Skate or Die Hardcore Extravaganza
at Wareham Sports Arena
by William Ham
Ah, what fulsome imagery those five words conjure up. One imagines a speed-frenzied riptide of anarcho-freaks climbing on their boards, screeching barely intelligible cries of “SMASH THE STATE!” as they crush the skulls of the disbelieving under their wheels, driven into microcosmic genocidal rage by the pounding, relentless squall of the new breed of rock ‘n’ roll animals. (Either that or it could refer to explicit sex acts on rollerblades.) Yes, one could imagine that. But as some great man once said, “Never judge a booking by its cover charge.” Between my romantically dystopian ideal and the rather trite reality falls the shadow. And that shadow wears a backward baseball cap.
First of all, the Wareham Sports Arena ain’t really any sort of arena – more like a high school gym with a thyroid condition, with the gig itself being held in what looked like a floor hockey “rink.” (Personally, I would have preferred the sand-filled net-enclosed volleyball court they have there, but maybe they were saving it for the cockfighting exhibition the following weekend) Secondly, I didn’t see one skateboard the entire night. Maybe when they said “skate” they were referring to the fish. I didn’t see any of those either. Third, and most disheartening, the crowd, who, from the looks of things, were still tadpoles when the first Black Flag record was released, were so well-behaved they were practically narcoleptic. You go to a HC show, you expect mania, barely controlled chaos, Nuremberg in Doc Martens. Yet the vast majority of the crowd seemed bored, listless. Where’s the suburban hardcore fury of old? I’ve seen more vicious mashing at a Morrissey concert, for fuck’s sake!
To be fair, in a realm as inherently limited as all-ages hardcore shows, certain things remain constant. The cops, for example. Several of Wareham’s, cough, finest could be seen swaybacking about, mumbling threats even before the show started ’bout shutting the whole thing down. But after a while, even they came to realize that the whole affair had the charged atmosphere of an insurance seminar, and they disappeared from sight. Some of the bands did their best to fire up the masses with some by-the-book punk rhetoric – “This is our scene,” “We’re playing it ‘old-school'” garnished, naturally, with liberal doses of “fuck.” But other than some ’70s-style pogoing, the kids seemed most excited when the top-heavy muscleheads at the gym – sorry, the Arena – dragged an unfortunate or two out to the parking lot. In other words, my fever dream of a teenage riot never happened. Not that I didn’t meet some swell guys (Hi, Roger) or that there’s anything inherently wrong with giving the kids a safe place to go on a Friday night, but I didn’t get into rock “journalism” to be surrounded by good intentions and orderly behavior and to leave a hardcore gig feeling cynical and old.
Oh, yeah, they had music there too.
