I was reminded of this last week when I was talking to my man Lins on IG about friendship and hardcore. So much has been said about the music, the message, and what makes hardcore unique, but I think one thing that often gets overlooked is the bonds made along the way.
It’s being 3,000 miles from home and having your friend Tony Moore hand you a “Straight Edge Isn’t Cool Anymore….” t-shirt just because he knows you wanted one. It’s having friends you barely knew—or maybe had only written to—decide they wanted to come to a show in your town, climb into their mom or dad’s car, and drive a couple hundred miles just to hang out with you for the weekend.
It’s a handwritten note from Sean McCabe saying he bought hinges for your door because he wanted you to have some privacy, too.
It’s someone you met on a message board somehow getting your address and sending you a stack of Flyers stickers because they know you’re a Flyers fan. No questions asked. Just putting some shit in the mail because they knew it would make you happy.
It’s friends you haven’t seen in years randomly showing up with their daughter to check out your photos in an art gallery.
These are the things that don’t get talked about enough in hardcore. The lifelong bonds that came from being in a van together for a weekend in 1993. The friendships that somehow survive distance, decades, different lives, kids, marriages, divorces, and everything else that gets thrown at us. That’s the part of hardcore that people outside of it can’t understand. And honestly, the older I get, the more stoked I am on that kind of community.
So the old heads can wring their hands about what hardcore isn’t anymore, or what it’s not supposed to be. They can have those arguments.
But the things I’m talking about?
They’re undeniable.
And to me, that’s the part of hardcore that matters most.
Is it friendship? Trauma bonding? Stockholm syndrome? Maybe all the above. Anyway, I’m off to eat cake.
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Tagged: crud is a cult, ink and dagger
