There was a situation where the shows were becoming increasingly, moronically violent, and a lot of people were like: 'fuck it, I'll drop out, I don't want to be a part of this any more.
From the late 1970s through the early 1980s, Washington, DC had a thriving hardcore punk community.[1] The short-lived scene was one of the most influential in the United States.[2]Bad Brains were an early influence on the speed of hardcore punk, and straight edge came to fruition in the wake of Minor Threat, whose frontman Ian MacKaye owned Dischord Records.[3] By 1984, the scene was awash in violence: racist skinheads came to hardcore punk concerts in the city to fight;[4] shows devolved into vandalism;[5] and many participants in the scene developed an ethos of toxic masculinity.[6]
When the Faith (with Alec MacKaye) put out the EP Subject to Change in 1983, it marked a critical evolution in the sound of D.C. hardcore and punk music in general.[7]AllMusic writer Steve Huey described their music as "hint[ing] at what was to come, softening the standard-issue hardcore approach somewhat with better-developed melodies and a more inward-looking perspective" [8]
Conceptualisation
Revolution Summer was conceptualised by Amy Pickering while working at Dischord Records
In the early 1980s, Amy Pickering was hired by Dischord Records, where, on her first day of work, she tore down a sign that said "No Skirts Allowed".[9] Due to her perceived transgressions of the scene, Pickering proposed a concept to a number of musicians, which would entail a "re-birthing" of D.C. hardcore in the following years.[10] The tight-knit community around Dischord Records, who helped establish the original scene, decided to leave it and create a new music scene in the city.[11] It was envisioned to be more aware of the sexism of the traditional punk scene, embrace animal rights and vegetarianism, and oppose moshing and violence at concerts.[12] Ultimately, it was an attempt to "rid punk of its machismo."[13] "Revolution Summer" had been a phrase Pickering used in notes she sent out to people in the D.C. punk scene to reflect "a climax, the end of something" and to re-inspire punks in D.C.[14] Oman Emmet named Pickering as "the mother of the revolution" and credited Pickering with "setting a season into motion."[15][16]
Fruition
Revolution Summer was led by bands associated with Dischord Records. According to the Dischord website: "The violence and nihilism that had become identified with punk rock, largely by the media, had begun to take hold in DC and many of the older punks suddenly found themselves repelled and discouraged by their hometown scene,"[17] leading to "a time of redefinition."[17] During these years, a new wave of bands started to form, including Rites of Spring, Lunchmeat (later to become Soulside), Gray Matter, Mission Impossible (with Dave Grohl who later joined Scream), Dag Nasty (formed by Brian Baker of Minor Threat with members of Bloody Mannequin Orchestra and Shawn Brown later in Swiz), Beefeater, Fire Party (featuring Pickering)[18] and Embrace (with Ian MacKaye and members of the Faith).[19][7][20][21] Rites of Spring has been described as the band that "more than led the change",[17] challenging the "macho posturing that had become so prevalent within the punk scene at that point", and "more importantly", defying "musical and stylistic rule".[17] Journalist Steve Huey writes that while the band "strayed from hardcore's typically external concerns of the time–namely, social and political dissent–their musical attack was no less blistering, and in fact a good deal more challenging and nuanced than the average three-chord speed-blur",[22] a sound that, according to Huey, mapped out "a new direction for hardcore that built on the innovations" brought by Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade.[22] Some other bands took inspiration from a broader range of genres such as funk (in the case of Beefeater)[23] and 1960s pop (such as the example of Gray Matter).[24]
According to Eric Grubbs, a nickname was developed for the new sound, with some considering it "post-hardcore", but another name that floated around the scene was "emo-core".[10] The latter, mentioned in skateboarding magazine Thrasher, would come up in discussions around the D.C. area.[10] While some of these bands have been considered contributors to the birth of emo,[25][26] with Rites of Spring sometimes being named as the first or one of the earliest emo acts,[27][22] musicians such as the band's former frontman Guy Picciotto and MacKaye himself have voiced their opposition against the term.[10][28][29]
Revolution Summer lasted only a few years, and by 1986, most of emo's major bands (including Rites of Spring, Embrace, Gray Matter and Beefeater) had broken up.[30] However, its ideas and aesthetics spread quickly across the country through a network of homemade zines, vinyl records and hearsay.[31] According to Greenwald, the Washington, D.C., scene laid the groundwork for emo's subsequent incarnations:
What had happened in D.C. in the mid-eighties—the shift from anger to action, from extroverted rage to internal turmoil, from an individualized mass to a mass of individuals—was in many ways a test case for the transformation of the national punk scene over the next two decades. The imagery, the power of the music, the way people responded to it, and the way the bands burned out instead of fading away—all have their origins in those first few performances by Rites of Spring. The roots of emo were laid, however unintentionally, by fifty or so people in the nation's capital. And in some ways, it was never as good and surely never as pure again. Certainly, the Washington scene was the only time "emocore" had any consensus definition as a genre.[32]
↑ Hurchalla, George (29 January 2016). Going Underground American Punk 1979-1989. PM Press. When bands like Warzone, Murphy's Law, Cro-Mags, and Agnostic Front began attracting large skinhead followings, however, violence in the scene became more commonplace. Faced with early hostility from the DC and Boston crews who came with their bands to town, New York fought back by attempting to uphold its reputation as the toughest city in the country. A whole mythology and movement built up around "mean streets" hardcore. Rather than embracing individualism, there were a lot of kids just attracted to being in a gang or "crew." They were a little late on the harder than hardcore bandwagon, though, because the DC and Boston crews had largely grown out of their aggressive ways by 1984, leaving NY free to carry the mantle of tough guy hardcore unchallenged.
↑ Crawford, Scott (2017). Spoke: Images and Stories from the 1980s Washington, DC Punk Scene (Illustrateded.). Akashic Books. p.95. ISBN978-1617755002.
↑ Pattison, Louis (2012-11-27). "Rites of Spring and the summer that changed punk rock". The Guardian. ISSN0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-05-03. Rites of Spring's handful of furious, impassioned live shows would be a spur to action. The summer after their formation, 1985, would enter DC punk folklore as Revolution Summer, a long hot season of discussion, learning, and political action..A new clutch of Dischord bands offered evidence of the label's newly broadened horizons: the funk-tinged Beefeater, all-female group Fire Party, and Ian Mackaye's new band, called, pointedly, Embrace.
↑ Raggett, Ned. "Plays for Lovers – Beefeater – Review". AllMusic. Retrieved March 19, 2011. Drawing from funk as much as punk, Beefeater cooks up a groovy combination on their debut album.
↑ Foster, Patrick. "Gray Matter – Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved March 19, 2011. The recordings, which revealed the influence of early-D.C. punk ('Gray Matter', 'Caffeine Blues'), also warned about the dangers of punk nostalgia ('Retrospect') and featured a surprising cover of the Beatles' 'I Am the Walrus' was the first hint of the band's strong pop streak.
↑ Prindle, Mark (2003). "Guy Picciotto interview". Markprindle.com. Retrieved March 19, 2011. Well, first of all, I don't recognize that attribution. I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it's so stupid is that – what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What – they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
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