Indoctrinated into the faith of hardcore punk at the dawn of the 1980s after hearing the bare-knuckled triple-threat of "Too Drunk to Fuck" by Dead Kennedys, "Rise Above" by Black Flag and the absolutely essential Alternative Tentacles compilation, Let Them Eat Jellybeans (still criminally unavailable on compact disc to this day), I have been an avowed fan ever since. In short order, I was scrawling the Circle Jerks logo on my notebooks, making a jackass out of myself on a second-hand skateboard and regularly blowing my summer job money on 7" vinyl in local record shops like 99 Records and Bleecker Bob's. I was hooked.
Of course, the golden age of hardcore is long over. I checked out sometime towards the end of the decade, but scenes still continue on today. My friend/colleague Drew is constantly playing me some contemporary hardcore, and a lot of it is pretty great. That said, my heart still belongs to the old stuff. As such, you can imagine my glee upon stumbling upon these two amazing galleries of photographs on Facebook taken by one Jospeh Henderson. Joe was a rock photographer who shot for Flipside in the early 80's, and his pictures completely capture the sweaty, hyperkinetic aggression of vintage hardcore. If you're a fan of this stuff, these pictures who blow a new part in your hair. Here's the first, and here's the second. Check'em out.
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