The 2022 Negative Approach / 7 Seconds / Circle Jerks concert at Boston’s House of Blues collated two postponed ‘21 Paradise Rock Club shows—as Keith Morris had contracted Covid-19, which he thankfully recovered from. It had been forty years since the Jerks first played the city; ‘81 is even more significant as the year West Coast HC arrived and jumpstarted Boston scene: The Dead Kennedys played at the Channel in April, while Black Flag played the Channel, Rat, Paradise, and several other dates around Mass from March – December.

The House of Blues is the lone reminder of when Kenmore and Fenway were dotted with a loose assembly of bars and clubs that frequently hosted underground music. It currently stands where the Avalon and Axis bars did at 15 Lansdowne. Before the infamous Rathskeller welcomed local hardcore, they played at 9 Lansdowne in along with the DKs, Black Flag, Flipper, and Bad Brains.

Avalon at the end; the Lansdowne clubs were demolished in 2007. Credit: Mike on Flicker ^[1]

The Circle Jerks stopped by the Channel in June ‘81 and returned to town almost annually; they once headlined a fascinating ‘83 show with the Freeze, Deep Wound, Volcano Suns, and the Annoyed at Jumbo’s of Somerville. In his autobiography, Morris recalled sojourning with Gang Green’s Chris Doherty in Braintree during his peripatetic 1990s—meanwhile working at the Taang! record shop in Cambridge.^[2] Their bands had toured together regularly and must have been close. A member of Youth Corps reported:

My band opened for CIRCLE JERKS in Hartford June ’82, it was really great to find out Keith had brought GANG GREEN with them from Boston. Afterwards, Chris told me that my band YOUTH KORPS was on the bill with MINOR THREAT & SS DECONTROL the following night at Gallery East in Boston. The SSD guys were so inept, they booked my band without telling.^[3]

Negative Approach and Co. flyer, Gallery East 13.08.1982. Credit: Hectors Metal Pages ^[4]

Negative Approach and 7Seconds also have intriguing local connections. NA performed at the Boston Crew-organized Gallery East along with Gang Green, DYS, and fellow Midwesterners the Necros, Meatmen, and McDonald’s (of Ohio) in Aug 1982; they returned to the Channel a summer later in support of the Minutemen, with Boston’s wonderful Sorry. The band finally returned during their ill-fated Summer 1984 tour. Mike Gitter interviewed a brand-new lineup—assembled by John Brannon to support the Tied Down record after McCulloch, Zelewski, and Moore jumped ship. He sounded optimistic:

xXx (Gitter): How would you compare the two bands?

John : The other band was good, but it’s not like those guys really wanted to do anything with it…Plus, we didn’t really get along on what kind of music we liked […]and wanted to do. This band’s a lot more into doing a lot of new songs and dropping the old ones

Kelly [Dermody] : We’re trying to progress.

J: Everyone’s helping out with the writing and it’s coming along really well.

[…]

J: Now, we want more to the music instead of just a simple, generic song. Stuff like “Ready to Fight” we don’t do anymore. We just progress. It’s good to change.^[5]

John Brannon and Negative Approach at House of Blues, 16.07.2022.

The xXx interview capped a 16 June 1984 Paradise concert with Sorry, DYS, and Psycho. Brannon teased a never-to-be Negative Approach 7” without knowing they would dissolve in a month. The career retrospective Total Recall (1992) ended with three live cuts from the ‘84 Boston show, including the new “Tunnel Vision” and a cover of the Stooges’ “I Got a Right.” Both were powerful in 2022.

Negative Approach has long shared a certain sonic sensibility with the heavy guitars, varied tempi, and throaty vocals of Boston Hardcore. Check out the gruff proto-grunge of Jerry’s Kids’ “Lost” alongside NA’s classic “Evacuate,” and consider the striking sympathy if not directional push between them! Today, Brannon’s aged-intensified vocal grit (from xXx: I’m trying to make it as fucked up as I can. My voice will last forever) and the band’s metallic crunch forge remarkable affinities with newer styles. This potency bespeaks their attunement to the continuing relevance of their early work. Negative Approach remains harshly inspiring.

We relocated from the main floor to the mezzanine for 7Seconds. The gregariousness of Kevin Seconds sparked more active participation following Brannon’s bulldog front. The room was equally into their earliest work, The Crew, and their later pop-adjacent appeal. Kevin spoke to how welcoming the Boston bands were when 7Seconds joined the F.U.s and Outpatients at the Paradise during their inaugural ‘84 tour—having recently played with the Freeze and Jerry’s Kids in California. Kevin was restrained in the subsequent xXx interview and did not disclose any personal ties—likely to distance himself from the codified straight edge associated with Boston. He did, however, discuss the significance of the ‘crew’ idea – equally befitting the town’s hardcore scene:

Kevin: It’s just the idea that rather [than] saying the gang thing on the West Coast is cool, let’s just make a big show of unity and make it into a working crew. It’s like over here someone’s putting on shows and this girl’s putting out a fanzine and we’re all doing this whole thing together and the idea was to say that we are the crew and you don’t have to have a certain color bandana on your head to be cool. ^[6]

7Seconds show flier, The Paradise 13.10.1984. Credit: Hectors Metal Pages ^[7]

There twenty or so active slamdancers during 7Seconds that we used to gauge where we should stand for the Circle Jerks. We were wrong: after Keith’s opening spiel, the band dropped “Deny Everything” and the pit, now doubled, hyperextended and engulfed us. But we were were back on our feet quickly and only suffered showers of beer. The band distributed the microhardcore of Group Sex throughout the best songs of the next two LPs along with later gems like “Casualty Vampire.” Morris remains one of the world’s most compelling frontmen and earns his laurels as the hardworking patron saint of punk. He self-disparagingly narrated past events and only once admonished some hooligans for fighting (we did not see them). Describing “Wild In The Streets” as the closest they came to a radio-friendly number, he recounted a mild flirtation with the majors:

The big wigs said “What the fuck are you thinking? Are you fucking out of your mind? The Circle Jerks on A&M records—are you serious?… Hold on, we have IRS records which is the Go-Gos and the Cramps. That’s a good fit.” And the people at IRS laughed at them and said “Are you fucking serious, are you out of your fucking mind, The Circle Jerks? They’re F-league.“

The 16 July concert reminded me that John Porcelly once characterized Youth of Today as an attempt to meld the message of 7Seconds with the sound of Negative Approach.^[8] By 1985, a facsimile of this ideal had already arisen and declined in Boston’s SS Decontrol and DYS. An auspicious feature of this night, incidentally, was the presence of SSD’s Al Barile and his wife Nancy Barile—a continuing punk contributor in her own right. While I map many significant actors in my work, Barile’s straight-edge brotherhood continues to have a powerful hold on Boston punk and hardcore historiography. As I nursed a soft drink and watched Al greet old and new friends around the mezzanine bar, it became clear how this hold has become only more benevolent over time. The Boston Crew’s intimidating 1980s reputation was one thing; these feelings of community are another.

ldm

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[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/mgwilkins/2451332284/in/photostream/

[2] Keith Morris & Jim Ruland, My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor, 2016.

[3] The reality of this show cannot yet be confirmed. See the post on Discogs, https://www.discogs.com/master/364398-Gang-Green-Preschool

[4] http://www.metallipromo.com/negative.html

[5] Mike Gitter ed,, xXx No. 7 (1984): 5-6.

[6] xXx No. 8 (1985): 5.

[7] http://metallipromo.com/seven.html

[8] Tony Rettman, Straight Edge: A Clear-Headed Hardcore Punk History (Bazillion Points, 2017):112.