“When [President Ronald] Reagan entered office,” says punk elder statesman Mark Andersen, “it provided a focal point, like a physical embodiment of the things that we opposed.”

Andersen makes that observation to WAMU reporter Patrick Madden in a story that aired Tuesday. The co-founder of D.C. activist group Positive Force says that in some ways, the Reagan era energized punk in D.C. And some say the same could happen under President Trump.

Visit the WAMU homepage to hear Madden’s story, “Could D.C. Punk Thrive Under President Trump?” The sound-rich feature includes interviews with Andersen, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and Minor Threat, filmmaker Robin Bell and Jason Mogavero of rabble-rousing D.C. band Jack On Fire.

Citing its “unique mix of breakneck-paced hardcore punk and dubby reggae,” the Hall included the band Tuesday on a list that also proposes Tupac Shakur, Pearl Jam, Jane’s Addiction and Depeche Mode among first-time nominees. Bad Brains not only set a standard for speed and fury, but it also had an all-African-American lineup in a genre generally dominated by white musicians. (Above: Live At CBGB 1982, featuring the band in its prime.)

Often imitated, never duplicated: the cover of Bad Brains from 1982.

A nomination is just the start of the process — actual induction comes via a vote by more than 600 historians, artists and music industry figures. If Bad Brains is inducted this year, it would be the first D.C. hardcore band to make the Hall, although one product of D.C.’s hardcore scene, Dave Grohl, was inducted in 2014 as a member of Nirvana. (Another legendary underground rock band, the MC5, is back on the list this year after receiving an unsuccessful nomination in 2003.)

Bad Brains was in the news earlier this year as family and friends launched a campaign to help fund medical care for frontman H.R., who was diagnosed in late 2015 with a rare and painful disorder called SUNCT.

The 2012 documentary Bad Brains: A Band In D.C. traced the band’s complicated history, from its roaring appearance on the D.C. punk scene in the late 1970s, through its move to New York in the 1980s, and into a phase in the ’90s and ’00s that included disagreements among members. (H.R. and two of the filmmakers appeared on WAMU 88.5’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show in 2012.)

Beyond Bad Brains’ musical influence on bands such as Minor Threat (and by extension, Fugazi) and the Beastie Boys, the cover art for the group’s 1982 self-titled album — with its image of a jagged lightning bolt striking the U.S. Capitol — has inspired countless homages.

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.”

According to H.R.’s wife, Lori Carns Hudson, the veteran performer (aka Paul Hudson) was diagnosed in December with a rare and painful condition called SUNCT, which stands for short-lasting, unilateral neuralgiform headache attacks with conjunctival injection and tearing.

“He’s been getting headaches for about 10 years,” says Hudson, who lives with H.R. in Philadelphia. “He used to think they were migraines but it’s been very, very strange. They’ve progressively gotten worse until they culminated in November [to the point] where he’s just constantly in pain.”

The couple’s friend, Brian Marsh, started a GoFundMe campaign Monday to help Hudson cover her husband’s medical treatment and other expenses. The campaign aims to raise $30,000.

Hudson says H.R., who has struggled with physical and mental issues for years, is unable to work.

“He goes out and takes a very brief walk every day,” she says, “but he mostly just relaxes and watches TV.”

Hudson supports him with income from her retail job, and she’s begun selling H.R. artwork (like the above) for extra money. Meanwhile, her insurance covers some of her husband’s medical expenses. But conventional treatment has only helped so much.

“We’ve been through a lot of doctors … [and] the medical community does not understand this specific type of headache,” she says. She would like to try herbal remedies — Hudson herself is an herbalist — but those aren’t covered by health insurance.

Money raised from the GoFundMe campaign would help pay for alternative treatment and other expenses, like traveling to see medical specialists.

Friends have suggested that H.R. try psychoactive drugs like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, but Hudson rejects the idea.

“He would never do any kind of psychoactive drugs,” Hudson says. “So it’s not something that we will be trying.” But she adds that they are looking into CBD oil, a common medical marijuana treatment.

Hudson says despite H.R.’s chronic pain, he maintains a positive outlook. “He really does live that PMA,” she says, referring to Bad Brains’ philosophy of a positive mental attitude. “He still has a smile on his face every day — even though he’s spending most of the night sobbing and crying out because the pain is just so much.”

So far, the campaign for H.R. has raised nearly $6,000.

There is also an ongoing GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Dr. Know, the Bad Brains guitarist who suffered a heart attack and organ failure last year. That campaign has raised more than $40,000 since it launched last week.

Returning for its fourth edition April 7 to 10, the all-ages fest will take place at All Souls Unitarian Church, Calvary Methodist Church, Black Cat and the Pinch, all located in Northwest D.C.

Organizers are also adding 10 more bands to the already robust schedule. (See a list below.)

Tickets can be scooped at Ticketfly, D.C. record stores Smash Records and Joint Custody, Celebrated Summer Records in Baltimore and Vinyl Conflict in Richmond. A limited supply of discounted three- and two-day passes are also available.

Damaged City Fest has grown both in size and reputation since it debuted in D.C. in 2013. Bookers Chris Moore and Nick “Tape” Candela have stepped up their game for this year’s round, flying in Japanese hardcore legends Systematic Death for the occasion.

Also on the docket: lots of vegan food.

Latest additions to Damaged City Fest’s 2016 lineup in bold:

Zero Boys (Indiana)
Systematic Death (Japan)
The Avengers (California)
Sheer Mag (Pennsylvania)
Tau Cross (England)
Youth Avoiders (France)
Disguise (Ireland)
La Urss (Spain)
S.H.I.T. (Canada)
Blood Pressure (Pennsylvania)
Coke Bust (D.C.)
The Goons (D.C.)
Eel (Pennsylvania)
Caught in a Crowd (Massachusetts)
Dame (Massachusetts)
Torso (California)
Post Teens (Florida)
Rubbish (Florida)
Stalled Minds (France)
Triage (Canada)
Gaucho (Canada)
Busted Outlook (California)
Genocide Pact (D.C.)
The Pessimists (Brazil)
Sem Hastro (Brazil/U.S.)
Holder’s Scar (North Carolina)
Digital Octopus (France)
Firing Squad (Virginia)
Protester (D.C.)
Depths of Reality (Massachusetts)
Firewalker (Massachusetts)
Drug Control (California)
Odd Man Out (Washington)
Bricklayer (Washington)
Stand Off (D.C.)
Homosuperior (D.C.)
Radiation Risks (New York)
Bust Off (D.C.0
Kombat (D.C.)
Collusion (D.C.)

The band made its debut with 2013 Nites of Midnite, a blistering LP that harks back to Washington’s ’80s hardcore heyday. Since then, Red Hare has been putting together the pieces of a second album. A piece of their new work, a fresh 7-inch called Lexicon Mist, arrives Tuesday.

“We work any way that we can, because we all have jobs, wives, lives, responsibilities, children,” says guitarist Jason Farrell, who lives in Los Angeles. “But this is still something that has meant something to us for longer than it hasn’t.”

On the record’s A-side, “Silverfish,” Red Hare explodes from every corner: Vocalist Shawn Brown barks with sharp clarity; Farrell draws blood from metal-tinged riffs; Dave Eight’s bass growls and drummer Joe Gorelick pops and punches on the kit.

But on the 7-inch’s B-side, Red Hare nods to a band that’s less prone to spontaneous combustion: Lungfish. “Sphere of Influence” pays homage to the deep and droning track from the Baltimore band’s 1996 record Sound in Time. For that one, Brown tones down his typical roar, channeling Daniel Higgs’ distinctive vocal style.

“It’s such a heavy song, not only musically, but spiritually,” says Brown.

The song reflects the personal challenge, Brown says, of “trying to juggle your desires to play music and still work and survive, and in some of our cases, raise a family and realizing that your time is short anyway.”

Lexicon Mist arrives Feb. 16 via Dischord and Hellfire Records.

Organizers announced today that Damaged City 2016 will take place over four days, from April 7 to 10, at venues to be announced. So far, 33 bands are booked to play the fest’s beefiest lineup yet, with notable performances from Japanese hardcore legends Systematic Death and classic California punk band The Avengers.

Like past Damaged City headliners Negative Approach, Infest and The Mob, both Systematic Death and The Avengers date back decades. But festival co-organizer Nick “Tape” Candela says he and partner Chris Moore “made a strong effort to include a lot of fresh blood and newer bands” for next year’s edition. Philly rockers Sheer Mag, French punks Youth Avoiders, straight-edge Californians Torsö and grubby Irish punk band Disguise are among them. (See the rest of Damaged City’s preliminary 2016 lineup, below.)

As Bandwidth writer Ron Knox pointed out in 2014, Candela and Moore deserve much of the credit for reviving the District’s fabled hardcore scene, and they’ve done it without tweaking the formula. In the purist tradition of D.C. hardcore, Damaged City remains all-ages and strictly DIY, aided by a legion of volunteers.

“[Moore and I] are the only two organizers,” Candela writes in a Facebook message, “but there are dozens of folks that help out with everything.”

Volunteers clean up, provide equipment, pick up bands from the airport and — critically — open their homes to out-of-town bands. That’s a task Candela says he’s happy to delegate.

“In the past, I learned not to let too many people sleep at my house,” Candela writes. “In 2014, I got home around 4 or 5 [a.m.] from cleaning up and found that there were punks everywhere in my house.” He’d been left with nowhere to sleep.

“I didn’t have the heart to kick our foreign guests out of my room so I just went back outside and slept in my car,” Candela writes. “Lesson learned: Don’t do that again.”

Check Damaged City’s Facebook event page for ticket information and schedule updates.

Damaged City’s preliminary 2016 lineup: 

Systematic Death (Japan)
The Avengers (California)
Sheer Mag (Pennsylvania)
Youth Avoiders (France)
Torsö (California)
Disguise (Ireland)
La Urss (Spain)
Obstruct (U.K.)
Blood Pressure (Pennsylvania)
The Goons (D.C.)
Eel (Pennsylvania)
Caught in a Crowd (Massachusetts)
Dame (Massachusetts)
Post Teens (Florida)
Rubbish (Florida)
Stalled Minds (France)
Busted Outlook (California)
The Pessimists (Brazil)
Sem Hastro (Brazil/U.S.)
Holders Scar (North Carolina)
Firing Squad (Virginia)
Protester (D.C.)
Depths of Reality (Massachusetts)
Firewalker (Massachusetts)
Drug Control (California)
Odd Man Out (Washington)
Collusion (D.C.)
Stand Off (D.C.)
Homosuperior (D.C.)
Radiation Risks (New York)
Bust Off (D.C.)
Kombat (D.C.)
Spite (D.C.)

“Good Behavior” leads the record with a snappy, twisted pop song. Sam Rosenberg’s knotty guitar work continues to evolve, as a Pixies-like sense of melody lurks the background, and he works nicely in tandem with new member Andy Chervenak (Grass Is Green), the bassist and co-vocalist who’s boosted the musicianship of the already talented trio. But Rosenberg has also finally come into his own as a singer. Here, he plays with the shapes of words as he circles around the melody and sells and yells the hell out of his dejection: “Good behavior cannot help me now.”

Personal Life comes out Feb. 5 on Exploding In Sound.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Back in the toddler years of D.C.’s hardcore scene, Georgetown venue the Bayou was both loved and loathed.

On one hand, the Bayou was one of precious few D.C. clubs that would host punk bands like The Damned and Bad Brains, who played a now-legendary show at the venue in 1979. But punk kids in particular complained about the Bayou’s security staff, who had a reputation for being less than hospitable.

One of the groups coming up in that era was Youth Brigade, who both formed and broke up in 1981. As young punk kids who felt unwelcome at the Bayou — which closed in 1998 — they had opinions about the club’s bouncers. (As did Ian MacKaye, who called them “a**holes” in 2013 documentary The Bayou: D.C.’s Killer Joint.) So Youth Brigade decided to put those opinions on tape.

Called “Bouncer,” Youth Brigade’s 72-second Bayou diss track was recorded at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington. The song appears on Youth Brigade’s first demo, which MacKaye’s Dischord Records will release for the first time on Nov. 23.

Here’s what Youth Brigade’s Danny Ingram tells Brooklyn Vegan about “Bouncer”:

It’s about our experiences at the Bayou, a D.C. club that often employed locally stationed marines as bouncers/doormen, many of whom had a less than cordial relationship with the punks who attended the shows. The song was written right after the Bad Brains played there. I managed to get into the show, but Nathan’s fake ID was easily spotted and he was given the bum’s rush. Once I was in, I found the staff was their usual belligerent selves — hassling kids who were dancing and jumping about, all the while castigating those who didn’t drink. In those days, righteous indignation often wound up as a song at the very next rehearsal. Such is youth and such was the case with this song.

Listen to “Bouncer” below. Want to bark along? Here are the lyrics:

Bunch of ugly thugs
Await you at the door
Trying to take your drugs
Trying to make a score

You wanna see your favorite act
But you made a mistake
and you can’t come back
If they don’t like your looks,
you don’t get to see the show
Bayou bouncers, f*****g clowns,
really got to go

Got your friend
By his shirt
Trying to make him stand still

Take away
All your gear
And give you s**t
For not buying beer

Don’t be fooled: if you get inside
If you’re a punk, you better hide