Hardcore, and D.C. hardcore in particular, has a rep for being stuck in the past. But it stays fresh by continually creating new pasts to draw from. A few years back, bands like Coke Bust brought the early ’80s thrashy style of hardcore back into vogue. But there are others reviving the mid-’80s melody of Dag Nasty, the late ’80s aggression of Swiz and the late-’90s chug of Damnation A.D. Soon there will be late ’00s tribute bands to Coke Bust, too. The logical endpoint is to be, to paraphrase The Onion, nostalgic for bands that don’t exist yet.

This Was My Night & This Was a Lot of Other Nights is another chapter in the scene’s love affair with itself, though an entertaining and necessary one. Editors Tim Follos and Hussain Mohammed compile show reviews and interviews from Follos’ blog Day After Day DC, covering the past decade — the most recent era of harDCore. It reads like a blog, in good ways and bad: The energy of the house shows reviewed (though “lovingly described” is more accurate; Follos has hardly an unkind word for anyone) is palpable, and he draws from a depth of knowledge and eye for detail only a true fan could.

At the same time, the long personal asides, shout-outs and inside jokes (most involving Sick Fix‘s Pat Vogel) remind you this was written by and for a small group of friends who all hang out and play in bands together.

This Was My Night isn’t so much about a particular city or era, but rather a particular crowd of 20-something, group-house-dwelling, radical politics-having, dog-walking, (ex-)vegan straight edge punx dedicated to putting on shows in makeshift spaces on shoestring budgets.

So the 12-page review of the 2013 Damaged City Fest that opens the book is kind of overkill. And for a book aiming to document an era that produced hundreds of local bands, a lot of the same ones show up again and again — Ilsa and The Max Levine Ensemble, both terrific bands, but reflective of the authors’ personal preferences.

There are a lot of others from that period that don’t appear, either for taking a different punk-derived trajectory, or just being in different social circles. They include Deathfix, Mass Movement of the Moth, The Apes, The Shirks, The Cassettes, Medications, Imperial China and the whole Sockets Records roster. Today, as always, there isn’t one D.C. punk scene, there are many scenes, and they don’t always communicate well with each other.

‘This Was My Night & This Was A Lot of Other Nights,’ back cover

This Was My Night isn’t so much about a particular city or era, but rather a particular crowd of 20-something, group-house-dwelling, radical politics-having, dog-walking, (ex-)vegan straight edge punx dedicated to putting on shows in makeshift spaces on shoestring budgets. And in that sense, it’s really about one band, Coke Bust, whose members and fellow super-promoters Chris Moore and Nick Candela (aka Nick Tape, who’s since moved to Brazil) held this scene together mostly by themselves through sheer force of will.

Thus one of the best pieces in the book is by Nick Tape, in which he describes the benefits of booking shows at the Corpse Fortress, the famously filthy, hot, dilapidated Silver Spring house that put on memorable shows until the neighbors finally got sick of the ruckus and got them all evicted.

“As a promoter, access to a venue with no rules and no set fee is enormously helpful,” Tape writes. “The lack of a fee allows promoters of shows with mediocre turnout to still pay bands somewhat respectable amounts at the end of the night.”

The second half of the book is made up of interviews with familiar punk figures, some of which are more lucid than others (Bad Brains’ H.R. is, predictably, in another world). There’s a bittersweet chat with the now-deceased Dave Brockie of Gwar. There’s a theological discussion with Positive Force co-founder (and fellow scene historian) Mark Andersen. There’s the requisite Ian MacKaye interview — a surprisingly unique one given the man must give dozens of interviews a month — in which he takes a deep dive into the history of Georgetown.

Follos is a skilled interviewer, able to draw out rich personal stories without being too much of the fanboy that he is (and most of us who read the book are). He can also be mischievous, asking Brian Baker, “Why is it necessary for Bad Religion to have three guitarists?” and getting Ian Svenonius to accidentally agree with conservative columnist George Will.

It’s fair to wonder whether a book like this needs to exist, especially for a genre saturated in self-documentation — and especially today, when many of the bands documented still exist, and a lot of the material is already accessible online. But I’d say it does. Given the book’s ultra-insider perspective, the target readership seems to be the 50 or so people who already appear in the book.

But only an insider could tell the story of the Bobby Fisher Memorial Building, another DIY space that the Borf graffiti collective jury rigged and briefly put on art installations and punk shows before it inevitably got shut down: “Towards the end, they cut our power, because we were stealing power from a neighbor who was also stealing power,” writes Chris Moore. “We ran over 15 shows on generators. Cops never shut down the shows… Seeing 20 people installing soundproofing and insulation… that’s awesome.”

The authors of This Was My Night & This Was a Lot of Other Nights host a book-release party Monday, April 25 at Black Cat with Scanners and Mirror Motives.

In a little more than a year, the website — with its insider jokes about scene clichés, browbeating frontmen, mosh pit faux pas, austere lifestyles and so on — has become a hit, racking up pageviews and earning guffaws from people who instantly find humor in headlines like “Ted Nugent Begrudgingly Inducted Into Straight Edge Hall of Fame” or “Henry Rollins Driving App Tells You How Hard It Would Have Been to Get There in the ’80s.”

Gags like those, of course, would be impossible without the nearly four-decade legacy of D.C.’s hardcore scene. A dive into The Hard Times’ archives reveals that the site, based in California’s Bay Area, owes a debt to ideas and trends that can be traced to the Washington region.

Matt Saincome displays his postcards from Ian MacKaye. (Matt Saincome)

Founder and editor-in-chief Matt Saincome freely acknowledges that debt. One of his first pieces for the site was “Ian MacKaye Prepares For Another Long Day of Documentary Interviews,” which skewers the Dischord Records co-founder’s status as a punk figurehead and an accomplished conversationalist. It was an early sign that the Fugazi and Minor Threat frontman — and progenitor of straight-edge culture — was hardly off-limits.

“The truth is, I’m a really, really big Ian MacKaye fan, and the reason why I wrote that story is because I was seeking out and watching so many punk documentaries… and Ian MacKaye was popping up in all of them,” Saincome says. “I love Ian MacKaye interviews. My Ian MacKaye interview was a highlight of my life. He sent me postcards afterward — I still have them on my wall. But I do think it’s funny how often he pops up [in documentaries].”

Saincome interviewed MacKaye in 2010 for his zine Punks! Punks! Punks!, and he says it was a “life-changing conversation.” (Another, more recent fanboy moment for him: when Brian Baker — of Minor Threat and Bad Religion — started following The Hard Times on Twitter.)

Saincome, 25, says he’s been straight edge since high school — no alcohol and no drugs, in particular. “For me it doesn’t have anything to do with sex or the type of food you eat, or anything like that. [It’s] an addiction-free type of lifestyle” for him, he says. Two other people on The Hard Times team are also straight edge, he says.

Inside out

Saincome doesn’t consider himself particularly preachy about his lifestyle, but straight-edge adherents generally are known as some of the most sanctimonious characters in punkdom. For that kind of thing, nothing is better than self-deprecation, Saincome says.

“We found that … the most pointed and funny articles come from people from that particular subgenre. So if you’re writing a straight-edge article, it’s always best to come from a straight-edger,” he says. “‘Cause if you are something, you kind of know what’s silly about it.”

That instinct gives The Hard Times an undertone of love instead of self-loathing. For Saincome, it colored his exploits prior to starting the website. As frontman for the hardcore band Zero Progress, he assumed the persona of The Champ, a blowhard egotist whose costume included thick chains. The point was to mock hardcore’s macho tendencies from the inside, even if it made punks uncomfortable. The behavior of punk singers, naturally, is a big target — especially their reputation for haranguing crowds. (See: “Hardcore Frontman Running Out of Generally Well-Accepted Beliefs to Share.”)

“It’s different for everyone, but I do think that when people get up on stage, they like to present themselves in a certain light and in a certain manner, and in a lot of times in punk, it’s in a moral crusader role, and they’re preaching to the choir a bit,” he says, equating the tone of the site’s anti-frontman jokes to the ball-busting that happens in the van when bands tour together. The public face of punk doesn’t always show that jokey side, though.

“I think a lot of people appreciate what we’re doing because punks do like to joke around and have a good time,” he says. “It just doesn’t always get the spotlight.”

And that self-awareness, Saincome says, is a vital part of what separates The Hard Times from its most obvious comedy antecedent, The Onion.

“I think a lot of their tone has to do with hating life — it’s funny as f**k, I love the Onion — but we don’t hate hardcore and we’re writing about hardcore. So a lot of our stuff definitely has a lighter touch to it than theirs,” he says.

At one point he did a deep dive into The Onion’s archives, and it helped him make an important distinction for his own content.

“Crust punks… maybe get an unfair helping of satire from us. Straight-edgers, too.” —Matt Saincome, founder and editor-in-chief of The Hard Times

“It wasn’t gonna be punk satire, it was gonna be ‘alternative lifestyle’ satire,” Saincome says. “The way music people live their lives, not just at the concerts, but the way we live our entire lives as an alternative underground culture.”

The satire establishment has taken notice: The Hard Times is now part of The Onion’s advertising network, meaning that “they package together a bunch of websites and pitch that whole network to advertisers,” Saincome says. The Hard Times’ contribution? Saincome says that his site has as many as 1.4 million unique visitors a month. There’s also a project in the works with Vice’s music site, Noisey, he says.

His D.C.

Although The Hard Times draws on D.C. hardcore’s influence and history for inspiration, Saincome says he sees the area’s current scene through a different lens: friendships, particularly with the band Coke Bust and all its related projects. Saincome says he’s never been to Damaged City, the ever-growing annual festival founded by Coke Bust members, but he views it as a beacon for a lot of other scenes. (The 2016 version of the fest kicks off April 7.)

The Coke Bust guys “did a good job of not eating their young, of supporting younger people in the scene, and playing in bands with them … and I feel like that doesn’t always happen in the Bay Area. We’re a little bit more fractured. [Coke Bust] seem to keep it pretty tight, which I think works to their benefit.”

One trip through D.C. with Zero Progress gave Saincome an anecdote that summarizes another pillar of The Hard Times’ comedy: edgy or extreme characters operating in totally normal situations.

“When we went on tour, we stayed at a friend’s house, and it was in a fancy D.C. suburb, and all the hardcore kids were hanging out, like, in the decked-out basement of his mom’s place. Which I thought was awesome, you know? Dude, I don’t mind,” Saincome says, noting that he grew up in the suburbs, too. “But I remember his mom was like — in the morning when we woke up, because we’d played a show — like, ‘OK, I made you guys some sandwiches, oh, here’s some cereal with vegan milk.'”

Saincome likes to cite examples of that dynamic, including “Family Prepares for Another Horrible Thanksgiving With Vegan Punk Son” and “Black Metal Guitarist Spotted Celebrating Gammy’s 87th Birthday at Old Country Buffet.” Another target for fish-out-of-water jokes: the vehemently DIY, dumpster-diving “crust punk” lifestyle.

“We try to spread it out, but the more extreme of a personality type that your particular subgenre of punk has, the easier it is to pick it apart a little bit,” Saincome says. “So crust punks definitely maybe get an unfair helping of satire from us. Straight-edgers, too.”

Keeping things fresh hasn’t been too difficult, he says, because the site has dozens of contributors and the editorial team rigorously vets story ideas. Being able to chart the audience’s reactions via analytics and social-media activity helps, too, Saincome says. He half-jokes that The Hard Times is now entering its “Fugazi phase,” and branching out a bit more. (Recent headline: “Audiophile Neighbor Pounds Ceiling to Demand You Adjust Midrange.”) Consider it a nod to another important facet of D.C.’s punk culture: intelligence.

“We have a really intense drive in us to not be ‘basic’ or ‘simple.’ A lot of the basic and simple ideas work the best, but we try to do things a little bit differently,” Saincome says. “In our editorial meetings, it’s one of the main things we think about. And I think it’s been part of our success, because I think anyone can make jokes — but to make a couple of smart jokes once in a while, I think that’s part of the reason why a lot of people like us.”

More than three decades after Flex Your Head came out, it finally feels that another moment is taking shape, thanks in part to a new D.C. hardcore compendium called The Red Line Comp.

Featuring 12 of the best and most interesting NWODCHC (New Wave Of D.C. Hardcore) bands active right now, the right time for a project like The Red Line Comp feels like it’s been bubbling up for the last 12 to 18 months. While annual D.C. hardcore festival Damaged City has helped put the spotlight on what is going on in D.C.’s contemporary hardcore scene, it’s the bands’ recordings that have made the biggest impact outside of D.C., with excellent releases from Protester, Public Suicide and Red Death, among others.

D.C. hardcore musician Ace Mendoza, who plays in a number of the bands featured on the release (Red Death, Stand Off, Jåvla, Pure Disgust) assembled The Red Line Comp. He says the collection’s timing was just a matter of circumstance. 

“Last year was mainly a demo year for a lot of these bands, so this year marks the beginning of the NWODCHC’s record debuts,” Mendoza writes via email. “Nine of the bands on the comp are putting out either a 7-inch or an LP, meaning a lot of [them] are also either starting extensive tours or playing out more in general.”

With bands like Red Death releasing a record on hardcore label Grave Mistake — which also released an LP from D.C. hardcore band Coke Bust in 2013 — and Pure Disgust putting out a 7-inch with Brooklyn’s Katorga Works, the comp feels not only vital today, but also potentially important years from now as a document of the scene, much like Flex Your Head.

Listening to The Red Line Comp, it isn’t hard to hear how diverse each band is: There’s the relatively straightforward hardcore of Public Suicide, the hard oi! of The Defense, the death metal sludge of Genocide Pact. What makes this recording sound essential is how high-impact each band is. You get the sense that all of them wanted to make a statement, and did.

But Mendoza didn’t necessarily aspire to put out a nouveau Flex Your Head. When asked what compilations influenced The Red Line Comp, Mendoza mentions two now-legendary New York hardcore compilations from 1989: Where The Wild Things Are and The New Breed, only citing Flex Your Head in passing. But with each track, The Red Line Comp writes a new chapter in D.C. hardcore history — a much-needed update to a story that many know by heart.

“DIY.” It’s a term you can stick in front of any music genre to indicate a way of doing things. It doesn’t describe a particular sound. It doesn’t just mean “punk.” Really, it’s just the idea that we musicians don’t need the backing of the music industry to make music. We can and should seize the means of production. We should do it ourselves.

In 2015, doing it ourselves is easier than it’s ever been, thanks to technology that eliminates barriers between musicians and listeners. But today’s crowded creative environment has also prompted artists to begin rethinking the way they define and practice DIY.

What are the boundaries of DIY? Are you doing it yourself if you’ve hired someone to do publicity for your band’s tour? What if someone booked the tour for you? Is playing a traditional music venue DIY, or do you strictly play houses and nonprofit show spaces? At what point does the stability of your project depend on outside involvement?

When considering the costs of DIY touring, bands often bump into and wander back and forth across these ill-defined boundaries. They ask themselves questions like, “What effect does it have economically and experientially to hire a booking agent?” and “To what extent should courting media coverage factor into our tour budget?”

I don’t have answers to these questions. But I chatted with several musicians who have been mulling them over while they attempt to produce and share their music in a sustainable way. Here’s what we talked about.

Publicity

The ups and downs of playing the promo game

Artists have an incentive to get out the word about their shows: They want people to see them play. But first, people have to know about the show.

Good ol’ word-of-mouth can go a long way, but in a world where Facebook and Google algorithms dictate who sees what about which bands, having the endorsement of reputable music blogs seems to play an increasingly large role in artists’ promotion strategies.

The problem is DIY publicity is next to impossible. Media outlets are bombarded by tons of press releases and inquiries every day. Necessarily, some of them are more likely to check out music sent by entities they already know or trust, and often, those entities are PR companies.

That means that even DIY labels and artists will sometimes a hire PR firm to promote a record or tour. Daoud Tyler-Ameen of D.C. indie-pop project Art Sorority for Girls says pro publicists try to strike a balance between inundating and intriguing media stakeholders with pitches for their clients’ music.

“They will spend a year building it up in such a way that you keep getting hammered with the name,” Tyler-Ameen says. The goal is that “the media coverage rolling up to a release is spaced apart far enough and novel enough each time that you don’t get sick of it.”

Confusingly, though, sometimes publicity just happens on its own.

“People think, ‘Oh, they’re doing fine. They got written about in Rolling Stone.’ But that doesn’t translate to money. It’s a cool thing to show your parents, but it’s not a real, actual thing.” — Sam Cook-Parrott of Radiator Hospital

“We played mostly local shows for the first year of us being a band. Then someone from Pitchfork and someone from Stereogum each wrote about our band, and suddenly it was like, ‘Whoa, a lot of people know about us!'” says Amanda Bartley, who plays in Columbus, Ohio, band All Dogs. “We had a lot of people contact us about doing PR stuff for us and we haven’t pursued any of that, which is kind of a testament to the Internet doing that for us.”

But the fickle Internet is nothing to bet on. Waiting for accidental exposure can be like playing the lottery. Jeff Rosenstock, formerly of Bomb the Music Industry, has been touring in bands for 15 years. Despite various other measures of success, he rarely used to catch any attention from music blogs.

Rosenstock told me last fall, “I don’t know what blog buzz is like. I bet it’s awesome.”

That changed this year, when Rosenstock put out a record on a label with an in-house publicist. Quickly he found himself written about on Consequence of Sound, Noisey, Stereogum, A.V. Club and Spin.com, just to name a few.

But getting attention in the music media can lead to an inflated outside perception of success, says Sam Cook-Parrott of Philadelphia’s Radiator Hospital.

“People think, ‘Oh, they’re doing fine. They got written about in Rolling Stone. Don’t f*****g worry about it.’ Does success mean getting written about in a cool blog or in Rolling Stone? Because what does that mean? That doesn’t translate to money,” Cook-Parrott says. “It’s a cool thing to show your parents, but it’s not a real, actual thing.”

Plus, there’s a feeling among some bands that the promo cycle can lend an empty glaze of marketing to the art of writing and producing music.

“I think that bands are way more short-sighted than they used to be,” Cook-Parrott says. “It’s like with blockbuster movies and it’s all about the opening weekend. That’s not how making a record should be.”

Booking Agents

When they’re cool (and when they’re weird)

There was a time when hiring a booking agent was considered the definitive line between whether a band could be called DIY or not. But putting together a tour can be draining for bands, particularly in the DIY world, where booking networks are informal and constantly changing. The time and energy that goes into organizing a tour can feel like a full-time job, which is especially tough for musicians who already have one.

When are house shows better than club gigs? (Photo: Michael Andrade)

Tyler-Ameen, who works full time, says he felt exhausted by booking two of his own tours in 2014.

“They kicked my ass,” Tyler-Ameen says. “It really did feel each time pretty consuming, where I would get out of work and go and send emails until I was tired. And that was the case for weeks. Which doesn’t seem sustainable.”

Katie Alice Greer, who sings in D.C. punk band Priests, writes in an email that her band’s decision to work with a booking agent had a lot to do with time management — particularly making time to earn money.

“I had a very low-cost living situation and a job with flexible hours [in 2013],” Greer says. That meant she and Priests’ drummer were able to book most of their tours themselves. But when they both had to ramp up their work schedules, she says, they hired a booking agent.

“House shows are always a lot more fun while you’re playing. But sometimes on tour I don’t want to have a meet-and-greet every single day.” — Gabrielle Smith of Frankie Cosmos

“It certainly helps to have an extra head (with a lot of experience) involved in the process of mapping out a tour that will make sense,” Greer writes.

But some DIY bands choose a combined strategy: They book some of their own shows, and leave others to a professional. That’s the method familiar to Gabrielle Smith, who plays with indie bands Eskimeaux, Frankie Cosmos, Bellows and Told Slant. Two of her bands book their own tours and two work with booking agents. When those worlds meet, she says things get a little strange.

“It totally is weird when we play a house show and the booking agent asks for a W-2 and a headcount,” Smith says.

When bands work with professional bookers, they’re more likely to play commercial spaces like bars and clubs, and that transition can be a little jarring. For one thing, there’s an experiential difference between the two kinds of shows.

“House shows are always a lot more fun while you’re playing. The entire interaction beforehand can be really amazing and really warm and welcoming, but also can be really uncomfortable,” Smith says. “Sometimes on tour I don’t necessarily want to have a meet-and-greet every single day. On that level, having the booking agent and playing at a place that’s not a house every single day can be more comforting.”

Then there’s the question of how money is handled.

“The houses don’t take money most of the times, and a bar will. Or they’ll say, ‘We’re gonna give you $100′ and maybe they make more, but you’ve agreed to that amount,” Cook-Parrott says. “A house show is pretty clean. They tell you, ‘This is the money we made’ and sometimes it’s way more than you’d ever make if you just played some $100 guarantee show at a bar.”

When playing house shows is working optimally, it can feel magical, like an alternate economy worth putting faith in. But it’s also precarious.

Smith describes a common experience of playing a house show, where no effort is taken to collect money at the door: “They give you $10 or $15, and they’re like, ‘Hope this is enough. Thanks for playing. Bye!'”

If no explicit financial arrangement has been made, there’s not much you can do but fill your gas tank up one eighth of the way and hope the next show pays better.

Talking About Money

Mum’s the word

Sometimes income itself isn’t the only economic obstacle to a DIY tour. Conversations about money — or the lack of them — can be a huge factor in a tour’s economic success.

Bands can feel uncomfortable talking about money with show promoters, especially when they’re relying on an informal network of people exchanging favors. Take Bartley, who says she didn’t talk to anyone about money before booking her most recent tour.

“I just kind of assumed that everyone I talked to was kind of on the same page,” Bartley says.

But that assumption can leave musicians vulnerable.

“When it is uncomfortable, I remind myself that it is absolutely necessary,” says Greer. “I will not be in a position where I am not paid fairly because money was not explicitly discussed.”

Rosenstock says he has a way of conducting conversations about money on the road.

“When we would play house shows, I’d talk to the people at the house beforehand and be like, ‘Hey, I don’t wanna be a d**k, but I think somebody should be at the door making sure everybody gives six bucks or five bucks or whatever it is,” Rosenstock says.

“When [talking about money] is uncomfortable, I remind myself that it is absolutely necessary. I will not be in a position where I am not paid fairly because money was not explicitly discussed.” — Katie Alice Greer of Priests

He thinks money at shows should be going toward bands, not beer for the party. “I’d rather that money be able to sustain us to go on tour again next year than for that money to fuel this ‘You need alcohol to party so put another bunch of dollars in this huge company’ thing. Don’t you think it would be nicer if we got that money tonight instead of Anheuser-Busch?”

Rosenstock says that approach has worked for him. “I would never, ever ever get a response that was like, ‘F**k you.’ It’d always be like ‘Yeah, you’re right. Totally.'”

Still, hiring someone else to handle the money side can be a sufficiently attractive reason for some musicians to work with a booking agent.

“We’re all very polite people, so we’re not that good at getting paid maybe what we know certain places have budgets that they can afford to pay us, and we’ve definitely been shorted in a lot of ways,” Smith says of her bands. “With the booking agent it’s always pre-arranged. There’s a guarantee or a very specific percentage that we’d get of the door … and if they tried to give us less, we had the backing of someone else.”

Guarantees Vs. Door Deals

Punkonomics!

When a venue commits to paying a band a certain amount of money no matter how many (or few) people come to see a show, that’s called a guarantee. They can be pragmatic. But they’re also deeply stigmatized in the punk and indie-rock scenes.

In a network of show promoters where anti-capitalist (or at least anti-commercial) ethics have been central to their community identity, it can come across as arrogant to demand a fixed amount of money to play a show, especially if that means a promoter will be paying out of pocket at the end of the night.

On the other hand, promoters don’t always understand the costs of tour — or worse yet, they do understand and still pay too little. A guarantee can offer protection against that.

“The guarantee is set in place so [bands] are able to sustain a tour and are able to do future tours. It’s taboo in the punk scene to even consider something like that.” — Chris Moore of Coke Bust

But Rosenstock says that politics aside, some bands are better off doing a door deal.

“Say you’re asking someone who runs a house,” he says. “You’re like, ‘Hey, we have a $250 guarantee,’ and you bring, like, 10 people to the show. That promoter’s going to be like, ‘OK, I’ll pay this band 250 bucks, but I’m never gonna book them again because this was a nightmare.'”

Guarantees are typical when bands work with a booking agent. Professional bookers tend to prefer it that way so they can assure their own percentage and a cut for the band. But if the booker’s only criteria is a venue that will agree to a guarantee, other important factors like finding the right place for a band’s audience can fall by the wayside.

“I played in a band for a little while and we did a big tour and it was booked by this guy. We played shows every night, and we played $100 guarantee shows that no one came to. If we would have booked the show ourselves, a bunch of people would have come,” Cook-Parrott says.

So on Radiator Hospital’s last tour, the band did things differently.

“We did it all ourselves and the shows were consistently f*****g awesome. Because we were communicating with our friends and with people who understand our music,” Cook-Parrott says. “Not just the dude at the bar down the street who needs to fill entertainment every night.”

Chris Moore, who plays in D.C. hardcore bands Coke Bust, Sick Fix and DOC, says none of his bands have a guarantee. But he doesn’t fault anyone for having one because guarantees serve a purpose.

“The guarantee is set in place so they are able to sustain a tour and are able to do future tours,” Moore says. “It’s taboo in the punk scene to even consider something like that.”

* * *

Regardless of where bands stand on booking agents, publicists, bar gigs or guarantees, sustainability is the key issue in these conversations. Few people in the DIY music community expect to strike it rich, but when pursuing music is keeping musicians broke, considering compensation for their labor comes into focus.

To what extent should music be the labor of love it’s widely understood to be? In the face of a music economy that’s being reshaped on every level, to what degree can musicians expect to be paid to keep making music? And what happens when the answers to those questions mean the difference between having a band and not having one?

We’re still talking about it.

Stay tuned for Combs’ next installment in a series of essays about the DIY music economy. Read Part 1, “These Are The Real Costs Of Going On A DIY Tour.”

Photos, from top: Young Trynas at the Dougout, July 2014; modified iPad email inbox used under a Creative Commons license; Swimsuit Addition at the Rocketship, July 2014; modified donation jar used under a Creative Commons license; donation bowl used under a Creative Commons license.

Ask any DIY musician why they play music or why they go on tour, and they’re probably not going to tell you they’re in it for the money. They’ll say they do it because they love it, or because there’s something inside of them that compels them to hit the road. But money is still part of the picture, and a lack of it can take even small-scale musicians off the road, swiftly and indiscriminately.

Most DIY artists aren’t spending nearly $18,000 on hotels and food like the band Pomplamoose did last year. But that doesn’t mean we don’t face risks.

Say your band’s van breaks down when you’re making less than $100 a night on tour. There’s a good chance that tour is over, or at best, it will be a while till your next one. When gas prices go up, that money’s coming out of your food budget. Packed too many CDs and not enough T-shirts? That’s money lost, too.

I spent the better part of four months on tour in 2014 with my solo project, Spoonboy, and I’ve been touring for more than 12 years with my punk band, The Max Levine Ensemble. I consider myself a part of a strange community of punk and DIY musicians who make music regardless of economic incentives. But no tour can happen without some consideration of money. And since it’s not something we’re prone to bringing up, people outside of our world might not understand how crucial it is, even for artists playing living rooms.

Before DIY bands even begin to think about widely discussed issues like income from online streaming, they’re more likely to be thinking about the basics: gas, vehicle expenses, food, merch, lodging — and one factor that’s a little more nebulous: reciprocity for people who helped them on tour.

I talked to a few musician friends about the lesser-known but fundamental costs of small-scale touring, with the goal of sharing — for both showgoers and bands — what DIY musicians experience on the road.

Gasoline

It gets you around, so you won’t get around it.

On tour, nothing is more certain than the next stop at the gas station. DIY bands easily spend most of their tour money on petroleum.

The last several months saw sinking gas prices, but that’s unusual, and already reversing. Jeff Rosenstock — who plays solo and formerly with punk band Bomb the Music Industry — says that traditionally, gas prices have risen much faster than many musicians’ incomes.

“Gas prices change more than anything,” Rosenstock says. They “increase so much more than the amount that minimum wage has increased over the past 15 years.”

He’s right. Between June 1999 and June 2014, gas prices rose by 216 percent before they began to slide. The federal minimum wage increased by 41 percent in the same amount of time.

The cost of fuel looms so large that some bands get desperate. Take Chris Moore, who plays in D.C. hardcore bands Coke Bust, Sick Fix and DOC. He says he went to extremes to avoid paying for gas on one of his first tours.

“Me and the roadie in the band would take these five gallon gas containers, put them in contractor bags, sneak around at night, find some poor guy’s car and steal as much gas as possible.” — Chris Moore, Coke Bust

“I was like, ‘All right, we’re gonna steal gas every single night,'” he says. “And that’s how we’re going to make it work.”

Moore’s band at the time, Magrudergrind, bought a hand-pump syphon so they wouldn’t have to slurp gas out of people’s tanks with their mouths, and picked up bags and two large gas canisters.

“Me and the roadie in the band would take these five gallon gas containers, put them in contractor bags, sneak around at night, find some poor guy’s car and steal as much gas as possible,” Moore says.

Eventually, the hardcore band had second thoughts. “It ended up getting so sketchy. We were playing a lot of country towns. Who knows, maybe some of these people [had] guns,” Moore says. “If I caught someone stealing gas from me, I don’t know what I would do. So we just gave up after two weeks. More trouble than it [was] worth.”

Vehicle

Get in the van.

Vehicle expenses can sometimes top gas prices, but they’re far more circumstantial. They depend on questions of renting versus owning and how reliable and fuel-efficient the mode of transportation is.

“I’ve always gone back and forth between being in a band that owns its own vehicle to renting something every time we go out,” Moore says. “On the renting side, is it renting something that’s brand new or renting something that belongs to someone? As much as I love saving a little bit of money by renting a vehicle from a friend, there have been so many instances where that vehicle has broken down or it’s so old that its gas efficiency is so bad that we might as well have rented something brand new.”

You can cut out rental expenses if you own your vehicle, but the liability is a real gamble. Say a deer runs into your car on the highway, knocks a part in your radiator loose and that leads to a busted transmission. There goes your tour fund, and probably a good portion of your savings. (Not that this happened to me. OK, it did.) Plus, the cost of maintaining a van driven tens of thousands of miles a year adds up.

Fuel-efficient vehicles, alternative fuel, driving shorter distances between shows — they’re all useful tricks to cut costs. But paying for gas adds up no matter what.

On my own tours, I’ve tried everything from hitchhiking to scamming fake Greyhound Bus passes to find a way around these costs. But I’ve always ended up in the same place: back in the van.

Food

Meet the chips-and-salsa sandwich.

This one seems obvious. You’ve got to eat. But talk to a touring band about how food is paid for, and you’ll find it’s a hot topic.

“I think everyone in our band at some point skips a meal or two just because we couldn’t afford to be eating out every day,” says Radiator Hospital guitarist Sam Cook-Parrott. Most musicians don’t have the budget to be eating out for every meal, of course — but when you’re living out of your van, you don’t have a choice.

Musicians on tour routinely keep food costs down by flirting with malnutrition.

“We used to get ramen and just crinkle it up in the package and pour the sprinkles on it and have ramen chips. That’s what we would eat for every meal,” Rosenstock says.

Every band has their version of this, whether it’s peanut butter and jelly or one of my personal favorites: the chips-and-salsa sandwich. Musicians on tour routinely keep food costs down by flirting with malnutrition. Ideally the tour should pay for the food, but it’s not always possible.

“If the tour is doing well, then we’ll pay for food out of the tour fund,” Moore says, speaking of his various bands’ routines.“We’ll do a per diem, like a $5 or $10 per day per diem. Or when the band goes out to eat, the band will just pay for it. I kind of prefer that because that means you get to order dessert.”

Even then, food expenses can be a source of interpersonal drama.

“Sometimes people take advantage of it,” Moore says. “There are situations where everyone’s ordered this food except for this last person, and the last person orders two appetizers, a side and a dessert, and you’re like, ‘Damn man, come on!'”

Merch

Spend money to make money.

Merchandise sales account for a big portion of tour income. But producing records, shirts and other goods is also one of a band’s biggest expenses.

“You’re spending money up front, and then earning it back slowly by selling the records,” Cook-Parrott tells me. “After all the money I spent on the tour and getting ready for the tour, when we got home I had about as much after the tour as when we left. In some ways it’s almost like, ‘Did that even happen? Was this a dream?’”

Estimating how much to spend on merchandise is always tough, too. “We went on one tour where we only had CDs and then the CDs sold out really quickly,” says Gabrielle Smith of New York bands Eskimeaux, Frankie Cosmos, Bellows and Told Slant. “Then on [our most recent] tour we had T-shirts, vinyl and CDs — and we bought way too many CDs and not enough shirts at all. We ran out of shirts after four days of being on tour.”

But Moore says merch is an inescapable expense.

“It’s sad to say, but you can’t really do a big tour without having some sort of merch to cover costs,” the drummer says. “It doesn’t mean that you need to have 10 different T-shirt designs and beer koozies and shot glasses or whatever, but you need to have something, because there are going to be times when you don’t get anything from the door — or what you get from the door is so small that it’s only enough for a bean burrito at Taco Bell.”

Lodging

We’re crashing on the floor tonight.

Most bands operating even at the edge of DIY learn that hotel rooms are a no-go. You quickly find yourself inside a network of fellow musicians and their friends who can lend you a couch, bed, floor — or, in the best cases, a guest room.

“Spending your money on a hotel every night, especially when you’re a band just starting out, that’s kind of a waste of money,” Rosenstock says. “Even if you’re a band who’s beyond just starting out, that’s a waste of your experience.”

Plus, crashing with people usually leads to new friendships. “We have these really wonderful tour friends who we would never have met otherwise,” Smith says. Almost everyone I spoke to expressed similar sentiments.

“It’s very rare that you’re ever gonna take a plane trip to Lima, Ohio, to visit your friends,” Moore says. “The only time you’re ever gonna do it is when you’re driving to Illinois on tour.”

In the event that you can’t find a place to crash, you’re left with a choice between booking a hotel and getting a good night’s rest in the van at a Walmart parking lot. Depending on how you respond to that quandary, lodging can also be a major cost.

Reciprocity

It’s the backbone of DIY.

In the world of DIY touring, reciprocity is tough to quantify, or even count as an expense. But it’s definitely a big part of the picture.

Here’s how reciprocity works: If your band from D.C. plays a show with an out-of-towner, you play for free so the touring act gets the door money. When you play out of town, local bands do the same for you. That local band could also help book a show for you in their town, and repay you that way.

“I started booking shows for friends, and then I started playing in a band,” says All Dogs bassist Amanda Bartley, “and just through going on tour and making those connections, you become friends with people in bands. And you’re like, ‘I book shows here, could you book a show for me in your town sometime?’”

The informal gift economy attracts a lot of people to DIY, but it can fall short of meeting bands’ needs.

Moore echoes the importance of this arrangement. “I don’t know if I believe in karma, but I think it’s important to pay it forward.”

That informal gift economy attracts a lot of people to DIY, whether it’s for political reasons or just the romance, but it can also fall short of meeting bands’ needs.

“DIY booking feels like a very personal interaction, and it feels like a very favor-based gifting and owing system. It’s very precariously balanced,” Smith says. “When there’s a booking agent involved, it becomes a business interaction that’s sort of missing from the DIY version.”

And that’s where some of the more interesting economic questions start to pop up. While many bands have found success and longevity operating on a strictly DIY model, others might turn to a booking agent or publicist to try and alleviate some of the challenges a band faces in our bleak economic landscape.

To what extent those things are useful solutions really depends on the band. But these days it’s not hard to find bands with one foot in a traditional DIY ethic, and the other in a more professional approach to marketing music.

And that makes sense. As the prevailing music industry model has crumbled, musicians of all stripes have been experimenting with new models for success, and the lines between the DIY and the professional have blurred. So we’re talking about it.

Stay tuned for Combs’ next installment in a series of essays about the DIY music economy.

Photos by Flickr users Incase, Andrew Taylor, Les Chatfield, Will Fisher, Christian Kadluba and baronsquirrel.

That quote has context — MacKaye was talking about his old band Minor Threat’s if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em solution to shirt bootlegging — but in general, D.C.’s best-known record label really doesn’t do band swag. You won’t find any accessories, posters or clothing in the official Dischord store, not even from non-Dischord bands it distributes. If you want to buy a Dischord tee, you’ve got to go elsewhere, like Pedestrian Press, a company owned by the imprint’s other founder, Jeff Nelson.

But most touring D.C. musicians probably don’t share MacKaye’s position, and if they once did, they are probably rethinking that in the age of tepid physical sales.

So what D.C. bands and labels make the best merch-table fodder, besides records? Tough question. Bandwidth contributors put their heads together and came up with this list of creative standouts from local artists and record labels.

If you’d rather get your music from Soundcloud or Bandcamp, fair enough — you can support local music by buying this swag instead.

Note: We can’t guarantee that all of these items are still available.

Via Bandcamp

Coup Sauvage And The Snips’ “Your Condo Will Not Protect You” T-shirt

The D.C. dance-pop ensemble calls its music “a soundtrack for the children to watch the first world burn” — and this T-shirt won’t assure wealthy urbanites that they’re safe from the flames.

Via Tumblr

Ras Nebyu’s “Washington Slizzards” gear

The uptown MC christened his crew the Washington Slizzards, a name that even he acknowledges doesn’t mean much. Nebyu says he came up with the Wizards pun when he was joking around with his friend, and they thought it was funny, so they rolled with it. Then it blew up on Twitter. So Nebyu recorded a song by the same name and cranked out some T-shirts. That did it: the Washington Slizzards are totally real now.

Via Bigcartel

Moshers Delight sweatpants

The D.C. hardcore label makes its own sweatpants, probably for cozy roundhouse kicking in the pit.

Marijuana paraphernalia from Weed Is Weed and Dying Fetus

Both heavy Maryland bands have sold ganja supplies in the past: Dying Fetus slapped its name on an “herbal grinder,” and Weed Is Weed had its very own glass pipe. These guys understand their fans.

A Sound of Thunder “Blood Vomit” T-shirt

This shirt makes no attempt at subtlety. Then again, neither does the over-the-top metal band that commissioned it.

Via Bandcamp

Jack On Fire matchbook

From the band that wrote “Burn Down the Brixton” comes D.C.’s most black-humored merch: an official Jack On Fire matchbook — complete with a disclaimer, in case you get any funny ideas.

Via Bigcartel

Shy Glizzy’s “FXCK RAP” beanie

D.C.’s biggest street-rap up-and-comer takes a utilitarian approach to music: He said in a Fader interview with Bandwidth’s Briana Younger that he raps to make a living, calling hip-hop a “last resort.” His song “Fxck Rap” makes that much clear. “I know how to hustle, so f**k rap,” he says on the track. It’s all a little meta — a rapper rapping about the uselessness of his own rapping — and this rap beanie (yours for $10!) doubles the effect.

Via Causticcasanova.com

Caustic Casanova’s Bullets-style T-shirt

Dig stoner rock and D.C. sports history? Caustic Casanova has got the shirt for you.

A mildly NSFW shirt from Coke Bust

D.C. hardcore stalwarts Coke Bust sell an elaborate hand-drawn T-shirt designed by Brazilian punk rocker Xavero. Mind the nudity.

Via Silver Sprocket

Lemuria comic book

I wouldn’t doubt that the Syracuse/D.C. indie-pop band has loads of fun on tour, but this 40-page Lemuria comic book has them “travers[ing] the vast landscape of Russia, dodging roves of violent Nazis, crooked cops, mobster shakedowns, gunshots, a tropical storm, rabid dogs and a substandard German pizza.”

Windian Records 45 spinner

You can’t play most releases on the D.C. garage-rock label without one of these little guys.

Via Sean Gray

Accidental Guest’s “Morrissey Still Sucks” button

Record label owner (and Bandwidth contributor) Sean Gray seems to take glee in bashing musicians he dislikes, and these (free!) buttons make that contempt wearable.

Ex Hex tote bag

D.C.’s best rock band doesn’t sell any swag online, but catch the three-piece on tour and you’ll probably spot one of these simple tote bags at the merch table.

Via PPU

Peoples Potential Unlimited leggings

Andrew Morgan’s boutique funk record label makes excellent merch for vinyl obsessives, including slipmats and record bags that come in two sizes — for 12-inches and 7-inches — but I can’t think of another D.C. label that makes its own glamorous leggings like these ones designed by Lisa Stannard.

Via Facebook

Gloom sunglasses

If one day our world is destroyed by an exploding sun, our oblivion will probably sound like blackened death-metal band Gloom — and we’ll want to be wearing these shades to go out in style.

What merch did we miss? Drop us a comment or an email.

Photo by Flickr user Barb Crawford modified and used under a Creative Commons license.

Gray complained to me on Twitter that our list had overlooked D.C. hardcore. So I asked him to make a list of his favorite local hardcore songs of the year — and he delivered that and more. If our list inflicted a wound on the D.C. hardcore community, I hope Gray’s contribution, below, helps heal it. —Ally Schweitzer

* * *

D.C. hardcore got a good bit of attention in 2014, especially from Bandwidth. I think that’s partly because of Damaged City Fest — the growing local festival of punk and hardcore scheduled to return in April — and also the scene’s quality: D.C. hardcore bands sounded excellent last year. But Bandwidth’s Best of 2014 list didn’t acknowledge any of it.

Before I get to my list of the year’s best D.C. hardcore, I want to say something first: It bums me out that the bands listed below are all-male. Right now DCHC seems stronger than it’s been in ages. Let’s hope in 2015 we see more women involved. This scene has the power to make a change for the better.

With that said, it’s hard to deny how many great releases came out of the local hardcore scene in 2014. That’s often how I’m hearing this music — through recordings, not live shows — because I have cerebral palsy and use a walker. Lots of hardcore shows happen in places that aren’t accessible to me.

That means I base my understanding and critique of new D.C. hardcore purely on the releases. Certainly, it makes for a different experience of the scene. But I can’t hear Misled Youth’s “Deadbeat” and “Waste” and not imagine how sick that band sounds live.

D.C. hardcore also sounds contemporary. Local scenester Pat Walsh recently tweeted at me that hardcore is “obsessed with 1980.” But I’m sure most people playing hardcore in D.C. now — regardless of this city’s storied hardcore scene — don’t care what happened in 1980, 1985 or 1995.

The urgency and energy of these bands seems as fresh to me as any hardcore I heard in my teens and 20s. This scene, right now, is as important as it ever was. I hope my list demonstrates that. — Sean Gray

Warning: Some of these songs contain explicit lyrics.

Pure Disgust, “Denied”

I finally happened to get a copy of this 7-inch a few weeks ago. Instead of listening online, I just waited until I was able to play it from start to finish. Right off the bat I hear tinges of oi, but this doesn’t just sound like The Oppressed if they started a hardcore band. “Denied” is completely tight and packs more dynamics into two minutes than most hardcore bands can do on a full LP.

Public Suicide, “No Pity”

Some people live for the breakdown, and those people would love the last 10 seconds of this song. “No Pity” pounds through until it completely falls apart in the best way. Its production sparkles, and for a lot of bands doing this, that could be a bad thing. (The vocals seem questionable at first, too.) But it works here, underscoring how much work was put into these songs.

Jävla, “Warped Ones”

Supposedly the brainchild of a teenager named Brendan Reichhardt, Jävla could come off as a tribute to bands like Anti Cimex (I hear some No Security in here, too), but this demo offers more than that. The drumming makes “Warped Ones” shine, and the guitar solo gets buried in the mix — a nice change for music in this style. It all adds up to a strong demo not just for D.C.’s scene, but for the genre overall.

Misled Youth, “Nothing Left”

“Nothing Left” solidifies Misled Youth as one of the most promising new hardcore acts in D.C. Mark Jubert has the strongest vocals of any band in DCHC right now; he’s aggressive without sounding overbearing. Closing the band’s debut 7-inch, “Nothing Left” seems to split midway through, revealing a sort of coda to everything else on this single.

Red Death, “Unholy Agony”

Red Death put out the best demo of the year, period. For some purists, this may be too metal, but for my money, the band found the perfect balance with its brand of metal-tinged hardcore. This demo comes out of the gate with a “take no prisoners” attitude: “Unholy Agony” feels as brutal as any Consumer Electronics dirge and as thrashy as the best of Death Angel, and it carries the energy of underrated New York hardcore band Misguided. But don’t let these comparisons seal the deal for you: Not many bands achieve this sound as confidently.

Collusion, “Don’t Care”

With members of Coke Bust, Public Suicide, Misled Youth and Pure Disgust, Collusion could be called a DCHC supergroup — and as expected, this demo represented a snapshot of where DCHC is right now. It’s angry and bitter, sure, but for some reason I find these songs catchy. “Don’t Care” has a slight sing-along vibe. Maybe that’s because of the simple lyrics, or the fact that this song boasts the best DCHC riff of 2014.

Protester, “Let You Forget”

If there’s a band that can recruit listeners to the new school of DCHC, it’s Protester. This single packs energy that most hardcore bands would envy, and wraps with one of the most intense song endings I’ve heard in a while — vocalist Connor Donegan screams, “Will you ever fight back?”, and the song cuts out. It’s one of those moments that makes fans remember why they started loving hardcore in the first place.

Photo by Flickr user Chey Rawhoof used under a Creative Commons license.

Some operators of these small venues don’t realize they’re subject to the guidelines established by the Americans With Disabilities Act. (For more on this, check out Kerr’s piece.) On top of that, many of them don’t publicize whether or not they’re accessible.

Showgoer and record label owner Sean Gray has a partial solution to that problem: Make a list of D.C.’s accessible venues. He’s started a new Tumblr called “Is This Venue Accessible?”

“I have a disability and going to shows (DIY or otherwise) has been something I’ve been doing for half of my life now,” Gray writes on the blog. “But because of the lack of accessibility in some of these venues and/or the lack of information, I have been unable to experience many shows as well.” In an email, he points to two recent shows—last night’s Select DC-booked gig at Back Alley Theater and tonight’s Coke Bust show at The Pinch—as prime examples.

“Maybe if there’s actual data, people will care,” Gray writes.

Gray is asking the public to send information about venue accessibility to Contact.ITVA@gmail.com. Got a favorite venue you know is accessible? One that isn’t? Let him know.

Here’s the beginning of Gray’s D.C. venue list, including detailed information on accessibility for ground floors, upper floors and bathrooms. The nascent list includes big clubs like Rock & Roll Hotel and 9:30 Club. Gray hopes to eventually add information about underground music spaces, too, particularly because those are the ones most likely to be inaccessible.

Photo by Flickr user danielderrick used under a Creative Commons license.

Brazilian artist and musician Xavero had spent the last six months in D.C.’s Brookland neighborhood taking part in an informal punk-rock exchange program. While the mononymous artist lived here, he spent his time learning English, befriending some of the scene’s elder statesman and for the first time in his life, fronting a D.C. punk band.

That band was Sem Hastro, a temporary group that would nevertheless make a mark on the city’s vibrant, growing hardcore scene. Technically, Sem Hastro disbanded when Xavero went back to Brazil. But it left behind a demo recording that rises from a thick, primordial punk-rock sludge.

In a local hardcore scene that tends to follow in its forebears’ footsteps, Sem Hastro stands out. Over the demo’s five songs, punk bleeds into blastbeat hardcore. The tempo slows. Guitar solos abound. Its spirit resides in a time and place other than 2014 D.C.—maybe the West Coast, sometime in the 1980s, alongside The Circle Jerks and Black Flag.

The songs are also in Portuguese.

“It’s funny,” says Xavero, sitting under a streetlight outside of The Dougout on one of his last nights in D.C. “A lot of people started liking the band because I was singing in Portuguese.”

Sem Hastro’s story is really the story of Xavero, a 24-year-old punk rocker who began swapping emails with local hardcore band Coke Bust from his home in São Paulo more than two years ago. A bassist in his own straight-edge band, Disease, he had contacted Coke Bust vocalist Nick Candela to try to persuade the group to play his city. Later, when Xavero and a friend visited Berlin for an art exhibition—Xavero was invited to paint—they stayed in Europe for the summer and eventually caught a Coke Bust show in Prague. The musician and Candela became fast friends. When Coke Bust finally made it to Brazil in January, they crashed with Xavero.

“In Sao Paulo, we were just hanging out, having a good time after the tour ended,” says Candela, who also goes by Nick Tape. Afterward, Coke Bust invited Xavero and his friends to visit D.C. during the festival Candela and bandmate Chris Moore booked: Damaged City. “It was an insane opportunity,” Xavero says. “I’d never been to America. I really wanted to go.”

In April he came. He had a six-month visa, but just a few English words to work with. When he flew into New York and turned up at Union Station a few days before Damaged City, he called Candela but struggled to say where he was or what he needed. Candela managed to get the message and pick him up. When festival time came, Xavero helped out onsite, selling hot dogs to punk kids.

Even with the language barrier, Xavero made friends. He settled in. As the day of his return flight neared, he realized he wasn’t ready to leave. He asked Candela—who he had taken to calling “Nicktape,” like it was one word—if he could stay on his couch in Brookland.

So Xavero stayed, even while Coke Bust went on tour. By the time the band got back from their West Coast jaunt, Candela had come up with an idea: Let’s start a punk band.

Back in Brazil, Xavero plays in Disease and tinkers with a few smaller projects. But in those bands, he plays guitar or bass. He called his new band Sem Hastro—an intentionally abstract band name that has no English translation—and decided he would sing. In Portuguese.

“It wouldn’t make sense if I were singing in English,” Xavero says. “It’s not my language. It’s hard to write in English. We listen to a lot of Crudos [the legendary Chicago punk band that sang in Spanish]. We knew it would be cool.”

First Sem Hastro wanted to play straight-ahead punk, Xavero says, the songs slower-paced and melodic behind his ghostly, guttural screams. But with the band’s lineup—which included Candela, scene mainstay and Sick Fix member Pat Vogel and Coke Bust’s James Willett—a distinct D.C. hardcore influence crept in.

“It’s the most punk band either one of us has ever been in. But it’s still hardcore.” —Nick Candela

“It’s the most punk band either one of us has ever been in,” Candela says, referring to himself and Xavero. “But it’s still hardcore.”

The next steps felt easy, Xavero says. They wrote a few songs, practiced four or five times and played their first show at the end of July. The band was a quick hit, says the singer—possibly because they sounded so different.

Six months can fly by. The band played its last show—for now—at the Rocketship Sept. 15. The following week, Xavero boarded a plane.

Under the streetlight outside of the Dougout, Xavero says he doesn’t want to leave. He has friends here now. His English sparkles. He wants to keep pushing with Sem Hastro and see where it goes. But he can’t, he reasons. Overstaying a visa is a mess he doesn’t want to make.

But he’ll be back, Xavero pledges—as soon as March of 2015, when Disease plans to tour through here. Candela says next time, they’re going to work on finding a legal way for him to stay permanently. Until that day comes, the band will be waiting.

Photos, top to bottom: Sem Hastro at the Slam Pad by Michael Andrade; Sem Hastro at the Rocketship by Ron Akins.

Moore, prolific punk-show promoter and drummer for D.C. hardcore band Coke Bust, is a key component in the engine that makes Damaged City go. He and bandmate Nick Candela booked the bands and the venue, and now here Moore is, in the packed chapel walkway that doubles as the festival’s marketplace, trying to make sure the whole thing stays on the rails. As fast as the band plays, Cülo has a reputation for slowing things down. So Moore heads back to the stage to make sure the band of mutants—and everything else—is keeping pace.

Damaged City is too important to go off course. The weekend-long all-ages festival, held two weekends ago primarily at St. Stephen’s and Columbia Heights dive The Pinch, is a celebration of hardcore in the city that birthed it and continues to embrace its ethics with more zeal than any other punk scene in the country. Alongside bigger headliners like Infest and Crudos, 10 D.C.-area hardcore bands played the fest, many of them part of a wave of surprisingly young musicians that their older peers say may be the greatest hope for D.C. hardcore in a generation.

But a dozen-odd bands doesn’t necessarily make a scene. What makes a scene are the few people who bring it all together. So there Moore stands, dutifully watching by the stage while Cülo sets up, sound-checks for maybe a tick too long, and rips into its set.

* * *

“Honestly, the best hardcore punk bands are kids between the ages of 13 and 19,” says Moore, a relative elder statesman at 27. “And there’s a ton of them. And they’re all [freaking] awesome. It’s crazy.”

Right now, D.C.’s hardcore scene has one of the most promising assortment of bands it’s seen in a long time, and many of their members are still in high school. The young Vile Faith put out an outstanding seven-song tape before disbanding last month, and some of its members—including drummer Robin Zeijlon—formed Pure Disgust and Public Suicide, the latter of which has its own EP coming out later this year. Nuclear Age released a blistering demo last fall. There’s Misled Youth, whose new album is already streaming online and should be released physically in a few months. Longer in the tooth are Red Death—whose January demo will probably go down as one of the year’s best D.C. hardcore recordings—the more metal Genocide Pact, straight-edge band Protester, and scene mainstays like Sick Fix, Give, and Moore’s own Coke Bust, among others.

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

In a way, the young kids have an advantage, because they’re more likely to live with their parents and they don’t bear the brunt of an increasingly unaffordable D.C. But those kids could also disappear from the area soon, as they go off to college or try their fortunes in another city. Moore—along with Candela—is part of the force that keeps the home fires burning.

Moore books and promotes dozens of local DIY shows a year. He hauls his PA from show to show. He stands outside of venues and hands out flyers. At Damaged City, he was the person running drum-kit components to and from the stage, depending on what the band needed. He also started a practice space behind his Takoma Park home that bands can use for as long as they need. “As far as I know, [it’s] the only affordable place you can just go and pay, like, $10 an hour and use a drum kit there,” says Priests drummer Daniele Yandel. “That’s so important for people who want to start bands.”

Moore tries to offers the kind of guidance he struggled to find when he first got involved in D.C. punk a decade ago.

Born in Montgomery County, Md., Moore was first introduced to punk rock around age 13. His mother was into ‘80s new wave and had punk friends from her days growing up in D.C. “That inadvertently exposed me to that stuff,” he says.

With his mom’s support, he started his first band in middle school, called Munk Petal, a spoonerism of “punk metal,” neither of which really described his band. Moore starts to characterize it in musical terms, then stops. “It’s what an eighth-grader’s first band would sound like,” he says.

Chris Moore

Moore and his Munk Petal bandmates played their first show at his high school, just across the street from his family’s home. It went off as well as it could have, with his friends moshing in front of the stage. But midway through the set, the school’s security guards broke up the pit, saying it was too dangerous, and shut down the show.

Moore had an idea. He called home and moved the gig across the street to his mom’s basement. Over the next few years of high school, Moore says, he and his friends put on 30 or 40 shows in that basement, including performances by regional and national bands. “It started to become a regular spot for suburban Maryland kids to come to shows,” he says.

By 2005, Moore had already carved out space in the D.C. hardcore scene with his high school band, Magrudergrind, which started when Moore was 15 and went on to tour with bigger punk and metal bands across the country.

“I think it’s important to involve younger kids,” says Chris Moore. “It’s what makes D.C. special.”

But back at home, the scene wasn’t great, Moore says. When he first began booking gigs, there weren’t many active DIY venues, and music tastes were different: People were listening to screamo—which, for all of its punk influences, didn’t always adhere to the same value structure as hardcore. The older D.C. punk community had also wound down considerably, and by then “the majority of the older people in the area were [jerks], or I thought they were [jerks],” he says. “They were really alienating to younger kids.”

If that particular crew had been his only exposure to D.C. punk, he might have lost interest and dropped out, Moore says. But around the same time, he met Matt Moffatt and Pat Vogel from Crispus Attucks, a band that anchored the city’s hardcore scene at the time. They welcomed Moore and his teenage friends. Moore says they answered questions, got them gigs, and generally helped out however they could. That stuck with Moore. Ten years later, when kids ask for his advice or guidance, Moore does what he can to help. It’s his way of perpetuating an all-ages tradition that started with the days of harDCore and the early Dischord scene.

“I think it’s important to involve younger kids,” he says, whether it’s getting them shows or involving them in the process of booking shows themselves. “It’s what makes D.C. special.” Plus, he knows if he doesn’t help those kids—if he and folks his age are dismissive or cold—“the scene kind of dies with those older people.”

* * *

Just before Give takes the stage at St. Stephen’s, Ray Brown sits in the chapel’s pews, his elbows on his knees, and thinks about what hardcore in the city means to him.

“Community, definitely community,” he says. Brown is the 16-year-old bass player for The Black Sparks, another teenage group with as much potential as any in the scene. And he says the young bands are a big part of that community. Among them, he says, “in the past year there have been, like, 10 demos recorded.”

Brown appreciates the fact that his band’s relative success is made easier by D.C.’s hardcore tradition. “D.C.’s probably the only place where it’s almost impossible to go to a show at any age and be denied, like you can’t come in,” he says. “And that’s all because of Ian MacKaye, doing everything he did to make sure shows were all-ages.”

The resurgence of young, talented bands coursing through the scene is refreshing, says Tim Mullaney, singer and guitarist for D.C. death-metal band Genocide Pact. For years, he’s used his portable, door-to-door recording kit to tape demos for punk bands, including some of the young ones. Mullaney says there were some lean years earlier this decade, when all-ages spaces were in short supply and bands weren’t as numerous or active. But while it’s had its slumps, hardcore punk has never completely died here—and people like Moore help make sure it continues on for decades. “I don’t ever see those guys quitting booking shows,” Mullaney says. “There hasn’t been a year since I’ve started going to shows that Chris hasn’t been booking four or five big shows a year.”

Meanwhile, Mullaney sees new kids picking up the baton, like Robin Zeijlon, who books shows at Tenleytown restaurant Casa Fiesta and elsewhere.

The scene is in a different, healthier place than it was when he started out, Moore says. “I do think it’s important and it’s cool that this younger crop of D.C. punk bands is getting attention,” Moore says. Some of them are planning tours this summer, too—and that’s how the music and the message spreads.

“If I were a teenager, and I saw this ripping teenage band play my town, I’d think: Oh [man], I could do that. I want to do that.”

This article has been updated to emphasize the fact that Nick Candela also booked Damaged City Fest alongside Chris Moore.

Top photo: Cülo at Damaged City Fest. Image of Chris Moore courtesy of Chris Moore.