking bogus. Likewise Raw Power and Riistetyt did a whole US tour then their van broke down in West Virginia and they cancelled the last show, which was to be in DC.

In 1984 or 85 COC and Slayer played the Loft in Baltimore. I went for COC and they ruled, I saw them the night before at the Wilson Center too. All I knew about Slayer was that they were metal and wore make up so I left. I just assumed it was weak. A year or so later I heard Hell Awaits and I was so pissed that I had left early. When I did finally see Slayer in 91 they were incredibly weak and washed up.



On the way to see Marginal Man and Seven Seconds in Baltimore we got into a car accident. We tried and tried to persuade the rich kid who was driving us to go to the show anyway, but he was so terrified of what his dad was going to do to him for wrecking the car that he went home and dropped us all of at this one kids house, miles from where we lived. That guy used to drive us around a lot, I'm sure he's a dot com millionaire or something now. Anyway, he had this fancy little sportscar that you could barely cram four people into. The funny thing about it was that it had very little headroom. Since Travis and I had mohawks this meant we had to sit with the windows rolled down and the tops of our hawks sticking out the windows. If this practice was not observed we would show up at shows with alternately left and right leaning mohawks depending on which side of the car we were riding in.

When I first heard the Amebix I was super into them. This was about 1984 and Amebix weren't the crust cult band they are today. Indeed, in 1984 I don't think there really was such a thing as crusty punk, at least not in America. I spent all afternoon painting the artwork from the "Beginning of the End" 7" on the back of my leather jacket. I was stoked to wear out my new style and put on my jacket and got on the bus to the Metro station. When I got up at my stop there was a sucking sound and I realized the paint wasn't dry on my jacket yet and had stuck to the seat of the bus. This totally fucked up the paint job on my jacket. I can't remember if I went to the show anyway or went home and changed. Either way I was late and missed some bands.

When 7 Seconds played at the Burke Community Centre on the Walk Together Rock together tour we missed all but a few songs because we couldn't find the place. Burke is an upper class suburb that at the time was newly built. There were no maps we could find and all the streets were twisting and confusing especially to guys like us who grew up on numbered and lettered streets in a grid pattern. Everything was like "brandwine terrace" brandywine court" "brandywine way" and they all dead ended into cul de sacs. Finally we called the local police and asked, "where is the Burke Community centre?" (Note: I opposed this action as I didn't want to support the police in any way, but the guys I was driving with insisted on it) We were told there were something like six community centers in Burke and they told us the locations of all of them. We drove around this sleepy suburban community for what seemed like an eternity from darkened community center to darkened community center. Sure enough, the last one we tried was the one where the show was just about to end. At least we didn't have to pay to get in at that point.

I remember one time there were rumors that the Subhumans were going to play at 9:30 club. We all went downtown and wandered around. The streets were crowded with punks but the 9:30 club was closed. There were kids all over the street wandering between DC Space and 9:30 asking each other "where are the Subhumans playing?" or sometimes "Where are the UK Subs playing?" There was even an argument over whether it was the Canadian Subhumans, English Subhumans or the UK Subs who were supposed to be playing. I still want to know who started that rumor.

I can remember a lot of shows at the 9:30 Club I either got thrown out of, wasn't let into, or just didn't go into because I didn't want to give the 9:30 my money after they had thrown me out. I got ejected from 7 Seconds in 87 for heckling them as they played that horseshit REM sounding stuff they were trying to push. I've never supported that band since. I remember being "banned" from a Youth of Today show in 1987 and not let in. (I did get to see YOT three other times though). I got thrown out of TSOL for throwing a cup of ice at them and yelling, "play faster!"

At the GBH show in 1986 there were a lot of kids hanging around out front of the 9:30. At one point someone (I swear not me) started the dumpster on fire. A bunch of cops and firemen showed up. While the cops were in the alley with the firemen I took out my trusty can of black spray paint and painted "fuck the cops" down the side of a cop car and a long black line down another. I was so scared one of the pro America skinheads would rat me out for this (I did this in front of 20 or 30 kids) that I decided to bail and left without seeing GBH. Still have never seen that band, can't imagine they are any good now.

Speaking of comic book UK Punk bands, the Exploited recorded their "Live at the White House" LP in DC (although it pictures the Capitol on the cover). I was not present at that show because I thought the Exploited were a stupid cartoon punk band. I still think the Exploited is a cartoon punk band, although they must be much worse by now.

One English band I really liked was Conflict. They played one of those huge Goldenvoice shows at the Olympic in 86. I made reservations to fly to LA with a friend of mine. We heard though that Conflict was doing a full US tour in two months so we didn't think it was worth the 250 bucks to fly to LA for one show. Conflict was probably at their peak then, they never did tour the US until just recently about 15 years late if you ask me.

There were quite a few other shows I missed because I either didn't know about them (a lot of DC shows were pretty much centered around a small scenester elite and not well promoted), wasn't 18 yet, couldn't get a ride (lots of shows were in strange suburban areas where the Metro didn't go), or was terrified of the Skinheads who would beat the shit out of punks at shows. (Which I talked about last month). Also, in the days that I drank and did drugs there were shows that I was so fucked up I remembered nothing. I draw a complete blank on the Christ On Parade show I went to at New Method in 87. I saw Fang at Gilman about the same time and remember nothing; I do recall MDC playing that night though. Or maybe it was Christ on Parade at Gilman and Fang at New Method. Another argument for Straight Edge, you'll be able to remember the show.

About that same time in 1987 I was at Gilman and the Feederz played. This was a kind of legendary show as the Feederz threw dead dogs and cats into the audience and at cockroaches during the set. I was tripping on acid and this made me extremely angry. I was really into animal rights at the time and decided I was going to wait outside for the Feederz and fight them "for the animals who can't fight back" after the show. This of course because I didn't want to get banned from Gilman for fighting inside. While I was waiting by the side door this really hot girl came up to me and said "wow, you have a lot of studs on your jacket, do you have any extra that you could put on my jacket?" Suddenly in my acid blown mind fighting for the animals lost all relevance. I pulled out my bag of studs and Swiss army knife and put a few 1/2" cones in this girl's epaulets. She told me she had some wine coolers in her car and I was smitten. I totally missed the rest of the show and never fought the Feederz. The story continues however. After a few wine coolers we started to get frisky in the car. She decided we should drive to some park and we put this car cover she had over the top of the car, which was a BMW or Mercedes or some shit. We were just getting into it when there was a tap on the window. "Fuck Off" I growled in my most intimidating gutter punk voice. I looked up and there was a cop shining her flashlight on us holding her badge up to the window. Here I was tripping on acid, naked, in the back of a car with an underage girl I'd known for all of two hours and potentially under arrest. The cops left the cover on the car until we could get dressed then checked our ID's. I had just turned 18, and I was terrified that I would get nailed on a statutory rape charge. Luckily, they bought her fake ID and let us go. Turns out that girl was some sort of model, she had a stack of copies of "Elle" on the floor of her car and tore out a page that had her picture on it and gave it to me. That was punky love at first sight. Two days later her mom caught me hiding in her closet and chased me out of the house and down the road with a vodka bottle. She was screaming "get out of my house you green haired faggot" to which I replied "I'm not a faggot I just fucked your daughter" this didn't help my predicament. I had to hitch hike back to SF (she lived in some redwood forest off 101) with this psycho tweaker but that is a story for a different column.

So enough hazy recollections from bygone days. It's funny how now it burns me up that I didn't go in and watch Negative Approach who are one of my favorite hardcore bands while at the time it didn't seem very important at all. Bands that are legendary today were "just" bands you would go and see back then. So it will probably be for the bands playing today. I wish I'd bought more records and gone to more shows in the 80's but I guess I'd have to say I still went to enough. Next time you are thinking about blowing off a show or something else come up; consider that it might be the show you regret missing for the rest of your life.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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