Straight Edge: A Clear-Headed Hardcore Punk History

Jonathan Anastas

D.C. is responsible for the iconography of straight edge. They brought along the X’s on the back of your hands so bartenders can’t serve you alcohol because you’re underage; and Minor Threat wrote the song “Straight Edge.” Boston took it further by bringing that Boston-tough-guy thing into straight edge. Kids in D.C. were not slapping beers out of people’s hands. They weren’t preaching about lifting weights and eating red meat. We took it to a different place. The branding of straight edge was solidified in Boston.

Mike Gitter

I think that Minor Threat wrote the script, and then SS Decontrol codified the message.

Jaime Sciarappa

In 1980, the Boston hardcore scene was in its infancy. There were maybe six or eight of us that kept bumping into each other. My first encounter with Al Barile was at a Dead Kennedys show. We connected briefly, then I saw him again the next time the Dead Kennedys came to town.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

When I discovered straight edge, it was like, wow, now there was a term for I was already feeling. In the summer of ’81, it all started coming together. It was just sheer luck that I ran into people that were like-minded.

Black Flag played at the Mill Hill Club on Cape Cod, and I spoke to Jaime Sciarappa at that show. Black Flag also played again later in the afternoon at the Channel in Boston. Al Barile was driving down across the bridge heading toward the Channel and he saw me walking. I had a shaved head, so he pulled the car over. He was playing Disorder, and the first thing I said to him was, “Hey, Disorder, I like that band!” That was it. I hopped in his car and we were buds from then on. You couldn’t miss Al at all those early shows. He was the biggest guy in the crowd.

Jaime Sciarappa

Choke was one of the first guys we latched onto. We met him at Newbury Comics. He was wearing a Black Flag button and we immediately connected. Choke, Al, and I became pretty inseparable in the early stages of the scene. That was the nucleus of what would be called the Boston Crew.

Mike Gitter

The Boston Crew was a small handful of guys, probably about ten people. They were the guys at the first shows in the city at Media Workshop or Gallery East, and they created the foundation for Boston hardcore.

Dave Smalley

The first Boston hardcore shows happened at Gallery East and the Media Workshop, which was this place up on the ten-millionth floor of this building that should have been condemned.

Al Barile

The initial members of Boston Crew went to New York and saw Black Flag at Irving Plaza. Somehow I met Henry Rollins and he told me about the straight edge thing in D.C.

Jaime Sciarappa

Henry Rollins was the first one of the D.C. guys to talk to us. He said he heard from the Black Flag guys that the Boston Crew was cool. We hung out with him a little bit and Henry told us about the straight edge thing.

Al Barile

Straight edge hit me at a point in my life where drinking wasn’t really important. Personally, drinking was already over for me. So when Henry told me about straight edge, it just became a very natural influence. I didn’t ever say anything to the people with me, like, “Hey, we have to stop drinking and be straight edge.” That was never said. Ever.

To me, though, it was a light bulb moment, because I saw kids that looked cool to me and they were proud to be straight. I immediately saw the power of that, and for the first time ever I connected cool with being straight. I wanted to try to take that example of being straight edge and being cool, and bring that to Boston and basically spread it to the rest of the world. I wanted to run with it.

Jaime Sciarappa

I remember driving home to Boston that night with Al after the Black Flag show at Irving Plaza in New York. We had this talk that we were going to make a conscious decision to take on this whole straight edge thing. We weren’t big drinkers. We’d drink a beer here and there. But when we saw those D.C. kids and how cohesive they were, we wanted to model the Boston scene on the whole D.C. scene.

Al Barile

I think Henry may have overstated the strong foundation of D.C. kids that were straight edge, numbers-wise, but I’m glad he did, because it left more of an impact.

Ian MacKaye

Al wrote me a letter very early on saying how much he loved the Teen Idles and Minor Threat, and that he was down for straight edge. Then we spoke on the phone repeatedly. We were all isolated, so we were always looking for kids in other cities to share this with. I was psyched to be in touch with him.

Al Barile

I respect Ian immensely, and I was always kind of surprised that he didn’t embrace the subject. I know he believed in straight edge on a personal level, but whether he wanted it to be what it is today – I don’t think that was ever his intention. But it was mine.

Straight edge was never a movement with D.C., which people don’t understand. It was just a song. I didn’t live there, and I can’t be sure, but my impression was that only a few people there didn’t drink or take drugs. My feeling was that it was a very important thing. I felt that if they didn’t want to deliver the message, I would.

Jaime Sciarappa

When Al and I bumped into each other again the second time the Dead Kennedys played in Boston, he said he was a guitar player trying to get a band together. I was a bass player trying to do the same thing. We exchanged phone numbers and pretty quickly got together and started fumbling around.

Al Barile

SS Decontrol was already going by the time we went on that trip to New York. After that trip, I was resolute in making sure that I set an example in all facets of my life. It starts with one and you hope to get two, and hope to get three, and then just hope that the numbers grow.

Jaime Sciarappa

Almost every night Al, Choke, and I would hang out in Kenmore Square trying to make our presence known. I think we did, since three skinheads hanging around looked out of the ordinary at that time. We would hang out there, almost trying to recruit kids into hardcore.

Al Barile

It wasn’t about starting a gang or a club. It was about spreading the message of choice; hopefully people would think really hard about the choice of using drugs or alcohol, because that was the choice I was talking about.

Catherine Goldman, AKA Katie the Cleaning Lady

The first SS Decontrol practices went on in my grandmother’s house. Joe Mueller was the original singer for SS Decontrol, before they ended up getting Springa to sing.

Jaime Sciarappa

I’m pretty sure we got Joe Mueller as a vocalist through an ad we put in the Boston Phoenix. I think that’s how we got our drummer Chris Foley as well. When it wasn’t working out with Joe, we decided to ask David Spring, AKA Springa, to be our singer. He was a scenester in Boston; we would see him at shows all the time. The first time I laid eyes on Springa was at an Elvis Costello show in 1979, when he was probably twelve years old. He always had a way of getting into every show.

Dave Smalley

SS Decontrol stood for “Society System Decontrol,” and they were already a band by the time I moved from D.C. to Boston to go to college in 1981. They should be recognized as the bedrock of the Boston hardcore scene. They were the first band that were really getting out there and doing it, especially in terms of being a straight edge band.

Jonathan Anastas

Boston was just like every other city in America in 1981; Black Flag came to town and the entire world shifted. I missed the infamous first Black Flag show in Boston at the Paradise, since I was away at summer camp. I was working at Newbury Comics; everything was punk when I left for summer camp, and everything was hardcore when I came back. After summer camp, the first or second SSD show happened. The Rathskeller, or the Rat, had one or two shows before the bouncers beat up all the kids for slam dancing, and the club stopped having hardcore shows. There were also shows at Media Workshop and Gallery East.

Andy Strachan

Black Flag played in Boston in July of 1981. My friends and I all went to that show after cutting all our hair off with clippers. There were fifty or sixty people there, and there was instant thrashing. We couldn’t believe it. We all went to that show and met the rest of what would become the Boston Crew. They were blown away that we came from Marblehead, Massachusetts. There were maybe twelve of us, so they thought we were some big punk rock gang coming from there. We arrived with shaved heads and high-top Nikes, wearing rolled-up jeans and sweatshirts. Little did they know we were just these little kids who didn’t know anything. Al Barile was there handing out flyers for a show with his band SS Decontrol. He was a big leader for our scene. He drove us around in his black van. He put so much work into building the Boston scene.

Jonathan Anastas

Boston has always had this flinty, old-school work ethic. It’s in our blood. We ran with that, because everything that the Boston Crew did, we did full-on. It was inspiring. If some new wave band put up a hundred flyers for their show, SSD would put up a thousand. If some touring band came in with a new Marshall amp, the next month we would have four full stacks. A lot of the guys played competitive sports before they found hardcore, or at least lifted weights. We were all trained in that mindset. As they say in the gym, “Every day the weights are the same; the only thing different is you.”

Mike Gitter

The only reason I can give for why straight edge took off like it did in Boston is Al Barile. Al was and is a very strong, directed, and creative person. Also, Al is a hockey guy. He has a competitive and aggressive personality, and I’m sure there was a degree of one-upmanship in him.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

Al had his own gravitational pull. He was one of the guys who organized and led the charge. He knew all the guys in all the other scenes, and he was the ringleader in Boston. He was the focus.

Jonathan Anastas

Al had massive X’s on the back of his hands, and he wore the jacket with “The Straight Edge” in big letters on the back. He wrote a manifesto, “The Choice,” that was published in Glen E. Friedman’s My Rules fanzine. He had a fucking manifesto! No other kid in America had a manifesto!

Dave Smalley

Why was Boston so aggro and militant about straight edge? I don’t know – maybe because Boston is a tough freakin’ town! We had tough guys in our crew. We spray-painted our names everywhere, and got in fights, and got chased by jocks, and we ran from cops. That all happened on a regular basis. Boston pits at shows were known to be really hard and aggressive. I can’t count the number of elbows I caught in my eye and the number of times I started seeing stars. I’m not trying to glorify any of this, I’m just telling you this to describe things honestly. Our scene also had some great music that was centered around straight edge. Look no further than SSD and that first album in 1982, The Kids Will Have Their Say. Holy cow!

Al Barile

I was trying to associate cool with being straight – that was the key concept. That’s the big difference. I wanted that message to resonate with young people; that there was a different way to live your life. Hence the title The Kids Will Have Their Say. Back then, I think recorded music was more important than just merely playing live. You weren’t a band in my opinion unless you made a record, so putting out the record was important to me. And doing it ourselves was very important.

I used a team of people that were around us; Phil N Flash did the photography and Bridget Burpee did the layout. I asked Ian MacKaye if it could be a partial release on Dischord. My feeling was that would make the label I was starting, X-Claim!, somewhat credible, and possibly help us get off the ground. I don’t even think Ian reviewed anything; he just let me do it. He didn’t have to do that – I know that Dischord is a D.C. label, and I’m eternally grateful that he felt SSD worthy to be on his label. I don’t remember everything that went with it, but I think I sent him a bunch of records as part of the deal.

Mark McKay

I was in a record store out in the suburbs, and these thugs were in there selling their records to the store. That was Jaime and Al, and they were trying to sell this store the first SSD album. They played it on the speakers in the store, and I was just amazed. I gathered up the courage to ask if it was their record, and I bought a copy from them personally for three bucks. The straight edge content on that record was such a unified message. I didn’t have an idea of what Minor Threat looked like. I just knew what they sounded like, and what their message was. But I could hold this record The Kids Will Have Their Say, with these rebellious shaved-head kids running up the Massachusetts State House stairs and this straight edge message and these militant themes, and it was really attractive.

Nancy Petriello Barile

I bought SS Decontrol’s The Kids Will Have Their Say, which I absolutely loved. While there was no doubt that their straight edge message was strong, I was more interested in the music. Their power was unmistakable; I wanted to see them live. I called the phone number and asked them to do a show in Philly. I ended up talking to Al for about two hours. He couldn’t do the show, but he told me they would be playing in Staten Island with the Effigies and the Dead Kennedys. A couple of the guys from Autistic Behavior and I drove up to that show. I was blown away. To me, few bands had the sheer power of SSD. I remember talking to Al after the show. I didn’t really smoke, but for some reason I had a cigarette. Al looked at me like I had a gun in my hand.

Al Barile

I didn’t say I was going to be militant, but I was certainly going to be intense and over the top, because that’s how I live. Everything I do is one hundred percent – that’s the only way I can do it with a hundred percent authenticity. Maybe that’s where the militant intensity comes from.

Nothing was ever said to the other members of my band or the Boston Crew that we had to be straight, but certainly I wasn’t going to participate in any activities that didn’t involve being straight. So I guess while people were around me, they were going to be straight. What they did on their own time really wasn’t my concern; it should have been their concern.

Dave Smalley

Very quickly after SS Decontrol, our band DYS sprung up, as did Negative FX. One day I was walking around the Boston College dorm with a sleeveless white T-shirt with “Teen Idles” written on it in thick black marker. This kid came up and asked if I was in the Teen Idles. I said no, but we got to talking and we realized we both wanted to be in a band. I went down to Newbury Comics, which then was just one store that sold import LPs, a few punk records, and some buttons. I put up a little piece of paper on their cork bulletin board that said, “Punk singer and drummer with full equipment looking to form hardcore punk band.” I had nothing, and the other guy sure didn’t have a drum kit. We basically lied. But Jonathan Anastas called me up and said he was a bass player, and that he had an awesome guitar player who loved punk. That guy turned out to be a stoner who just wanted to play Van Halen riffs all day. So DYS was totally built on a lie. But Jonathan and I quickly jelled, and we eventually got Andy Strachan on guitar.

Al Barile

The most important thing about DYS arriving was that we suddenly had a bunch of people with common influences. So we did encourage them. Having a bunch of bands was important to building our scene. We didn’t want to have to play with a death metal band or something, but there was a period where we had to play with bands with whom we did not share a common fan base.

Dave Smalley

SSD and DYS were definitely brother bands. LA had a scene with the Circle Jerks, the Adolescents, and Wasted Youth. That mirrored their culture and who they were. With Boston, we had SSD and DYS, and that reflected who we were. It was very modest and pure. I wanted to have a hardcore punk band that was centered on trying to make life better – trying to make the world a little better – and doing all that for straight edge. We had a certain evangelical ferocity. When DYS called our first record Brotherhood, it was about hardcore kids sticking together – straight edge or not. We walked the walk and we talked the talk.

Andy Strachan

Seeing Al Barile play in SSD definitely inspired me to learn to play guitar. I was like, “Look at that guy. Look at the way he holds the guitar like a gorilla!” If he could do that, so could I. I joined DYS after only playing guitar for eight months. I think DYS was playing for a little while before I joined. Their guitarist was getting drunk, so they had to get rid of him. Our first show, we played a church in Cambridge opening for the Misfits.

Mark McKay

DYS was the band that always invited everyone to get up and sing along with them, and it was a real relationship. When you would see SSD, you’d feel it; but when you saw DYS, you were experiencing it. You were always afraid to get near SSD because they were so tough. DYS was more like, “Come up and join us!” You could go arm in arm with Smalley and sing. So DYS was more of a real influence on me than SSD, because I felt more camaraderie. Instead of being a witness, I could be a participant.

Jonathan Anastas

All the older Boston punk rock bands seemed to have a problem when hardcore came to town. No one paid attention to the older bands except their friends in Boston. They might have been punk rock, but they still existed in the mind-set of wanting to gain attention from major labels. They wouldn’t make a record until someone paid them to make a record. They weren’t going to send demo tapes out, or get in a van and play for 25 dollars. They were still waiting to be “discovered” in the old model. We weren’t thinking like that. If anything, we invented a new model. So I think there was incredible jealousy. These old bands were like, “Why are people in San Francisco talking about SS Decontrol? Why are people in New York talking about Gang Green?” No one talked about the older Boston punk bands outside of Boston.

Dave Smalley

We were proud of being straight edge and making that a part of our mark, but there was no wider intent behind it. There was no pretense from anyone, because we were all figuring things out as we went. That’s probably why each city was so distinct. Today, the internet has blurred all the lines between distinctness in our country. It’s hard to find an identity when every town has Starbucks and Target and Walmart and Staples. Back then every punk scene in America was pretty damned unique. Boston was very different from D.C., which was very different from Chicago, which was very different from Detroit, which was very different from LA, which was very different from San Francisco. Each of those scenes was so distinct, musically, stylistically, and aesthetically. We were just showing who we were. We threw down the flag. You could pick it up if you wanted. You could step on it, too, if you wanted – but I don’t think you would have gotten very far if you tried that.

Andy Strachan

Not every band out of Boston was completely straight edge. That was just impossible! We could count the numbers of people who were straight edge in the Boston scene on our hands. There were drinkers and partiers that we knew all through growing up that were part of our crew. It’s not like we were going to stop hanging out with them.

Jonathan Anastas

Gang Green was in the Boston Crew, and they were a heavy party band. Jerry’s Kids was somewhat of a party band. Even the F.U.’s were a bit of a drinking band. DYS and SSD were the straight edge bands, but there was no schism. You have to understand that no one was pure here. Media Workshop was a drug den, and no one talks about that. SSD would be putting on their straight edge shows while the owner sold beers out of a cooler and people probably sold God knows what else without anyone knowing. But SSD accepted it, because where else were they going to put on these shows?

Dave Smalley

Some other bands weren’t straight edge, like Jerry’s Kids or Gang Green or the F.U.’s. They were part of the Boston Crew, but not the Boston Straight Edge Crew. They weren’t straight edge and didn’t pretend to be.

Jonathan Anastas

The dirty secret about all these bands is that they were not even one hundred percent straight edge themselves. Not all of SSD was straight edge. Not all of DYS was straight edge. Not all of Negative FX was straight edge.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

I was the only person in Negative FX who was straight edge. But I wrote all the songs, so that made us a straight edge band.

Reverend Hank Pierce

The songwriters were always the straight edge guys, and the rest of the guys in the bands usually weren’t so much into it. Springa of SSD wasn’t the most sober of people as I remember.

Al Barile

I was going to spread this message, but I was going to do it by example. I never went to even my band and said, “Look, we have to be straight.” Never said. Never done. I just felt that if my lyrics were going to be about something, it was going to be something important and meaningful, and I was going to help try and change how kids approached getting through those teenage years, a period of life that can be hard to navigate. I think everyone is influenced by what they see and what they think is cool, right? That was the message – the message was about choices. It was a message of choice.

I never took a straw poll and asked who was straight edge or not. I figured the best way was to continue to be steadfast. I never knew who else was and who wasn’t. I just knew I was, and I was going to continue to set that example. Obviously I still had a lot of friends at home who went out on the weekends drinking. It’s not like all of a sudden I despised my friends, or that I thought every bar in the world should be closed. It’s not like I thought drinking or drugs were some tools of the devil that had to be eradicated from earth like during Prohibition. I definitely do not have a puritanical view of life.

Mike Gitter

Was straight edge the rule of thumb in Boston hardcore? Absolutely not! If you look at the scene, some of the best bands to come out of it weren’t necessarily the ones who called themselves straight edge. It’s similar to D.C., where bands like Scream or Void probably didn’t adhere to the same ideological stances as some members of Minor Threat.

You had these musically phenomenal bands like Jerry’s Kids or Siege, and history has been very kind to them. But they didn’t stand for anything. I think the reason SSD, Negative FX, and DYS have held such weight in the punk rock pantheon is that they stood for something.

Mark McKay

With Boston, we have the same attitude with our scene as we do with our sports teams. We follow our sports teams to the gates of hell. I’m 50 years old, and I still watch the scores of the Bruins games just because it’s something you hold onto. It’s familiar and comforting, and straight edge is the same way. It’s a source of pride; especially being in a town like this with a real active bar scene.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

When people would ask you where you were from, if you said Boston, you’d have to tell them, “We’re north of New York.” Sometimes it would just be easier to say you were from New York. So we were trying to get the name of Boston hardcore out there. In order to get people to listen, we had to go overboard sometimes. I guess I’ll always be that 12-year-old boy who wants to troll people. Sometimes I’ll write a song and I won’t mean it, but I’m not about to tell you that I don’t mean it. If you’re idiotic enough to believe it, then you’re an idiot. It’s not my job to spell everything out for you.

Jonathan Anastas

With Al from SSD and Choke as his hatchet man, the brand of Boston straight edge solidified and the myth built on itself.

Mike Gitter

If Al Barile was Grand Moff Tarkin, then Choke was Darth Vader.

Jaime Sciarappa

Boston started to get this reputation of being this super-militant straight edge city, and I think that was blown out of proportion a little bit. We would play a show in some town, and then hear afterward about things that went on, and everything was blown out of proportion.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

I remember a show in Ohio that SSD drove out to play. During the show, Al and I had flashlights. We were aiming them at people who were drinking, and shaking our heads in disapproval. We were just trolling people, to be honest. After the fact, people were saying the Boston Crew slapped beer bottles out of people’s hands. No, we didn’t. We never did anything like that! But we heard about that kind of stuff and saw the reaction, we would say, “Of course we did!” To me, it’s not my job to correct the legend. It’s my job to further it.

Jonathan Anastas

Do you know about the t-shirt-sleeve hats the Boston Crew used to wear all the time? Well, it started out that you couldn’t just make a sleeve hat; you had to tear a sleeve off someone’s shirt in the pit. It was like a trophy. You couldn’t just go home and make one with a pair of scissors. It started as a joke, and then it wasn’t. Then you really couldn’t make a sleeve hat at home, and poor kids were going home shirtless.

Jack “Choke” Kelly

I think Al came up with the idea of the sleeve hat, or maybe Springa. We were always cutting the sleeves off our T-shirts, so it was the first recycling or repurposing, you know? What could we use those things for? It’s kind of funny how they fit our heads so perfectly. It didn’t provide any bit of fucking warmth, but it was another thing to put our stamp on. No one else thought of it, so we were going to do it. Saying you had to earn your sleeve hat by ripping it off a punk’s arm in the pit was one of those fun things we started to get a rise out of people. Like a sleeve is going to rip off that perfectly! We were always coming up with shit like that.

Jonathan Anastas

Hüsker Dü came to Boston, and they sang backup vocals on the DYS Brotherhood record. They were grilling us. “We heard if we come with long hair, you guys will hold us down and shave our heads. We heard you guys slap beers out of people’s hands.” That’s when we started saying all that stuff was true; when these guys came from out of town with all these rumors. “Yup, that’s what we do!” And the stories just spread.

Slapping the beers out of people’s hands – I liken that to Method acting, or being a professional wrestler. But at some point, we started taking the character home. It started as an ironic joke, and then the mythology took over. I think at some point, Ian MacKaye was like, “What the fuck are you guys doing? Are you guys fascists?”

Ian MacKaye

SS Decontrol first came to D.C. in January of ’82 to play a show at Woodlawn High School. They drove down in a snowstorm, and, at the time, I was driving a newspaper truck for the Washington Post delivering bundles. I had come home from work and probably gone to bed at four in the morning or something like that. At the Dischord House, my room was directly above the front door, and I was woken up at ten in the morning by all this stomping. I came downstairs to see all these bald guys wearing shirtsleeves on their heads, stomping the snow off their boots. They all seemed huge and super muscular to me. That was the first time I met them and it left a real impression.

Jeff Nelson

We were friends with SSD, and I liked them, but there was a jock aspect to them. They called themselves the “Boston Crew”; the minute you start using the word crew, it constitutes a lot to me.

Ian MacKaye

SSD’s show ended up being controversial, because the Boston Crew was so violent on the dancefloor. I reckon that their idea of the D.C. punk scene was that it was going to be really tough. While we might have been tough, we weren’t bruisers. Most of us didn’t go to shows looking for a fight. On the other hand, we wouldn’t really back down from one. But the Boston guys definitely showed up to stomp some ass, and a lot of the D.C. kids just weren’t into it.

Jaime Sciarappa

SSD would do this thing called a “pig pile,” where we would just jump on each other and it would get to the point where the bodies would be eight high. I think in D.C. a kid got a broken rib or something. Then it went around that we were bullies, and we beat the kid up. Don’t get me wrong, we liked to go to shows and make our presence known. We had a few guys in our crew that were pretty insane, but we would never injure a kid on purpose, especially not in D.C.

Ian MacKaye

It was fucked up and some people were mad at me for bringing them down here to play. People were saying, “Fuck those Boston guys!” and I kept saying, “No, they’re nice guys! They’re my friends!” My recollection is that, after the show, Al Barile said something to me like, “I’m really disappointed in D.C.” I asked him what he meant, and he said that he had figured that our scene was going to be this huge army of bald guys throwing their X’d fists in the air or something. I think he was surprised to find so many weirdos, wimps, and women.

Jonathan Anastas

Compared to what happens today, or what went down in Los Angeles, it was really nothing. Everything was also more about factions than an overall scene war. Boston, for sure, did its best to create it. SSD would stuff their vehicles with as many kids as they could hold, then roll up to Irving Plaza or the Rock Hotel in New York. Someone would grab a Sharpie and say, “Everyone draw an X on your forehead so you’ll know who not to punch in the face.” Choke would lead a straight edge chant on stage between songs; things like that.

Brian Baker

There was a feeling at the time in D.C. about the Boston bands that had us thinking, “Wow, this is being a little bit misconstrued.” But it’s a long-running D.C. punk tradition to think we’re doing it the right way and the way you’re doing things is just the wrong way. D.C. likes to take ownership of things once we see other people want it.

Dave Smalley

There was a respectful relationship between D.C. and Boston. We were the two cities that were marked by this thing called straight edge. Both places were either hated or loved for it

Jack “Choke” Kelly

Dave Smalley and I were living in the same house, and he was pen pals with Ian MacKaye. Ian wrote a letter to Dave that read something like, “You guys in Boston are too militant about straight edge.” I was like, “Oh really?” So I decided to write this drill sergeant–style chant about straight edge, and recite it before SSD played with Minor Threat at Irving Plaza. Again, I was just trolling, but people fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It had lines in it like “Kill anyone with a beer in their hand.” I mean, c’mon, really? We were having fun with it all. I don’t understand why a lot of people don’t like me. To me, punk rock was always about pushing the envelope and stepping on toes. Did anyone think Sid Vicious was a Nazi because he wore a Nazi armband?

Sab Grey

I don’t want this to turn into a bunch of middle-aged guys stomping their feet and complaining, but most of those Boston guys were a bunch of fucking hockey jocks who got turned on to punk. They were jocks before punk, do you know what that means? They were always assholes! I was the weird kid who played sports, but I was a weird kid first. Why would you punch someone for drinking a beer? They’re not bothering you. I don’t like it when right-wing fascists do it. I don’t like when the Christian right does it, so why should we allow hockey jock punks to do it? It’s called bullying and I don’t like it.

Brian Baker

As the Boston guys took straight edge into this militant factionalized thing, all I could do was be a smart-ass and say, “Yeah, way to misread it.” But I didn’t realize maybe straight edge was very attractive to these people because they might have had problems with drugs or alcohol, or had a shitty upbringing where they got beat up by drunk parents. I never thought about it like that. I didn’t really think further that maybe this could be an awesome, empowering thing for them. And if so, who was I to interrupt the way they felt?

Straight Edge: A Clear-Headed Hardcore Punk History is now available via www.straightedgebook.com.