DYSTROPHY

The early '00s were a pretty fukkn special time for Bay Area punk and hardcore. The divisions between East and West Bay that permeated most of the '90s has partially dissolved, and you had freaks from the Tri-Valley jamming in bands with West Bay Coalition OGs. Shows in Santa Cruz and San Rafael were not an anomaly, and were often packed with hungry kids while San Jose shows seemed like they were damn near always banging. The Peninsula was still weird, as a crew of emo kids started to come into their own in the shadow of NO LESS and PLUTOCRACY...we would see UNDER A DYING SUN and DEADBODIESEVERYWHERE in the same weekend. TIME IN MALTA played with TRAGEDY in San Francisco because it made sense - hell, ICE 9 had played with HIS HERO IS GONE just a few years earlier in Indiana, so why not? And at the center of it all? Mission Records in SF and 924 Gilman in Berkeley. The Bay had finally gotten (back) to point where people just came to shows....not that it didn't matter who the bands were, but there were just so many good fukkn shows that you knew it was worth gambling. And there were kids everywhere...high school kids screaming the words, high school kids starting their own bands. It was awesome. I know that hardcore now is every bit as vibrant as it was then and I'm not some "living in the past" relic, but perhaps with advancing age comes the distance...and of course it feels more intense and more relevant when you're always in the mix, right? So sometimes when I attend (or play) a show and I find myself somewhat reserved and/or reflective, I come home and I blast something like this. 

SKATIN' FOR SATAN

Y'all know Tony Molina, right? A decade or so after this 5+ minute collection of relentless blasting teenage rage, the singer for DYSTROPHY was featured on some NPR "must hear" new artists or some shit. And as much as I confess that Dissed and Dismissed is worth the hype, watching the trainwreck that was Tony's current power violence project HEALER try to set up and tune their instruments was waaaaay sicker. DYSTROPHY live set from Mission Records at the end of 2001 has been up on Escape Is Terminal for a couple of years...link is still live and worth your time.