Saturday, March 29, 2008

Be Open Hearted, Don't Be Retarded

The lyric comes off as ridiculous. Now. But at sixteen. It was great.

Wrong or not. After all of these years. It sticks with me. That lyric. "Cats and dogs, have all the luck." Almost as much.

They were one of the first Revelation bands I listened to. Also. One of the first "Youth Crew" bands. That I listened to. Around that time I started categorize punk versus hardcore. Agnostic Front hardcore versus Gorilla Biscuits hardcore. Prior to that. All "punk" to me. The Cure, Agent Orange, Agnostic Front, PIL, Black Flag, New Order, The Clash, even Depeche Mode. It all fell under the "punk" umbrella. Anything different. On 120 Minutes. And on WPRB.

Between nine and fifteen. No real separation. If you were into skateboards. Or any bands out of the mainstream. It was normal to be into other bands out of the mainstream.

Gorilla Biscuits (Original Mix). Acquired on Livewire. I haven't compared the two mixes. I probably own the same thing twice. For Colin.

[Image via www.deckersports.biz]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a pretty good story about the Gorilla Biscuit lyric "Don't be retarded...Be open hearted" - I got to see GB in Cleveland back in the late 80's on possibly their first trek to Ohio - Civ had a friend that had a handicapped brother and they changed the lyrics and asked us to sing along the new words instead...I forgot what it was changed to but we did sing it different

I also like the other comment on when "punk" became "hardcore" to you - We must be from the same era because I felt that same way about everything being "punk" about that same time - I had gotten into YOT and Uniform Choice which led me to the New York City Hardcore: The Way It Is 12" and eventually GB - I had never heard the word "hardcore" as a music genre term until that record and then those bands were "hardcore" while bands like Agnostic Front in my eyes were still "punk" - I still remember being back in my room when I first put the needle on the Way It Is 12"...it changed my life forever

Thanks for the memories and a good post!

Handsome Pete said...

I'd love to find out what the lyric was.

And thank you for the positive words.