Skatepunk

All the recent talk (in my life) of hardcore has made me think about the bands that were so important to me during that certain era of my life. Here, in rough order of discovery, are the hardcore bands that made a difference to me:
Black Flag
DOA
Dead Kennedys
Los Olvidados
Seven Seconds
Minor Threat
Bad Brains
Misfits
Ribzy (they were from San Jose and had a song on the MaxRnR comp)
Code Of Honor
Vandals (first record)
TSOL
With the exception of Ribzy, TSOL, and the Vandals, these are all bands that I still listen to regularly today, although I also listen to a hearty dose of new stuff, and am by no means stuck in the past musically. Anyway, the Big Boys and the Faction, the local heroes in San Jose, were a little later but became very important soon enough. At the time of the first hardcore shows I went to, in early 1982, I'd already been listening to punk stuff for a year or more--since Fall of 1980-- but was a johnny-come-lately to "the scene"--there'd been a whole bunch of shows going on in San Jose and especially San Francisco that I never knew about until there was a flyer in the skate shop for a show at nearby De Anza College. That was Los Olvidados, Ribzy, Mistaken Identity, Social Unrest, Whipping Boy, Executioner, Unaware, and more. Also, other bands like Agent Orange and X wouldn't be lumped into hardcore today, but then there was nowhere else to put them, and they were both among early shows that I saw. This was 1982, and X went on to become my favorite band for at least ten years. Although they never had the same impact early on for me, Social Distortion, Germs, and Youth Brigade were really starting to be known in punk circles during this time and the first two were both really popular graffitis (along with the Dead Kennedys logo, the Black Flag bars and the Circle-A, which later evolved into the Circle-A skateboard logo with the wheels drawn under the cross bar of the "A".) I "discovered" those bands in earnest in about 1985 or 1986, when hardcore bands started to disappear and there was room to digest more of the original stuff. (I didn't start to understand or appreciate the Germs until the early 90's--guess that makes me suspect, huh?) Of course, compilation records like Beach Blvd, The Decline of Western Civilization, Hell Comes to Your House, Not So Quiet On The Western Front, Rodney On the Roq, and the Thrasher Skate Rock tape (volume 1) and record (volume 2) were all essential in the wonderful discovery of all this music. Actually, it all came from skateboarding: skateboarding was first and foremost until the last few years, when music has slowly ebbed its way into the forefront of my mind.
That is enough nostalgia for today... (how did that happen?)

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