Please dispute the "Classic" status of Born Against.

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I can't imagine people having real issues with this band, provided it's not a taste or political issue. That is, I'm curious about people who like this type of music (screamy hardcore) but don't like Born Against; it seems that everyone digs them, even the crusty punks and emo kids.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Monday, 9 December 2002 23:37 (twenty-three years ago)

born against? as in the band that sam mcpheeters sang for? can it be the same band? doubt it... is it? or are you kidding me?

― kate, Monday, 9 December 2002 23:41 (twenty-three years ago)

That's the one.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Monday, 9 December 2002 23:42 (twenty-three years ago)

are they still around? hah! sam mcpheeters (or however the heck you spell his name) was in my class at high school. he claimed to be an anarchist, but then he ran for our grade's representative on the student council. won, as well, IIRC, coz we figured we'd rather have an anarchist than a debutante.

about the music, i know nothing, but i can tell you loads of horror stories about what he got up to in drama club.

― kate, Monday, 9 December 2002 23:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Haha, no, they haven't been together in years and years and years.

He's in Men's Recovery Project now, I believe. I think they're either touring Japan or just got back from Japan. What a crazy fella. MRP are an awesome band too; freak-synth-noise-punk weirdness. Search: "Bolides Over Basra" a bizarre concept album about the Middle East (www.loadrecords.com)

― Ian Johnson (orion), Monday, 9 December 2002 23:53 (twenty-three years ago)

kate, does your comment in response to the JFA pic on the preppy thread apply here?

― gygax!, Monday, 9 December 2002 23:53 (twenty-three years ago)

gygax- god, no. i fancied two of his friends something rotten, though, but i won't put their names for google-protection. hah!

hrmmm, maybe i'll google MRP, but... erm... i don't actually have much of an urge to open any old high school wounds. he ran with a crowd that i wanted desperately to be a part of, but wanted nothing to do with me cause i was "too weird". spurned by the cool kids, how life never changes. just goes to show how many of these punk rock kids are really prep-school middle class right under the surface...

― kate, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:05 (twenty-three years ago)

too precious by half, too blunt by the other. atrocious self-editors, appalling curators - based mostly on vermiform's reliance on the earliest born against material to provide cash-in-hand for supporting whatever electrowank crawls out of rhode island or california this week. musically incompetent a good 50% of the time, and not in a charming or effective way, more that their "good" material is based entirely on happening upon a decent riff (or tonie joy.) rhythmically turgid. marred by infighting, their inability to keep personal obsession or failings from poluting their work, and of course their inability or conflicted desire to slide out of the straight jacket they fitted for themselves, either musical (nothing too metal, too noisy, too "rock", too Dischord, too anything) or social (their masochistic relationship with hardcore.)

of course, most of these are also what made them great, and when they were - briefly - on, they produced a half-dozen of the best songs to come out of the genre in the early-mid 90s.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:28 (twenty-three years ago)

i just googled, and it's fucking weird, i'm having this odd sense of weird displacement and oddness. just fucking strange to find out that someone you knew in one millieu went off and lived this whole alternate reality that you weren't even aware of. i didn't know that ANYONE from my class went off and did anything with their lives except become stockbrokers or society wives or write for the NY Times.

― kate, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:39 (twenty-three years ago)

those that i bumped heads with in florida mostly found born against to be "classic", yet pretty blandly straight forward. vermiform and the rest of the vermin scum stuff was much more respected for being forward motion (aka "real" punk). mrp and the like were hallowed in that sense because they were sufficiently warped... tickling our death and grind tendencies... (tampa being the death metal capital while most of the folks my age were in high school and so on...)

i'd rather listen to first wave hardcore if i wanted 3 chords and a good scream.
m.

― msp, Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Jess and msp win!

― Ian Johnson (orion), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 00:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Born Against and MRP are fine, but it's Sam McPheeters' writing that I find really appealing. That last issue of Error from a few years ago is great, especially the record reviews. The 'Stockholders Reports' on the Vermiform web site are also worth reading.

― DIE90 (dhadis), Tuesday, 10 December 2002 14:52 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

classic

― chinchillas they can fit on gorillas, Monday, 2 June 2008 03:39 (eighteen years ago)

eleven years pass...

Cannot recommend highly enough Sam McPheeters’ new book, Mutations. Highly personal memoir of his time in hardcore, including a lot about mental health which I didn’t get as a young fan. The essay alone about Doc Dart from Crucifucks is worth it. Reading it prompted a deep listening dive which tempts me to start a thread about the guitar playing of Tonie Joy...

― Yelploaf, Monday, 16 March 2020 18:44 (six years ago)

two months pass...

it really is very good. people with more informed opinions about hardcore might have different opinions from me, but i really enjoyed it. and yes the doc dart profile is the clear highlight.

― na (NA), Thursday, 4 June 2020 20:27 (six years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.