Wareness - Meatheads, or, How to diy without getting killed

N oahs not my name. I live in a toner cartridge in a copier on a painted wood desk next to a bed in a little room at the top of eighteen stairs in a house of friends in the middle of a big city. Ive never made anything like this before.

In the order we met, this is for Melanie Lambrick, Nathan Garfat, Jessica Yeandle-Hignell, Emese Boyko, Justine Sawyer, Simon Frankson, Anthony Crage, Andy Anderson, Alexis Hogan, and Caela Butt.

I only know LAs founding punk scene through printed histories. Mostly thats Lexicon Devil by Brendan Mullen, Wild-Eyed Boy by Lori Wiener, American Hardcore by Steven Blush, and We Got The Neutron Bomb by Mark Spitz. I should have read them better, too.

Writers owe their supports and sources, but a story owes the stories behind it. Some of this ones closest links are called Cruddy, Peace, Riddley Walker, Blood Meridian, The Troika, and Nine Hundred Grandmothers. The last two are nearly forgotten, and you need to go find them. Thats actually the most important thing.

B efore my parents were born, Saint Phil was writing about teenagers who spiked their hair, put bones through their noses and threw out all their inherited rules of space and time. You cant ever tell what comes true. Hardcore punk was a real thing that really happened and continues to mutate in the modern underground. Its shockwaves are still remaking peoples understanding of genuineness, ethics, and craft. When I was a teenager I was too scared and lazy to do more than put up my hair. This book is an attempted work of thanks.

Hardcores also young enough that most of the original kids who built it are still around. That means in the real world theyre people first, historical persons second, and myth persons third. I got the order backward and I hope this is okay with everybody. In particular, some of the myth people in the streets and stories of Lost Angeles are distortions of real historical people. Punks name themselves, mostly, and I didnt change those names, but when they do horrific or stupefying things, I dont mean to suggest the original people were capable of those actions.

That goes hardest for Darby Crash, who led the band Germs. During his quick life in the real world he pulled all kinds of manipulative stunts and positioned himself as this kind of messy teenage cult leader, but never anything like this. I know he was your friend, and you loved each other. Im sorry to be one more clueless traveller pissing at his grave. Darby Crash really did invent hardcore. He invented consciousness, too. Both those parts are true.