Well, here we are. The 80's, finally. Ronald Reagan is in the White House, Margaret Thatcher is in No 10, and a lot of people are angry. Punk Rock as we knew it splintered into New Wave, Ska, Post-Punk, and Goth. Those who stuck to the core Punk Rock ethos became known as Hardcore Punks, after the D.O.A. album Hardcore '81. Thanks to works like Penelope Spheeris' documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, Hardcore bands like Black Flag and Germs would become the faces of the movement. Punks as presented in movies and television would almost always dress and act like Hardcore bands rather than the likes of the Ramones or The Dictators. While CBGB had once been a home for weirdos making weird music, it was almost all Hardcore acts through the 80s. Evolution still happens, but at a far slower pace than previously, and in a way that's easier to track scene-by-scene. To that end, I'm starting the Hardcore Havens sub-series, in which I'll talk about the various Hardcore scenes and what they added to Punk Rock.

To begin: Washington, DC.

Punk came to the US capital the same way it came to everyone else: the Ramones came to town. In their wake, all the weirdos in D.C. decided to stop waiting for weird music to come to them. This resulted in the first wave of D.C. Punk bands, like The Slickee Boys and The Penetrators. These bands mostly released music through local Maryland indie label Limp Records, who released the foundational :30 Over DC compilation in 1978. But most of these bands still had a bit too much of that precursor DNA, sounding a bit folky and a bit garage rock, and mostly settling into place in the "New Wave" niche.

...And then, Hardcore happened.

One of the things about Washington, D.C. is that a lot of the people there are tuned-in politically and a lot of the young people were very angry about America's ongoing decline. To paraphrase Henry Rollins of State of Alert (and later Black Flag), there wasn't really a kind of music for people who were both very angry and very energetic. While the Ramones opened their eyes to the wonders of pounding rhythms and buzzsaw guitars, it was the likes of Black Flag, Germs, and (unfortunately) FEAR that showed that you could push it even further. Remember how I said L.A. Punks threw melody to the wind? Yeah, D.C. did that even more, with bands like S.O.A, Youth Brigade, and The Teen Idles just barely suggesting a melody in their songs.

In amongst all these up-and-coming Hardcore bands was a little Jazz Fusion act called Mind Power. From 77-78, the group had a dual awakening, as future vocalist Sid McCray introduced them to punk rock and Bob Marley introduced them to the Rastafari movement. Punk and the Rastafari movement spoke to their beliefs, and seemed to compliment each other. To that end, they changed their name to Bad Brains and became a Punk band. Their sound was much like that of their contemporaries in the D.C. Hardcore scene, except for the occasional dip into Reggae. This mixture of sounds made them incredibly popular with the DC Hardcore crowd, who would slam dance particularly vigorously when the band was on. Bad Brains encouraged this kind of dancing, which they called 'Mashing.' However, due to singer/guitarist H.R. and his Jamaican accent, the word came out as "Moshing." Club owners in D.C. were not very happy about moshing, as it was dangerous to other patrons and had the potential to cause a lot of property damage. As such, Bad Brains got banned from basically anywhere they could play in their hometown. In 1980, the band relocated to New York City, where they would become a staple at CBGB.

Ian McKaye was the bassist in The Teen Idles. He'd originally formed the band as The Slinkees in 1979, and formed Dischord Records with drummer Jeff Nelson to release the Minor Disturbance EP in 1980. And then The Teen Idles broke up. But Ian and Jeff persisted, enlisting Lyle Preslar on Guitar and Brian Baker on bass to form Minor Threat. Their debut release, a self-titled EP in 1981, contains the song Straight Edge, in which Ian explains why he doesn't get intoxicated. Except that song is only 49 seconds long, so he has to cut out quite a lot of the story. The truth is there was something of a temperance movement growing within Punk scenes, even before Minor Threat had formed.

What we know today as Punk began as a way to take rock 'n' roll back for the masses, and drugs and alcohol are part and parcel of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Being associated with Punk meant you were marginally more likely to encounter some stuff that was particularly hard and particularly cheap or even get introduced to impromptu highs like airplane glue. A lot of punks had become addicted to drugs and alcohol and were dying young because of it. The highly publicized death of Sid Vicious in 1979, followed by the suicide of Darby Crash in 1980 had started to put things into perspective. This was a big deal to one Ian McKaye, who had seen firsthand the way drugs and alcohol impacted the people in his life. He had sworn off drugs and alcohol in his teens and wanted to encourage others to do so as well. But Punk comes from counterculture, and attempts to take them away from their intoxicants aren't going to go over well. In Straight Edge, Ian made the case that one can live fast without taking drugs, drinking booze, or smoking cigarettes. Sure, Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers had sung the virtues of sobriety, and The Vibrators disavowed the hard stuff. Minor Threat made it about rebellion through self control, and while they never really tried to push it on people, they wound up becoming reluctant figureheads of the movement.

A thing I've been sorta glossing over is just how young some of these new Hardcore acts were. A lot of Hardcore bands consisted of people who were under 21, which made it difficult to book gigs at Punk-friendly clubs. Ian MacKaye experienced this firsthand when Teen Idles went to California, where a club owner turned them away at the door because nobody was of legal drinking age. The band was able to reach a compromise with the management by which they would all wear a big black X on the back of their hand in permanent marker, so staff would know not to serve them alcohol. When Teen Idles returned to DC, they spread the idea to local club managers, who liked the idea. With the X, teenagers could get into the shows, see Minor Threat play, and get introduced to the ideas of straight edge. When those kids finally came of age to drink, they kept the X as a way to self-identify with the new movement. This sorta continues into modern times, as xXUsernamesLikeThisXx originated as a way to denote that a user is straight edge.

As the movement spread, people began to wonder "Why stop at cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol?" After all, there were plenty more vices harming the Punk community around this time. STI's, and unplanned pregnancies were common among several scenes, and thus some began to eschew casual sex as part of their commitment to the lifestyle. Some Punks even became vegetarian or even wholly vegan, with bands like Earth Crisis incorporating animal rights and environmentalism into their interpretation of straight edge. There's also Queer Edge for those of you who abstain from drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes but aren't straight.

So don't do drugs.

Or do.

It's your life.