My First Hardcore Show

Growing up in Waltham, it may be fitting that my first hardcore show was at The Channel in Boston in an area of town that in the early 80s looked like Mad Max badlands. According to unofficial urban legend, the club was owned by Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi of Whitey Bulger's notorious Winter Hill Gang and it got closed down due to a dead body in the back of Flemmi's car. And when you walked over to the club, it really looked like a place where a mobster might stash a body or two or three.

Like CBGB in New York and the 9:30 in D.C., The Channel is now the stuff of legend and lore but back in the spring of 1983 when I saw my first hardcore show, it was a rough club in a sketchy neighborhood and you took your chances venturing that way.

I was always into music and loved hard rock and metal and in the summer of 1982, I discovered punk rock in Newport, Rhode Island when I was visiting my cousin, Johnny D, who figures in many of my stories. I spent many summers and weekends in Rhode Island as our family in Massachusetts and the Davis family in Newport were close. It was a different world down there and the kids were really into skateboarding, surfing, and punk rock. That was not the case in Waltham where many of the kids were into KISS 108 and Solid Gold and most of my friends were into metal and hard rock.

John and I discovered metal from reading Circus magazine and were listening to the Scorpions and Judas Priest long before they became famous. Newport had an awesome record shop called Doo Wop Records and the owner kept a lot of punk rock albums, t-shirts, and pins in stock. We soon got hooked on Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys. When I was back in Waltham, Massachusetts, my hometown, I'd head into Newbury Comics with my metal friends and they'd buy metal albums and I'd get punk rock and hardcore albums and singles.

One day on Moody Street in Waltham at a record store called The Jungle, I bought This Is Boston Not LA and my friend Jack bought Loverboy’s Get Lucky. Jack was Waltham and I was wanting to be something different. “What the hell is this shit” is what the clerk said to me when I bought the Boston hardcore sampler, which contained several songs from Gang Green, songs I grew to love. Nobody else in Waltham seemed to know about the hardcore revolution happening in Boston and I'd have to listen to the music in secret or with my headphones on. My dad could not stand it and berated me for listening to "that garbage" as he called it, and still does to this day. My friends were all into hard rock or Michael Jackson and none understood what I found in punk rock. That was why I loved visiting Newport so much because it was the polar opposite of Waltham. All the kids down there loved punk rock and they played in bands and went to shows.

I was in Waltham one Saturday when my cousin called me and said that most of the Newport crew, about 30 kids, were heading up to Boston on the Greyhound bus to catch a hardcore matinee the next day at The Channel. When he asked if I wanted to meet them, I said of course. I think I told my parents I was going down to the field to play ball with other kids and instead, I jumped on the bus to Cambridge and then got on the T to meet the Newport kids at the Greyhound terminal. The Circle Jerks from LA were playing with Braintree's Gang Green and these were two bands we both loved so I was really looking forward to the show.

I got off the T stop and came above ground and walked to the Greyhound station and waited for the bus to arrive from Rhode Island. It pulled up about 1 p.m. and I saw my cousin Johnny D and the Newport crew coming exiting the coach carrying skateboards and wearing homemade t-shirts with the names of the bands, Circle Jerks and Gang Green written on them. Others had surf shirts with decals from Mr. Zogs Sex Wax or Thrasher skateboards. They started skating all around the downtown Boston streets and we started getting psyched for the show.

To be continued