That Feel
Of the multitude of frustrations assembling NIHILISTIC, fallible memory is foremost. With no diaries, journals or notes to consult – and precious few pictures to jog memory – research is key. This Substack is one proving ground. I write Blah blah blah happened in 1981 and within hours a reader sets me right: It was 1982, not 1981. But more is needed. In one sense I’m in luck: interest in early ‘80s NYHC (New York Hard Core) history is on the rise. Contemporaneous Nihilistics interviews in fanzines – Jeff O.’s Flesh & Bones (pics above and below), Wendy Eager’s Guillotine, Maximum RocknRoll – and our Newsday piece are internet accessible. Books from Tony Rettman (NYHC, with its entire chapter on The Nihilistics), Steven Blush (American Hardcore, also a movie, both giving Nihilistics short shrift) and various band members flesh out details. There are Facebook groups dedicated to the scene, though largely focused on graphics, like the ubiquitous black & white photocopied show flyers every band ran off surreptitiously at work. A few jokers also flog their NYHC-centric podcasts, interviewing those who were there. I can’t bring myself to listen. Chalk it up to a fit of pique: I’ve been on the radio since 1986, had an entire professional career interviewing people and consider myself easy to find online yet no hardcore-focused podcaster has contacted me. Full disclosure: I’ve reached out to two of them and never heard back… yet each sat down with Nihilistics singer Ron Rancid. He gets all the Tell us what happened back in the day… business because he continues to be the face of The Nihilistics. It’s problematic. As pointed out previously, Ron is Unreliable Narrator Number 1. Most of what he’s uttered – even when we were starting out – concerning The Nihilistics is hyperbole shading into bullshit, meant to make us seem darker, more dangerous than the depressed teenagers we were. Mike (RIP) was also prone to making shit up during an interview. It always frustrated me, this need for puffery. I get it: we had a band to flog, shows to fill, records to sell. But I always felt our unembellished story – the one I’m hoping to tell – was dark and dangerous enough. Ron and Mike’s lack of veracity makes my job exponentially harder. I’m screwed another way: The Nihilistics never achieved the status of other NYHC bands, Agnostic Front arguably being the biggest example, and there’s a paucity of interest or documentation of us. Whoever has photos of the original Nihilistics in action, they’re not sticking them online. Video? Ugh. The sole video purposefully shot of us – performing at My Father’s Place in Roslyn on Long Island – was supposedly lost when Mike’s West Babylon basement flooded (why in the fuck there was only one VHS tape is beyond me: I’m convinced there’s a copy out there somewhere). I also remember video cameras at venues, usually positioned by the mixing console, but who knows if anyone hit RECORD? The policy at CBGB for board recordings was “Provide your own cassette or buy one from us.” so it’s likely we never brought a videotape or bought one. Who thought of that? Yet shit comes to light all the time and I remain optimistic someone will stumble on footage they didn’t know they had.
Meanwhile, I’ve never thought of NIHILISTIC as an unassailably accurate history of the band or the NYHC scene. The focus remains Mike and I. This week I did more research on the pivotal year – 1974 – and place – Lindenhurst Junior High School we met. As part of a series of interviews, I spoke at length with childhood friend Glenn Katz. Glenn and I also met in Junior High and from 1974 to 1977 were best friends and constant companions. We hit it off right away and probably for the same reasons Mike and I did: MAD magazine and Monty Python (their show had just hit PBS and Monty Python and the Holy Grail dropped in 1975: we were fascinated). I failed to ask Glenn exactly HOW we met and became friends but he’s open to speaking again and DID fill in details on our time together. He reminded me he used to come by our house often and that my brother Marc scared the shit out of him, too. I haven’t been thinking of Glenn as a big part of this book but he was crucial for a few reasons. He brought me in contact with Billy Kammerer, enabling my first band, Cobra. The destruction of his family through his father’s affair and embezzlement taught me an important lesson in envy. And when Glenn moved from Long Island to Florida with his mother and brother, Mike became much more prominent in my life.
More interviews ahead with those who knew me in Lindenhurst and beyond will flesh out what I consider the book’s Owner’s Manual. It lays out the characters, narrative, theme and concepts explored in NIHILISTIC and little coincides with what I read in books from contemporaries: “On this date we went here and played in this venue and then I met this scenester and then the band did this.” It’s not that I’m disinterested in these personal histories. But I’m after what Tom Waits dubs “That feel.” What did it FEEL like for me and Mike to grow up in a provincial town like Lindenhurst and want to escape it so badly we’d place all our bets on our instruments, wan talents and a band who soon could barely be in the same room together? This is from the NIHILISTIC Owner’s Manual:
SYNOPSIS
When the son of his long-dead bandmate messages him via social media asking for details of the father he never knew, former Nihilistics guitarist Chris T. hesitates to reply. How does he tell Mike Jr. – his father’s doppelgänger – the truth? Your dad tried to kill me and I suspect he’s a serial killer. As he journeys into the past, Chris confronts Mike in his entirety: from the sweet, shy, morbidly obese twelve-year old he meets in a Junior High cafeteria to the slim, tall bassist co-writing loud, fast songs to the grieving, twisted, budding alcoholic bemoaning the premature death of his beloved father to the balding, fat suburbanite choking the life out of him on a couch. Writing a series of letters to Junior, Chris lays out their story: The year is 1974. Inspired by his guitar hero Jimmy Page, twelve year-old Chris falls in love with the Harmony Stratotone a family friend stashes at the house. Playing it every chance he gets, the guitar is a welcome weapon to wield against his parent’s divorce, absent father and constant ridicule over his weight, especially from his brothers. Chris – fat, lonely, insecure – is apprehensive about entering Junior High but relieved when he meets a kid fatter than him: Mike. Bonding over their outcast status and shared interest in MAD magazine, Monty Python and Professional Wrestling, the two begin to hang out. Chris also meets Glenn, who lives on the nicest street in Lindenhurst, on Long Island’s South Shore, and they become best friends and constant companions. Glenn introduces Chris to fellow guitarist Billy down the block and they start jamming. After a family tragedy, Glenn’s family self-destructs and he moves to Florida with his mother and brother. Chris spends more time with Billy and soon after they enter High School they form the cover band Cobra (playing the rock hits of 1976). But Cobra can’t hang on to a singer and after a run of backyard parties culminating in a triumphant Christmas Dance appearance at a local church, the band is dead. Chris – having lost Glenn and Billy and inspired by the DIY approach of the emerging punk bands – persuades Mike to take up bass, helping him choose an instrument and teaching him how to play. Mike’s confidence grows and when he returns from summer vacation a year later he’s dropped a hundred pounds. Chris is amazed and envious: he’s still fat and the target of constant abuse from fellow students and his family. Losing himself in the guitar, he spends much of his time at the local music store or writing and playing songs with Mike. The two decide to start a band covering The Clash, Damned, Ramones and Sex Pistols. A frustrating search for a simpatico singer and drummer follows. Eventually, they stumble on Ron and Troy around the time Mike’s beloved father dies horribly, This transforms the former naïf into a sullen misanthrope, sequestering himself in his bedroom to crank out lyrics for dark songs like After Death, Kill Yourself and You’re To Blame. It’s now 1980. Ronald Reagan is President but for Chris and Mike, seventeen and eighteen, fresh out of high school, unable to afford college, facing a mind-numbing, soul-crushing future of the same blue-collar jobs their dads resent, there’s no “Morning In America”. But there may be a way out of their stultifying, provincial town. Christening their now fully-formed band after a word he spies in a stolen copy of Jean Paul Satre’s Nauseu, Chris views The Nihilistics as a possible escape route. The Nihilistics quickly record a demo cassette, gaining radio play on a NYC college station and subsequently booking gigs at now-legendary music venues, including CBGB, Danceteria, Great Gildersleeves, Max’s Kansas City, Mudd Club, My Father’s Place and the Peppermint Lounge. They record an EP, then LP; play intense shows alongside fellow hardcore bands Adrenalin OD, Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, Even Worse, False Prophets, Kraut, Reagan Youth, Sonic Youth, etc., often winning over skeptical city kids who think the Nihilistics are all North Shore Gatsbys. As their stature on “the scene” grows, cracks begin to form in The Nihilistics. Disengaged drummer Troy – always an enigma – is off on his own with one sugar mama or another. Mike – no longer anathema to women since trimming down and picking up the bass – falls under the sleazy spell of punk rock lothario Ron. Forever in a leather Schott Perfecto jacket – ala his hero Sid Vicious – Ron favors the sex & drugs to the rock & roll and views the band as a vehicle to bang more chicks. Ron and Mike – a tight, conspiratorial unit bringing out the worst in each other – leave Chris on the outside looking in. Wanting to veer more towards Judas Priest and heavy metal, they suggest the addition of a second guitarist – Ron’s kid brother – to play lead. Will Chris stick with the band despite this change in direction? Or is Mike destined to be his booster rocket, helping him achieve escape velocity but burning up in the process? “A Memoir with Guitar”, NIHILISTIC is more than the story of a hardcore band. The book explores how children process abuse, dysfunction and loss in radically different ways, asking “What if the deeply-flawed person who launches you into the next phase resents it so much they try to kill you?” and revealing dark serial-killer suspicions Chris harbors for years about his former best friend.
I continue to refine the Owner’s Manual but it’s the roadmap to the book I’m writing. There’s much more in it but this is all I’ll share for now.
If you knew me back in the day and feel you have something to share, please comment below or email me: chris@nihilisticbook.com.
