If you had told us a few years ago — much less during the Mullet Board era — that we could expect unreleased Straight Ahead and Cro-Mags songs before turning 30, we’d have reacted in an outrageous, respectful manner befitting vintage Chris Spaulding or Michael Dolloff. New music from any of the old NYHC bands is a sea-change, and inexplicably1 these have been unearthed, and are a gift. That these songs have come out, and been forgotten over a weekend is a bit troubling, but this is beyond the scope of this article. Our friend Chris “Cooch†St. Germane, record collector, illustrator, and so on, recounts his favorites.
Straight Ahead – Knockdown demo recording with Don Fury, May 20, 1987
This legendary Straight Ahead song came to me in late 2004 via a dubbed tape that was originally sent to a friend in Florida, courtesy of an infamous NYHC pack rat, Straight Ahead archivist who had been peddling his wares on eBay.2 Said friend — who is no slouch in the pack rat (N.B. — not PacRat, a.k.a. Tommy Rat, a.k.a. Daddy Moshbucks a.k.a. King Joffee Jaffee) department himself — informed me of the contents of said tape upon its reception, and upon hearing that, my own and several Boston-area heads simultaneously exploded. It should be mentioned that this friend did not own a tape deck at the time, and could not produce a dub nor a CDR, so we arranged to meet at an upcoming Daytona Beach, Fla., gig that Righteous Jams and Mental were playing. Once arrived, I borrowed the tape and was able to make a copy of it. Upon inspection, it contained, along with the song — the most ephemeral in Straight Ahead’s all-too-slim catalog3 — original live sets which the mysterious sender recorded from the audience, including the first Project X show, from the inaugural Superbowl Of Hardcore (bad quality), the first Skinhead Youth show, at CBGB’s (“for all the bashers†— enough said there), an Altercation soundboard from CBGB’s (incredible), and some other sets already in the PKR archives. This tape was so hot it almost burned a hole in my backpack.
We had to wait two long days until we hit a tape deck — this was in Austin, Tex., or about 1,143 miles away — and by that point it was New Year’s Eve. We were able to pop the tape in at Nate from Far From Breaking’s home4 stereo. Vigorous dancing erupted in the living room. After what must have been a dozen listens, some newness wore off, and we sat down to really listen to the recording. Admittedly, we expected more than was possible, and at rest, we were met with a somewhat lo-fi song, recorded live in the studio as so many others did with Don Fury. The vocals were a bit muffled, and the recording was raw and similar to Straight Ahead’s demo/comp tracks.
But it was still “Knockdown,†recorded in a studio, 117 seconds of unbridled hardcore glory, so what were our complaints? The sender of the tape (to my friend) mentioned that Straight Ahead played their final official show a week and a half before recording, and the musicians in the group — Armand Majidi, Rob Echeverria, Craig Setari — were apparently not happy with singer Tommy Carroll’s newfound stylings. Though I don’t know if this recording reflected that sentiment, the vocals are VERY low, and sound a bit unenthused — though it might just be a poor mix. The tape’s supplier also mentioned that the version of “Knockdown†was part of a two-day session during which just about every Straight Ahead song was put to tape. Unfortunately, the rest of the tape has never surfaced, which left us all scratching our heads, wondering what songs like “More Important”5 and “Take Control” would sound like on this phantasmic recording.
Cro-Mags – Unreleased Don Fury session, 1984
Another tape which came straight out of nowhere — specifically, a shoebox in drummer Mackie Jayson’s closet — and proved there is no limit to the amount of unarchived classic-era NYHC on the horizon. I heard about this tape from a N.J. friend several months before its March 2008 official release; he had overheard rumblings about an “unreleased early Cro-Mags demo session.” True to form, the session was released for the first time – official or otherwise, since they had not been bootlegged — sometime around Easter 2008 as bonus tracks on a CD re-pressing of The Age Of Quarrel. That demo-era Cro-Mags songs existed under the radar for so many years is perverse, like an earthquake hidden under a thatched hut. Luckily, when we heard them, they did not disappoint. If they did, our souls might have been harmed irreparably. A bad Cro-Mags song — none exist — would cause a re-evalutation the likes of which I have not grappled with since my girlfriend dumped me in high school.6
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