2004-07-19

Last night, I went to my second hard core show in the week. I am not the hugest hardcore fan, but if the music is good I am easily swayed. Sometimes hardcore riffs are so huge, and are actually metal riffs and sometimes you even get GROOVE! They would probably never admit it, but as an outsider, that’s how I have always seen hardcore tunes. Love them. My fave call at Hardcore shows is “Bring back the early 90s hardcore!!” as that was when the scene had LOTS of bands playing metal riffs and grooves. But being called hardcore.

The first band was OK. For about 15seconds they had a great metal riff in one of their songs. That was all that grabbed me. I don’t know their name.

Second up was No Jazz Before the Rumble and that band contains a guy Nods nicknamed Serial Killer. (This should not be seen as an offensive slight against that person. Nods is quite obsessed with spotting serial killers, ‘terror shacks’ where serial killers take their victims…she once refused a fellow’s advances by saying she was unsure whether he would simply just take her home and cut her up. She SAID this to him.). Our friend Ben (who may or may not be Serial Killer….you guess) plays drums. This was the last show for No Jazz and they were OK. Like the last band, they would play a good bit for about half a minute and never would that awesome groove return. So I didn’t quite get stirred up by them. One band member had a bandanna on, Axl Rose style. Half a point for that.

The final band was Life. Love. Regret, playing their last show also. Ceara and I started to joke that it was the end of an era, until someone told me that LLR have played several final shows. Who do they think they are? Cold Chisel? Heh…

Due to it being the last show for two local bands, the crowd was pretty good. Hardcore does really well in Newcastle, who knows why? Two shows in two weeks and there are heaps of kids at both of them. For those who have never been to hardcore shows, you are missing out on some modern theatre.

There are several features of a full on hardcore show. One is the non-egalitarian act of letting the kids take the mic and sing the lyrics. At one point last night Luke LLR held the mic out for someone to sing into and there was an odd scrum/pile-on-top, reflecting the urgency often felt by the kids to sing into the mic at their fave hardcore show.

Then there is the freaky dancing. Flailing arms and legs, as well as weird moves that look vaguely like digging a hole. If a large enough group gets jiggy with it, a whirlpool (or ‘circlestorm’) will form. The kids flailing and digging holes, but in large circular motion. The whole floor becomes a whirling circle of flailing bodies.

Black is the new black. There is so much black. Hardcore kids are the new goths. And the girls dress the same as the boys. And on that note, the ratio is about 3:1, boys:girls.

Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love the energy at these shows. Its just that I wanted to write about what it is like…