This is not a review: the story behind the Ghetto 84 / Klasse Kriminale split album

The connection between skinhead and hardcore behind the Ghetto 84 / Klasse Kriminale split album

The two bands from our beautiful country that in 8 minutes, in this split album released via Crombie Media / Skinhead Sounds, pay homage to New York HardCore need no introduction: together with Nabat, they are the founding fathers of Oi! Italian culture, and it’s true that there is no Olympus for those who come from the street, but if there were at least one podium they would be there. For both dirty rock’n’roll influences, explosive grit and scratchy vocals, smoky guitars, bass lines and drums that march like boots. And then the blues and that catchy melody that stays inside you, that makes you sing the anthem during live shows, for moments that seem eternal, like those riffs.

There is a digression, in the biographical book “My Riot – my hardcore life” by Roger Miret released in Italy for Hellnation, in one of the many stories of the dark phases of his life due to substances, in which the iconic frontman by Agnostic Front quickly tells the genesis of another band. The first drummer of Agnostic Front – Raymond “Raybeez” Barbieri – a close friend of Roger and marines veteran, after leaving the AF for poor technical skills and excessive use of angel dust, he joined the Rat Poison band, a project that Tommy Rat was setting up his own with Miret and his cousin Tito Perez. These four, after a few shows together, decided to change their name; and Raybeez decided to give up the drum sticks to become the iconic frontman of another legendary American hardcore band: Warzone.

It is a passage that can flow quickly when reading the book, between a bad trip tale in mescaline during a light-hearted tour, a street fight and the struggle against cockroaches in the Lower East side squats, yet let’s start from here to understand better this split.

It took a decade for the skinhead culture to cross the shores of Great Britain and land across the Atlantic; and when it got there it was, under many aspects, transformed. Scholars and analysts more experienced than who is writing (Riccardo Pedrini and Valerio Marchi, Skinhead, 2ªed., Flavio Frezza, Italia Skins) agree that, outside the United Kingdom, skinhead culture has always been linked to punk at least as much, in its native land, it was linked to the modernist and Jamaican ones. This harmony between the two movements (skin + punk = tnt) obviously arose after the birth in British punk in the second half of the 70s, when in the early 80s the skinhead movement, now in a phase of decline after the initial explosion, re-emerged promoting newborn punk as the new chosen music, as opposed to the previous skinheads (which remained “original” precisely), directed towards black Jamaican music.

Then, common elements such as hatred for hippies, unwanted subjection to a life of sweat and work fatigue, acceptance of a certain level of street violence, a shared passion for alcohol and aggregation made the glue. And strengthening the bond led to the birth of something that took the name of ‘street-punk’: the comprehensive solution that allowed on the one hand to bring punk back to the street, giving it an openly working class connotation and thus placing it in contrast, to some extent , with the Crassian pacifist anarcho-punk and on the other the possibility for the skinhead culture to survive but stripped of the more elitist and sometimes snobbish aspects deriving from the British style.

Detroit, New York and Boston were the American cities that saw a very high level of mixing of these genres, starting from the early 1980s. Concerts by proto punk bands such as The Stooges, by d-beat bands such as Discharge and the famous The Angry Brain which hosted bands such as 7seconds, Minor Threat, Black Flag and Dead kennedys as well as having local bands perform at the opening, favored that this happened.

In 1980, the New York band The Stimulators went on tour in Ireland: they were the first American punk rock group to cross the borders and upon returning from that experience the very young drummer – he was 12 or 13 years old – returned with a new look made of boots and a shaved head, making it perhaps New York’s first skinhead. That kid was Harley Flanagan, who about two years later would found one of the biggest hardcore bands ever, the Cro-Mags.

In 1981, in Detroit, one of the very first skin formations dedicated to hardcore was born: Negative Approach, which were among the first bands of that genre to make themselves known in Italy thanks also to the fanzine of Tiziano Ansaldi. In a recent interview, Negative Approach singer John Brannon said:

“The London version of skinheads took hold in Detroit, which we thought was pretty silly. There were some guys who acted as if they were from London with boots and suspenders. We do not. We were simply bald-headed American kids. We were proud to be Americans and therefore didn’t act as if we were British. ”

Later the virus spread like wildfire: there were more and more skinheads in the hardcore scenes of cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and Boston. The skinheads substantially came to be an active part of all the hardcore scenes, dividing it with what took the name of Youth Crew with obviously different participation percentages from city to city: more or less everywhere the YC and SH component were part of the same scene . And this happened despite all the differences of the case (straight edge question, vegetarianism question, religious proselytism, different musical contaminations).

In this phase, the success of American punk bands composed entirely or in part of skinheads exploded, such as the Effigies of Chicago and the Youth Brigade of Los Angeles, both formed in 1980. At the end of the 1980s, there was a slow decline in the involvement of skins in the hardcore scene which has also caused a sort of rapprochement with Oi! traditional by fringes SH and the birth of a movement that, behind bands such as Stars & Stripes, Anti-Heroes, USChaos in turn driven by the founding fathers Iron Cross and Doug & the Slugz, generate a genre apart, the American Oi !, even distant in some aspects from the British precursors. The only hardcore-skinhead scene still active, albeit reduced, remained in New York City, with the DMS crew (Doc Marten Stomps), which features Madball, Agnostic Front and Murphy’s law.

This was the amalgamation of the American scene in the 80s: a pot capable of mixing boys and musical genres very distant in styles but very close in intent, capable of creating incredible bands born by the will of kids who left rockers for Europe and returned shaved heads , capable of exploring thrash metal, reuniting with punk rock and arriving at the religious cult of Hare Krishna. These were Harley Flanagan’s Cro Mags “first American skinheads”, as well as squatters in the ghetto along with Miret, Rat, Raybeez, Todd Youth (Warzone, D Generation, Danzig, and founder of personal projects such as Son of Sam and Fireburn, recently passed away ) and other.

And in the only three-year period (96-99) in which Flanagan was away from the band he was replaced by Craig Setari, bassist that many will remember in Sick of It All, but who has also played with many other legendary bands, including Youth of Today, Straight Ahead, Rest in Pieces, Agnostic Front. These substitutions were natural passages: you belonged to the same skinhead subculture and everyone belonged to the same scene.

There are really hundreds of connections between skinhead culture and hardcore scenes that occurred in the 80s: impossible to name them all, but to confirm this I report directly the authors involved in first person, with some passages from George Marshall’s book “Skinhead Nation” (published in Italy always for Hellnation):

“born in the Lower East side in the early 80s, when punk rock turned into hardcore, the first skinheads were perhaps a hundred but their number grew with the expansion of the hardcore scene. Bands like AF, Cro-Mags quickly gained a skinhead following, and their tours helped spread the word to other cities.”

Lower East Skins were united by a love for all genres of music and for the skinhead style that was imported from Great Britain, and then adapted. Or, as reported directly by Miret in My Riot:

“if it hadn’t been for Sham69, Business, Cockney Reject or Last Resort I probably would never have oriented myself towards that great working class music I would have never discovered the great American skin groups”.

In 2004 Craig Setari’s Sick of it All released a b-side, cover and unreleased album entitled “Outtakes For The Outcast” to pay homage to the music of their roots. There are only two homages to British music. Both are in skinhead culture: Sham69’s Borstal Breakout and Last Resort’s Working Class kids.

If I were deaf and could not listen to the regenerating music of the two songs, I would still take this 7 ”even for the eyes only. Not for the national flags on the cover of course, but for the internal booklet which contains, in addition to curious personal stories of the two frontmen, the scanning of some handwritten letters.

The first track is from Klasse Kriminale, for the Warzone. Marco Balestrino’s band covers Raymond’s band “Raybeez” Barbieri playing the anthem “The sound of revolution”. The salty voice of the port translates the lead words of the late American veteran. As he did many other times during their correspondence: with those letters you find in the insert, sent from New York City to Savona and signed with “Keep the faith!”.An oath to which Balestrino, as is evident, is still devoted.

If I were blind instead, and I couldn’t see Raybeez’s handwriting with my own eyes, I would still take this 7” just for the ears. To hear Luca Rude’s voice explode against the posers of the scene, who apparently have always existed. The second track is by Ghetto84, for Sick of it All. Rude’s band covers Setari’s band playing the anthem “Step down”.

The anger against what is false, the feeling of disgust mixed with compassion for those who see the concert as a fashion catwalk not as an occasion of support and above all the invitation to show themselves for who they really are or to step back, to give more than what they give or to renounce the pact of fidelity; because “if the deal is right then respect is where it should be / if the oath is valid, then it must be respected”. An oath to which Rude, as is evident, is still devoted.

Keep the faith, against the fakes

Andre.Core

Translated by Dende

Dedicated to Tato