The Stimulators were a kind of a transitional thing in the evolution of the New York scene, between punk and hardcore. The band helped create a scene for the young kids that weren’t the throwback-junkie-Sid-wannabe punk rockers that were floating around, or the arty Contortions types. All the bands of the time, the whole English movement, and American stuff like Iggy & the Stooges and the Ramones, all influenced us, but we really had our own thing going on. Back then, everyone was doing their own thing. It was all new. There were no rules.
Eugene Robinson from Whipping Boy, now a noted writer, wrote me: “One night, I went to see this band called the Stimulators… with some crazy ten-year-old kid drumming. I was thinking ‘novelty act,’ I was thinking ‘cute factor.’ I was thinking some sort of sideshow appeal. But then they started playing, and the kid, who I later discovered was Harley, beat the fuck out of his drums. He was the most committed-looking ten-year-old I had seen. And while I thought the band was a little too ‘New York glammy’ for my tastes, I knew I’d see him again. And I did.”
Everyone on the scene before had been older and from that whole burned-out punk rock era. The young kids started breathing life back into it and made it fun again, instead of just the high and jaded leftovers that the Max’s, CBs and Mudd Club scenes had become. This was before bands like Minor Threat came to town or Circle Jerks or Black Flag. This was the pre-Hardcore era, on the tail end of punk—late ’79 into early ’81. It was a short period of time but a lot was happening.
A lot of bands were coming over to the States at the time besides the Clash. Bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Buzzcocks, the Undertones, 999, and Stiff Little Fingers. It was a transitional time for music and because of it we really played with everyone. We played with the B-52’s, Suicide, and the Stray Cats at Max’s, back when they were called the Hep Cats, and with Madness at their first U.S. show, at a club called Privates. We played with Levi and the Rockats, another popular rockabilly band from the time. We did that great show with the Damned at Hurrah on their Machine Gun Etiquette tour. I remember breakin’ Dave Vanian’s balls backstage at sound check. He was trying to bust on me ’cause I was a kid, and I was like, “Oh shut up, you stupid vampire.” Captain Sensible started pissing himself, so I had the whole band rolling. Rat Scabies still remembers that night. They were such a great band.
We played with the first-wave Hardcore bands, like the Bad Brains and Circle Jerks when they did their first New York show, Black Market Baby in D.C., and lots of other New York and D.C. Hardcore bands. Glenn Danzig told me the first time he ever saw me play was at Max’s Kansas City with the Stimulators. He was in the back at the bar. He looked up, and he was like, “Is that a fuckin’ midget on the drums, or is that a little kid?” He made his way up to the front of the stage, because he had to see for himself.
It was kinda funny, the craziness of my day-to-day life on the LES and in school, and then I had this whole other life as like a child star on the club circuit. It was really weird—it was these two separate lives that somehow collided somewhere in the middle.
A lot of really young kids started coming to our gigs. Maybe because they felt like they had something in common with us besides just the music. My age probably had a bit to do with it, and a lot of them figured if I could do it, they could too. We also had a lot of girls at our shows probably because there were two girls in the band. But I think there were just more girls on the scene back then.
Because I was in the Stimulators, I got into most of the clubs for free, and so did whoever I was with. So my 13-year-old ass would walk up to like Danceteria or the Peppermint Lounge, with all these young kids, and they’d be like, ‘Are they with you?’ and they’d let us all in.
I knew Adam and the Beastie Boys since before they were the Beastie Boys. Adam Yauch was always at Stimulators gigs when he was young, that’s how we met. He was only a couple of years older than me. I don’t know how many, but a little older. Him and John Berry, who was the original singer, were best friends; they used to come together.
OUTSIDE OF A-7, BY RANDALL UNDERWOOD
We became fast friends. I used to crash at their apartments all the time. John lived uptown, I can’t remember where exactly. He had a big-ass bedroom. I remember there were windows all around the room with a view to the street, and there was a shelf that went all the way around the room above the windows up near the ceiling and wrapped around all four walls. It had empty beer bottles of every kind you could think of from one end to the other. I used to think that was so cool. You gotta remember I was like 12 or 13. We used to get drunk, listen to music, jump around on the bed, beat each other up, and just freak out. This was before I’d even smoked pot or anything. I think I may have started popping a pill now or then around that time. But yeah, the first time I ate acid was with those guys, too, and that was a crazy night. We went to see A Clockwork Orange with Jill Cunniff and Kate Schellenbach from Luscious Jackson and a bunch of other girls. John, Adam and me were tripping our faces off. After the movie we wandered all over the Lower East and West Sides until the sun came up.
We all used to hang out at this record store on the Lower East Side, Rat Cage Records. This guy Dave Parsons owned it; him and his girlfriend Cathy ran the place, he also sold weed and LSD. Dave eventually started a record label with the same name. He only put out a few records. The Beasties recorded their first single and released it on Rat Cage. I was supposed to put out a solo recording of “Don’t Tread On Me” and a few other songs but never did. Rat Cage also put out The Young and The Useless, Adam Horowitz’s first band’s first and only single, as well as Agnostic Front’s first record. Rat Cage was where you could get all the newest punk and hardcore; I even got Venom’s first single and most of my Motörhead there.
We were at Jill Cunniff’s house when Adam Yauch and John Berry first conceived of the name “Beastie Boys.” It wasn’t even for a band, because they didn’t have a band yet. They were referring to themselves as “the Beastie Boy Crew.” It was really just the two of them. But soon after, Kate Schellenbach and Mike Diamond joined. I remember like it was yesterday. We were all sitting around, customizing our combat boots and drawing skulls and shit all over them with white Magic Markers. They came up with some stupid logo, like, “This is our logo for the Beastie Boy Crew!”
I tell you, some of my best memories of being a kid were with them, before the Beastie Boys and before the Cro-Mags. And not for nothing, Yauch was one of the funniest kids I ever knew. Berry and him, we’d be laughing and goofing and giggling for hours; it was just that young dumb energy, getting drunk for the first time, eating acid the first time, and being retards. My best memories of the Beastie Boys will always be the silly ones, like Adam teaching me how to play Dungeons & Dragons. Adam and John were some of my best friends when I was a kid.
Back then we used to have to sneak a lot of our fans into our shows ’cause they were all underage. We’d sneak them inside our road cases, and through back doors and windows! The only reason I could play these shows was because my aunt was the guitarist. So I had a legal guardian. Soon after, we started doing all-ages shows, a tradition that continues. That became a regular thing at CBGB, and that’s how the “Sunday Matinee” was born.
ROGER MIRET, VINNIE STIGMA AND HARLEY, BY AMY KEIM
Adam had a real nice Fender bass. We both used to write songs on it. He was a huge Bad Brains fan; we all were. How could you not be? I think that may have been in some ways one of the biggest influences on all of us.
I remember them getting all into Sugar Hill Gang and all that early rap that pretty much created their style. I remember Adam jumpin’ around his room out in Brooklyn doing his best Grandmaster Flash impersonation, and it was fuckin’ great. I would’ve never known then if you told me what would have happened to them. I think they would have laughed too. I stayed friends with them through the years. Although we lost touch, I’d occasionally get invites to their gigs and go backstage. They’d always give me a shout-out onstage.
&n
bsp; I remember going uptown to Mike D’s house one time when I was a kid, when he lived with his parents. It was on Central Park West—huge fuckin’ place, big staircase leading up to the second floor. It looked like a museum. It was in a very fancy, expensive building. They had two floors and the elevator opened into their place. I felt very uncomfortable, I knew I was out of place. I never knew anyone with that kind of money. It was definitely not the life I knew. It was definitely not “Hardcore.” To be honest, at the time I never understood how rich kids even found their way into Hardcore or punk or even rap for that matter. As far as I was concerned, that was “street music”; that’s what gave it its integrity. But a lot more kids on the scene had money than I realized. I just didn’t know.
One night at the Rock Lounge, or it might have turned into the Reggae Lounge by then, I was with Adam, Jill, and that whole Beastie Boys/Luscious Jackson crew. I was really fuckin’ drunk. I remember I was trying to catch a rap with this chick. She had to be 18 or so, which to me was an older chick. All I remember was mad cleavage, blonde hair—totally hot. She said something like, “I really like you.” And I remember looking down at her tits, and I’m like, “I really like you too…”—and then I just fuckin’ puked right down her front, right down her tits! She was screaming, crying, freaking out. The next thing I know, I’m puking in every fuckin’ corner of this club, vomiting in ashtrays. Then I staggered outside and puked in someone’s convertible. That shit was a fuckin’ mess. It was hysterical.
But yeah, those were good times: young and goofy, early teens—that awkward stage. But those kids all lived a little outside of the madness. They had good families and/or a bit of money. I lived among the chaos that was the LES, and I had been in it a little while longer. But I remember when they all started coming around and I loved those guys a lot.
I later saw them at Madison Square Garden with Run-DMC; that was a crazy show. A bunch of other rappers were doing little walk-ons onstage through the course of the show, Whodini and a bunch of others. It was a mixed crowd: all the white kids came to see the Beastie Boys, and all the black kids came to see Run-DMC. I saw one white kid get knocked the fuck out while walking past a group of black kids; one of them just turned and clocked him and he dropped. It was fucked up, but the whole shit was almost funny.
When I was backstage at one of their big gigs in Cali in the ’90s, Green Day was on the bill and the singer was backstage in their dressing room. I was chillin’; well, not really chillin’, I was a mess at the time, and I was a little drunk. There were all these Buddhists running around. Billy Joel or whatever his name is from Green Day kept asking me “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” I kept blowin’ it off, and he kept asking, and I was like, “I look like a lotta people.” I’m laughin’, and he’s like, “No, seriously, I think I know you from somewhere.” I’m all like, “I used to be in a band a long time ago but I doubt you ever heard of us.” I just kept laughing it off, but he keeps looking at me the whole time. A few years later I saw a story about them on MTV or VH1 or some shit like that and his wife was wearing a Cro-Mags shirt.
Eventually, a lot of the kids who found their way to our scene would come to define New York Hardcore. Dave Insurgent who founded Reagan Youth came from that scene; so did Robby Crypt-Crash who started Cause for Alarm, and Doug Holland from Kraut. They all started out going to Stimulators gigs at Max’s. Of course this was before bands such as Agnostic Front. Vinnie Stigma says he was the first punk rocker in NYC, but I don’t remember meeting him until 1980. He told me he had a band called the Eliminators, but I never saw them play; I don’t know if they ever did. Doug Holland told me, “I remember meeting Vinnie on the dance floor at a Stimulators gig at TR3. That was late ’79. With a mohawk, black eyeliner, and two needles and a tourniquet wrapped around his arms on his leather jacket. Remember, I was 17.”
The Mad was another really cool band similar to us but with all kinds of crazy stage antics and props. Blood, gore—all kinds of crazy shit. It was punk rock meets psycho Alice Cooper-style madness, with projectors and screens and all kinds of horror shit! They had these two crazy Japanese guys, Screaming Mad George on vocals, Hisashi Ikeda on bass, this chick Julien Hechtlinger on guitar, and Dave Hahn on drums. Dave wound up managing the Bad Brains for a little while, and was also one of the first Cro-Mags drummers, which I’ll get to later. The Mad’s singer, Screaming Mad George, went on to do special effects in Hollywood. He was a really amazing artist, painter, and sculptor. That was kind of the beginning of it. We became instant friends with the Bad Brains, who had just come to NYC from D.C., through our close friend and then-roadie/future Stimulators bassist, Nick Marden. They were really the fire that changed everything musically forever. It was a kick in the ass for everyone.
The Stimulators helped the Bad Brains get some of their first New York shows. Darryl Jenifer was like a big brother to me, and he was the only person besides Anne Gustavsson to show me how to play bass. But he’s the only person who actually gave me a lesson. I learned everything else from listening to records and watching people live. He taught me about proper usage of the power chord on bass, and how to pick properly. I was already a drummer, so that instinct was already there. The style of songs that I would later write throughout the course of my “Hardcore journey” was very influenced by the Bad Brains.
The Bad Brains spent Christmas at my grandparents’ house back in ’79. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and you don’t have that many people to your family gatherings when you live in a one-bedroom apartment! The Bad Brains became like family to me: Earl, Gary, Darryl and H.R. I love those guys and I always will. Every time Darryl would see me, he would jump on me and attack me and wrestle me to the ground, like the way an older brother does. You’ve got this gigantic black guy and this little white kid, and we were just rolling around in a ball. One time, at 171A, he must have made me surrender 10 or 15 times, and then I finally got him one time. I got him in a choke, and I made him beg and promise he wasn’t going to do anything when I let him go. There were all these girls sitting there watching. He’s like, “I promise, I promise!” And of course, when I let him go, he started fucking me up twice as good.
One time, the Stimulators played with them at the 9:30 Club in D.C., and we stayed with them at a house in Herndon, VA. It was the early days of their Rastafarianism. There was such a music vibe going on, it was great. You hear a lot of crazy stories about H.R. But as crazy as H.R. can act at times, back in the day he was inspirational beyond belief. He and the Bad Brains had the entire NYHC scene talking like fuckin’ Jamaicans for the longest time. Everybody was like, “Fireburn!” “Bloodclot!” It was hysterical. Bands like the Mob were so heavily influenced by them that the bass player started growing dreads and wearing a Rasta hat. A whole contingent of white Rastas started popping up on the Hardcore scene. They took things to such another level. It was impossible not to be inspired by the Bad Brains.
The only way to describe H.R. would be like James Brown-meets-Johnny Rotten-meets-Bob Marley. He was such a dynamic frontman. H.R. could do a standing back flip, and land right at the end of the song, nail it right at the last beat. It was like, “Oh my God! Did he just plan that?” I remember one time at A7, which was such a tiny club, within the first two minutes or so of their show he had already knocked the sheetrock ceiling out and bent the mic stand in half. The amount of explosive energy that would come out of that motherfucker, you couldn’t help but be blown away. Especially since we were all young, and here was this guy that was “in shape.” He used to be a javelin thrower back in school. He was always athletic. So you had a bunch of scrawny punk rock motherfuckers, and then this dude up there that was an athletic powerhouse, going completely apeshit—and he could sing his ass off, he could hit the notes.
H.R. came out there with purpose, like he was on a mission. Every show I saw of theirs back then was amazing. But then they got to a point where they started playing almost exclusively reggae, and that started pissing people off. People started
talking lots of shit, but you know, people go through their phases. And that’s the right of the artist.
Because of the way I grew up, I was never starstruck. Even when I met the Clash, I felt like we were on the same page as punk rockers. As much as I respected them and was a huge fan of their music—they were like “punk rock royalty”—I still felt like we were one and the same.
I saw the Clash on their first two trips to the States, both at the Palladium, a beautiful old theater. I actually saw a few bands at the Palladium back then, like the Buzzcocks and Siouxsie and the Banshees. But very few punk bands played the Palladium. I remember when Blizzard of Ozz played there, walking under the awning every day going to school, and going, “Blizzard of Ozz? What the fuck kind of stupid name is that?!” I didn’t even know what the fuck it was. I was a punk rocker. That’s where I was at.
I remember the excitement of that first Clash gig. It was a really big deal. The Cramps opened, and after they were done, my aunt and my mom went up, and we were hanging out with the Cramps in their dressing room. The Clash’s dressing room was upstairs above theirs. As soon as I realized that, I was like, “Fuck this, I’m going upstairs!”
One of my favorite bands of all time was upstairs, and I was a local punk. I felt like it was my duty to represent New York punk and introduce myself, and tell them about the local bands, the good ones—the Stimulators, the Mad and Bad Brains—and not the bullshit that was out there: the wannabe-Sids and the new wave assholes, posers that the press were just catching on to. I wanted to tell them about the real New York.
So I ran up the stairs, walked down the hall, and into their dressing room. I met Paul Simonon first, and then there I was in their room with all of them, meeting Mick Jones and Joe Strummer and Topper Headon and their tour manager. They were all getting a kick out of how young I was, I mean I was only 12 and I had my plaid bondage pants on with zippers all over them and straps and like a plaid shirt. My hair was all spiked and I wore a dog collar, and I was like, “I’m in a band.” Mick smiled, and he’s like, “What’s the name of your band?” I was a little embarrassed ’cause I didn’t like the name that much. I think he could tell ’cause when I said “the Stimulators” he smiled and said, “Say it like you mean it—you gotta say it with pride like you’re proud of it, that’s your name.” He was all smiles and shit, laughin’ and grinnin’. I think he was stoned. It was cool; they treated me so well right away. They gave me the all-access pass so I could go wherever I wanted and watch the show from the side of the stage.
Hard-Core: Life of My Own Page 7