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American Hardcore captures the ‘80s Punk scene and honors a lost chapter in rock History.

I was not part of the youth subculture explored in the new documentary American Hardcore (Sony Classics). In fact, my high school and college years in Ohio were, in many ways, the antithesis of the hardcore punk rock scene. I was President of my college fraternity at Bowling Green State University, and I was even hand-picked by the Secret Service to introduce and moderate a Q&A with President Ronald Reagan during a visit to my campus during the 1984 campaign.

Reagan played an important role in the hardcore punk era from 1980-1986. He gave punk bands all over the country a common enemy. As Vic Bondi from the hardcore band Articles of Faith says memorably in this film, "Everyone was saying it was ‘morning in America.' Someone had to say it was fucking midnight."

That line also embodies the anger, rebellion and anarchic spirit that is effectively captured in American Hardcore, which opened at the Angelika in lower Manhattan on September 22nd, delivering $18,102 on its opening weekend and expanded to include a pair of Los Angeles locations last Friday (9/29). The picture had the fifth best per screen average in its second week, scoring $8,601 per screen (trailing The Queen, The Last King of Scotland, Old Joy and A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints).

American Hardcore is directed by Paul Rachman, who directed the first music videos for Bad Brains and Gang Green, two of the most important bands in the era. He also created some of MTV's most important videos including "Man In the Box" by Alice In Chains before making his first feature film, Four Dogs Playing Poker starring Balthazar Getty and Olivia Williams, in 2000.

Rachman had read Steven Blush's book American Hardcore: A Tribal History, which was published in 2001, and when he ran into the author on the street in New York, he immediately suggested a movie on the subject. Blush had never considered it. To the contrary, he told me, "I don't even watch films. I get confused about actors. I don't even know the difference between DeNiro, Pacino and Hoffman. I'm not impressed with movies. I don't care about them." Despite Blush's complete lack of film savvy, the writer and the filmmaker embarked on their documentary journey.

They presented the idea for American Hardcore to any number of specialty distributors, producers and money guys only to be flatly rejected. Even Tom Bernard from Sony Classics, who would eventually acquire the distribution rights, politely declined to get involved. So, if this movie was going to get made, they were going to pay for it themselves.

That was fine with them, because do it yourself ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit are at the heart of the hardcore punk movement. Blush says that the era's music was made "for kids, by kids. No managers. No agents." In the same way, Rachman and Blush would need to make their movie with no help from "the system". They were uniquely qualified to tackle the subject matter.

Blush was an undergrad at George Washington University in DC in 1981 when he attended a concert on Valentine's Day. It was billed as "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" and featured the seminal band Black Flag, among others. From that point on he says, "Hardcore fucked up my life path." He had already been a fan of the Clash and the Sex Pistols, but it wasn't exactly who he was. "I was a kid who played basketball and ran track in Central Jersey. I saw Black Flag and connected because it was American music." He was a deejay and music director at the GW campus radio station, and he used that position to book the Dead Kennedys into the university cafeteria. He quickly became the most influential hardcore punk promoter in the DC area.





"When I went to write the book, I knew all these guys. Either I booked them or they crashed on my couch, or they had called me for advice," explains Blush. "When it came to tracking down people to interview for the movie, I knew how to find them. You don't find a guy named ‘Joey Shithead' in the phone book." (Yes, the lead singer of the seminal Canadian band D.O.A. is "Joey Shithead.")

Rachman not only had filmmaking experience, he also had shot actual concert footage with a camcorder in the early '80s. About a third of the remarkable archival footage, especially the material from 1981-1983, was Rachman's. The rest of it came from guys that the filmmakers knew or friends of friends.





It is the crudely shot concert footage that really captures the hardcore movement. Seeing a young Henry Rollins with Black Flag or Bad Brains lead singer H.R. wailing in a dingy club with rebellious, fist-waving teens shouting along and stage-diving feels fresh and visceral. As I watched this doc, I constantly had the feeling that, while I was attending Interfraternity Council meetings and tea dances with the Delta Gammas at Bowling Green State University, my "evil twin" was moshing at CBGB's in New York's Lower East Side.

You also get a real sense that this music, which, honestly, is unsettling, angry and dissonant, is more than just music. These "anti-songs" capture the voice of disaffected kids who didn't buy into the Eisenhower-like '50s mentality that was ushered in by Reagan. Blush says, "The hardcore punk movement wasn't about left or right - it had both elements to it. It was a very American movement...very much in the libertarian spirit. We knew that the America you learned about in school was a crock of shit. Our way of life was in opposition to what America had become, but it was an affirmation of what America was supposed to be."

Hardcore punk is a lost chapter in rock n' roll history, but its influence is still felt today. "You'd think that from the Sex Pistols and The Clash, we went straight to Nirvana," says Blush, but hardcore was an important musical bridge. Chris Cornell from Soundgarden started at the tail end of punk, and Pearl Jam started in hardcore. In fact, if there had been no American punk movement, grunge would have never happened.

I was curious about the people interviewed in American Hardcore - members of groups with names like Millions of Dead Cops, Negative FX, Social Society Decontrol and Bad Brains. What are their lives like now? "From the top of the corporate ladder to the bottom of the shitpile," says Blush, but they agree on one thing. They are "disgusted" with those in music who try to pass themselves off as punk today. "Hardcore wasn't about a musical style. It was about a way of life. It wasn't about a combination of chords. It was about an ethical code." The author-turned-filmmaker cites one band as upholding the ethic of hardcore - Green Day. "It takes some balls to make confrontational political statements, and, on their tours, they preach revolution."

The Reagan years spawned hardcore, but where is the current generation of youth as we wind our way through a second term of George W. Bush? There is no angry musical manifestation of rebellion because, Blush asserts, "Kids are too comfortable, too distracted - by the internet and MySpace and Ipods and video games. There aren't enough kids out there who are angry enough to seize the moment."

Sony Classics acquired American Hardcore after it played Sundance in January, and Blush says they insisted that not a single frame be changed despite graphic language and incendiary rhetoric. The documentary will strike a chord with the late 30s/early 40s crowd who were part of the movement or, at least, exposed to it. The doc can also play to a generation of today's kids who are at best sleepy and at worst lazy. It's the story of a remarkable subculture and a testament to the power of youth, and Paul Rachman and Steven Blush have found a brilliant way to keep the spirit and ethic of hardcore alive.

Read Part One
Read Part Three