Chapter 18

For a while, we got so much shit and people scrutinized our lyrics so closely that it was hard to convince anyone we fuckin’ hated Nazis and racists. Maximumrocknroll had writers all across the country, and some of their New York reporters tried to convince the editor Timmy Yohannan that we weren’t a gang or a hate group. But he turned his back on them.

Maybe it was because they represented well-situated, American, white middle-class students who read novels about oppression and followed class struggles from a safe distance. These were guys who thought they were fighting against the system but were living in fancy houses in upscale suburban neighborhoods. We were poor-ass kids living on the streets or squats of NYC and most of us never had the money or upbringing to climb the social ladder.

They represented the ultra-elite hardcore antagonists. “You guys are always talking about uniting, yet you’re always beating people up,” one of their reporters said the first time the magazine interviewed me. That was a lie. We never beat up people in our scene. We took care of our own. We didn’t take any shit from anyone that verbally abused us or attacked us. We stood our ground, and yes, we busted heads when we were provoked. It was survival of the streets, something Maximumrocknroll was too politically correct to understand. There was an us-versus-them mentality that we totally didn’t ask for and didn’t deserve. Our lyrics were angry but totally positive. There was nothing in there that anyone could have criticized us for.

That didn’t stop Maximumrocknroll from making sure their readers saw the situation from their point of view, and they set us up in different ways. They’d send their writers to review our shows and then they’d be confrontational, so either we or one of our supporters in the crowd would try to knock some sense into them. Then they’d write in the magazine how we were all thugs and Nazis. They created fictitious right-wing IDs for us, calling us Agnazi Front. I was Roger Agnazi. They even created flyers for shows that didn’t exist, linking hateful bands to NYHC bands. They were the ones who stirred shit up. They were supposed to be the voice of punk and they created controversy because they were trolls. Plain and simple.

After putting up with their shit for a while, I made a deal with them. I said I would do an interview if they sent me the questions and I replied to them, and that was the end of it. There would be no face-to-face discussion and no room for misinterpretation. It would be their questions and my answers, and my words would stand on their own. They agreed and mailed me a long list of questions. I replied to each of them as thoroughly and thoughtfully as I could. When I finished, I mailed it back.

I couldn’t wait to see the published article. I figured it might put to bed the beef between us. But when I read the issue (#21, released January 1985), it was clear that Timmy Yohannan broke the fucking rules.

He wanted to get his two cents in, which wasn’t part of the deal. Everything I said cleared up a lot of misconceptions, but then he went back and got his jabs in. He commented on everything I wrote and tried to make me look like an ass. He cheated because my answers weren’t what he wanted to hear. Anyone who read that article could tell from my answers what my position was, but Timmy’s comments might have left them feeling skeptical, which was mean-spirited. I don’t know why he was out to get me, but clearly he viewed me as the enemy and himself as some sort of freedom fighter.

I wouldn’t have cared so much, except back then the hardcore community communicated through that fucking rag. Rolling Stone and Creem wouldn’t give us a second glance and metal fanzines like Kick Ass Monthly and Metal Forces hadn’t discovered us yet. At least we had Flipside and Thrasher on our side, but they didn’t have the readership of Maximumrocknroll. The crazy thing about Timmy calling me a fascist is that I was an immigrant Latino kid dating a Jewish girl, and she never accused me of being a Nazi sympathizer.

“Fuck Maximumrocknroll!”

I can’t count the number of times I said that in disgust. When it came to opposing separatism and white power, we were on the same side. I couldn’t stand the hardcore bands that held those beliefs. I couldn’t even listen to their music. The ultimate hypocrisy is that the magazine had a huge collection of right-wing hardcore in its basement record collection. I’ve heard this from too many people who saw it for it not to be true.

To make a statement about the magazine’s bias against us, we played the Rock Against Maximumrocknroll show at the Tenderloin in San Francisco on May 3, 1985. The show featured AF, a reunion of the Fuck Ups, Verbal Abuse and Special Forces. No one from Maximumrocknroll was anywhere in sight. They were intimidated that we had organized this show on their home turf and terrified about what might happen to them if they showed up. These guys were only crusaders of hardcore when they were protected from the people they were talking shit about. It’s easy to be a champion of justice and hardcore purity when you’re hiding behind the safety of a computer screen.

The first Rock Against Maximumrocknroll concert was in a shitty club in a bad neighborhood. The show was great. The place was packed, kids were dancing and stagediving and the bands were all hanging out and having a good time. After it was over, we went outside to the parking lot to drink beer and chill. But there was no time to relax. One of the local gangs had gathered and organized in anticipation of our arrival. Before we knew what was going on, a San Francisco gang member ran up to one guy who was at the show, pulled out a razor and sliced his throat open. Then the assailant took off running. It was like the opening strike of an organized attack. Before we had a chance to react, bottles started raining down on us from the surrounding rooftops. They exploded on the ground and shards of glass sprayed like nails from a pipe bomb.

We jumped in our van and stopped in front of the guy whose throat was slashed. We opened the door and pulled him into our van. He was holding his neck and gurgling blood, which ran down his shirt and stained the inside of the van. Our friend Terry Psycho, who attended the show with her boyfriend, Billy Psycho, was a nurse, and she held his neck tight to minimize the blood loss. We rushed him to a local hospital. She definitely saved his life that night. If she didn’t have medical training, he would have bled out.

A second Rock Against Maximumrocknroll show was booked at CBGB on December 2, a few months after we returned home from the Victim In Pain tour.

After all the friction and bad blood, we needed some comic relief. Dave “Da Skin” was constantly falling in love with different girls. He met one named Brigitte in California and decided to bring her all the way to New York so he could be with her. He thought she could be our merch girl. Then she hooked up with a guy in Denver, Colorado. Dave caught her with the dude in the back of a club. He confronted her and she left him to hook up with the other guy. We still had her luggage, and she didn’t come back for it. It was typical for Dave, and since he always fell for girls that didn’t care about him, we teased him without mercy.

“Brii-gettte, Briiii-gette. She wants you, Dave! She’s coming back to be with you.”

Dave got pissed off, which made the routine more fun. We stopped somewhere along I-80 near Chicago. Dave was asleep in the back of the van. Vinnie and I went into Brigitte’s bag and took out her lingerie. I put on matching, lacy red bra and panties, which I was practically falling out of, and Vinnie wore a black bra and white underwear, which looked like a Speedo on him. Then we stopped on the highway and pretended to hitchhike. Dave woke up and heard us calling his name in high-pitched voices. We walked out in the middle of I-80 and danced around. Dave jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and took off. He left us there for 30 minutes, and during that time truck drivers drove by and tried to run us over.

We’d hear a truck come, and I could only imagine what the drivers were thinking. They probably saw sexy lingerie before they could tell who was wearing it, so they slowed down. Then they got closer and saw ugly, tattooed dudes in drag. They honked their horns and some swerved towards us, and we had to jump off the road. It’s a good thing we weren’t wearing high heels or we might have tripped and broken our ankles. Finally, Dave came back for us and we changed. For a while we were the ugliest fuckin’ whores on the road and our lives hung in the balance.

I don’t know if being duped by Maximumrocknroll or nearly getting killed by angry truck drivers had anything to do with it, but suddenly I felt unsure of my place in the world. Everything I had taken great pleasure in and felt was important didn’t seem to matter as much. I started to back away from the NYHC scene, and my friendships with the main figures in the movement became a little weird. I stopped drinking and taking as many drugs as I had been taking, and I restrained from a lot of the fighting that had been a regular part of my week. I didn’t hang with my friends who were still stirring up shit and sometimes getting into unprovoked fights. I started spending a lot of time by myself. At the same time, I was afraid to hide inside myself because I didn’t want anyone to think I was betraying the scene I was supposed to be a part of. In other words, I was deeply fucking conflicted.

Everything had happened too fast. There had been too much chaos and it was taking its toll. I went from being an unpopular guy in a regular hardcore band to being in this super tough-guy hardcore band, putting out a record and playing the role of the violent thug. During the United Blood era I talked about uniting people, but I had a short fuse and I took out all the anger from my youth and my feelings that I had been dealt an unfair hand in life on people who played no part in giving me those cards. They weren’t even part of the game.

I started spending more time with hardcore bands that came through town. We had a common bond, so they were like friends from other states. The first time NOFX came to New York was in 1984, and we hit it off right away. They were playing at CBGB, and at the end of the show I was talking to Fat Mike who told me they didn’t have any place to stay.

“Well, you can stay with me,” I said. I’ve always believed it’s good karma to help out other bands when you’re in a position to do so.

They jumped in their van and followed me as I drove to Tompkins Square Park. I told them to park right behind me. After I jumped out of the van, NOFX took their bags out of their van and started coming towards me. They figured I was heading to a house or apartment. I stopped in front of their van, opened the door and put one of my pit bulls in there.

“Here you go. Do you want a pillow or something?”

Mike started laughing. He was sure I was joking. I wasn’t. When I didn’t laugh back at him or change my expression, he figured I was serious. He was gonna spend the night in the van, I would be in another van in front of his and the dog would be his protection.

I didn’t figure anything was wrong and Mike didn’t say anything. “Do you wanna get some 40s and hang out?” I asked.

Before we started trying to figure out what to do for the follow-up to Victim In Pain, we went back out on the road. The band was in a parallel state of flux. I don’t even know how we recorded Cause For Alarm. We were trying to bring in friends who played in other bands that we liked, but Kabula was really into the new sounds that were happening in hardcore and Vinnie and I were unsure where we wanted to go. We knew we wanted the band to evolve. We just weren’t sure in which direction to take it. By that point, the metal scene had infiltrated hardcore and vice versa. Bands like Anthrax, Metallica, Exodus and Slayer were hanging out with hardcore groups like us, Murphy’s Law, Crumbsuckers and Cro-Mags. More than anything, they felt welcome around us because they were protected. Sometimes people got stupid and tried to fuck with them, and I stopped the troublemakers in their tracks. Usually, all I had to do was grab them or tackle them to put them in their place.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett liked the vibe at CBGB, and one night he went to a show when Crumbsuckers were on the bill. Crumbsuckers were big Metallica fans, and I was doing security. The Crumbsuckers invited Kirk to come up and do a song with them. Metallica had just released Master of Puppets and were starting to become popular. As Kirk went onstage, Tommy Carroll, who played in NYC Mayhem and Straight Ahead, yelled, “Rock star asshole,” spat on him and tried to start a fight. Kirk was a little guy and all he wanted to do was have a good time and enjoy the show. I intervened and stopped the situation from getting out of hand, but I think it freaked Kirk out. That was the last CBGB show I saw him at.

Aside from the occasional incident, pretty much everyone got along. The bands checked one another out and experimented with each other’s styles. Carnivore was a great Brooklyn band led by the late Pete Steele. He loved the New York scene and was a regular at CBGB. One day Kabula convinced us to check out one of their shows. He loved anything that was visual and fucked up, but he usually had good taste in music and in this case he was spot on. Carnivore had great songs. Way before Pete Steele started Type-O Negative, he had a strong grasp on how to combine hardcore and metal in a way that would appeal to fans of both. They dressed up like characters from The Road Warrior, which complemented their raw, primitive music. Onstage they had the energy of pure hardcore.

We had the same manager, Connie Barrett, and she arranged for us to meet up with Pete. Kabula was so stoked he was tripping over his words, and Pete was excited because he loved United Blood and Victim In Pain. We hooked up with him backstage and he was polite and friendly, which is funny since he was seven feet tall and had a low voice and a heavy Brooklyn accent. The guy was whip-smart and sarcastic, and his dark humor always had us in stitches. He could make people laugh by making certain facial expressions. He didn’t have to say a word. Over time I learned that, more than anything, he was an incredibly nice guy. Pete was cool to everybody—record label people, managers, journalists, fans and especially other musicians. He just loved aggressive music.

We hung out sometimes and got drunk. Maybe we’d sniff glue. He was a regular at the CBGB hardcore matinees, and even though he had long hair no one ever fucked with him. If I talked to him during the week he’d always mention that weekend’s show and even though he was usually even-keeled, that low, gentle voice got a little excited whenever we’d discuss who was playing. Those matinees were like his Sunday afternoon church.

One of the first benefit shows for CBGB was Agnostic Front, Carnivore and Whiplash. The show was on a weeknight so we weren’t expecting much, but the place was packed and all the bands killed it. Everyone was embracing each other’s roots. It wasn’t just happening in New York. North Carolina band Corrosion of Conformity (C.O.C.). covered Judas Priest’s version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Green Manalishi” on their 1984 hardcore album Eye for an Eye, and a lot of their other songs had some mean-ass guitar. In Texas, D.R.I. ramped up the speed and the noise with Dealing With It!, which came out on Death Records, an offshoot of Metal Blade. And Suicidal Tendencies were breaking nationally.

Writing-wise, it was an interesting time. Shards of thrash metal were sticking into the flesh of hardcore and freaking everybody out, including myself. To satisfy Kabula, we wrote some metallic riffs in dressing rooms when we were on tour for Victim In Pain. When we got back home from the tour in 1985, the band consisted of Vinnie, Kabula, Colletti and me. We messed around with something that started out called “Eat the Steak,” evolved into “The Bulldog Song” and eventually became “Out for Blood.” We were just jerking around, making up lyrics right on the spot. We played the song at shows, and people sang along like they knew it. I was trying to figure out what the hell they were saying because I didn’t have any lyrics and I could have used some help.

When we got back home and started rehearsing and fine-tuning our new songs, we found out that a big, early NYHC band, Cause For Alarm, had broken up. On paper, they began in 1983 and were one of the pioneers of the scene. What a lot of people don’t know is that Cause For Alarm started out in New Jersey as the Hinkley Fan Club with Billy Milano on vocals. Kabula was in Cause For Alarm before he joined AF. Keith sang in AF before he was asked to join Cause For Alarm. Keith was into Krishna consciousness and that didn’t sit well with some of the other members. Around 1985 he got deeper into his faith and the band became really unstable. At one of their most volatile points they moved to California to try to keep themselves together. By then we had gained some credibility. We got stronger and they became more fragmented until they started bleeding band members.

When we found out Alex Kinon wasn’t in Cause For Alarm anymore, we thought it would be a good idea to invite him to join Agnostic Front. We figured having a second guitar player would make our wall of sound even more powerful. Vinnie wasn’t thrilled about that at first, but when we told him it was Alex—whom he knew from the scene—he was okay with it. Alex was one of us. At the time, I thought having members from Agnostic Front and Cause For Alarm playing together would create a new hardcore super-band. I figured that if we could tap into the anger of Agnostic Front and the musicality of Cause For Alarm, we’d be unstoppable. I was right . . . kind of.

There were some intense and frustrating times in the rehearsal studio during that era. Cause For Alarm didn’t create itself. We bled for that album. When we weren’t cleaning and dressing our wounds, we were still cracking one another up. One time, right after Alex had joined the band, Kabula got a live chicken and brought it to one of our shows at CBGB.

“I’m going to throw it in the pit!” he said with a wide grin.

“You can’t do that, man,” Alex said. “People have seen you with the chicken. They’ll know it was us and we’ll get banned.”

Alex’s girlfriend was even more opposed to making the chicken a part of the show. She started yelling at Rob and tried to pry the chicken out of his hands. The bird was flapping, feathers were flying through the air and then the chicken jumped in her face. It’s hard to hold back a chicken from scratching someone. Rob held it by the legs so the chicken didn’t scratch her, but it pecked at her and cut up the side of her head and one of her arms. She was furious. At first I was laughing at how ridiculous the situation was. Then I intervened and helped wrestle the chicken away from Kabula.

I took the bird to Tompkins Square Park to set it free so it could join the wild roosters on the Lower East Side. It was snowing that day, so I placed it in the snow and walked back to the club. Then we played the show. I went back the next day to see if I could find out what happened to the chicken. There was a little trail of chicken footprints that suddenly ended. I guess somebody took it home and ate it.