The kids will have their say: a first-hand history of Boston straight edge legends SSD

Hard­core pho­tog­ra­phy is, broad­ly speak­ing, about cap­tur­ing move­ment on top of move­ment, with band and crowd com­ing togeth­er in a ris­ing tide of sweat and fists. But there’s some­thing else going on in Philin Phlash’s black and white shots of SSD per­form­ing at Gallery East in Boston over 40 years ago. Set against the stark back­drop of the art space’s bleached walls, the young Boston group’s leaps and lunges appear almost bal­let­ic. ​“The band was very visu­al,” gui­tarist Al Bar­ile says.

That idea is car­ried through How Much Art Can You Take?, a new book com­pil­ing some of Philin’s many SSD pho­tos along­side an oral his­to­ry con­duct­ed by Nan­cy Bar­ile, a piv­otal book­er in both the Boston and Philadel­phia scenes (and also Al’s wife). From nev­er-before-seen images to first-hand com­men­tary from the band and crew, the book offers a vis­cer­al taste of the ener­gy behind some of the ear­li­est thrash­ings of hard­core on the east coast of the US. ​“I don’t think the records cap­ture that all the time,” Al observes.

Born Phil Spring and brought up between South Boston and a lit­tle fur­ther out in Quin­cy, Mass­a­chu­setts, Philin’s style was as con­fronta­tion­al as the bands he pho­tographed. He wasn’t above or to one side, he was in the pit, cop­ping elbows and com­mit­ting hyper-local hap­pen­ings to the record as though they were world-chang­ing, which for many kids they were.

His group pho­tos of the Boston Crew, a mish­mash of punks and skaters who orbit­ed SSD, offer up skin­heads, watch caps and a keen sense of urban dis­af­fec­tion. Every ren­der­ing of vocal­ist David ​‘Springa’ Spring, mean­while, is pocked with youth­ful snot, and oth­er images cap­ture a tan­gle of social and musi­cal pre­oc­cu­pa­tions in a sin­gle frame.

Wit­ness the straight edge X on the head­stock of Al’s gui­tar as it swoops over the crowd, or bassist Jaime Sciarappa’s almost sur­rep­ti­tious Cheap Trick shirt, which nods to the influ­ences SSD would explore on 1984’s divi­sive How We Rock, a break from the gnarly hard­core of The Kids Will Have Their Say and Get It Away.

With­out fail Al, back then an appren­tice machin­ist at GE, looks like he could burst your head between his bicep and fore­arm. In How Much Art Can You Take?, Springa recalls encoun­ter­ing him for the first time as ​“a brick shit­house with a Destroy t‑shirt on.”

“I was nav­i­gat­ing the chaos,” Al observes, still speak­ing with enthu­si­asm and author­i­ty through waves of sick­ness caused by ongo­ing can­cer treat­ment. ​“I’m a phys­i­cal guy. I want­ed to be in a phys­i­cal band. I had crazy ideas of physicality.”

Nan­cy first crossed paths with SSD after try­ing to book them for a show in Philly. She called the num­ber list­ed on their record sleeves next to a stand­ing offer to play in oth­er cities. ​“I talked to Al for about three hours,” she remem­bers. After that they found ways to keep bump­ing into each oth­er, with the book chron­i­cling the ear­ly days of their rela­tion­ship through vivid dis­cus­sions of riots at shows on Stat­en Island, trips to see Minor Threat in Bal­ti­more and fights with the KKK on the streets of Boston.

To assem­ble How Much Art Can You Take?, Nan­cy invit­ed SSD over to their house, set up a tape recorder and let them go. ​“Those guys have such a nat­ur­al broth­er­hood that the sto­ries just came fly­ing out,” she says. ​“Tran­scrib­ing them was one of the hard­est things I ever did. They’d talk over each oth­er, and laugh, and Al’s real­ly loud. But I want­ed it to be authentic.”

Speak­ing about the book to Huck, Al and Nan­cy delve into the chaos, com­mu­ni­ty and cul­tur­al impor­tance of the hard­core scenes they helped to build as kids.

Al, What do you think the book says about SSD as a live band and your legacy?

Al: It’s tough for me to say from where I sit. I think we were an under-hyped band in a way, but then we got a lot of mileage out of the shirts and the let­ters. So, maybe that kept the lega­cy going. Who knows if we’re going to try to play again? I can’t pre­dict that right now. Maybe we’re gonna try to play one more time. But if that does­n’t hap­pen, I think the book cap­tures the phys­i­cal­i­ty of it. I have dreams of some young kids pick­ing up that book and being attract­ed to it because of the phys­i­cal pictures.

Nan­cy, after com­ing up from Philadel­phia what was your ini­tial impres­sion of the scene in Boston?

Nan­cy: It was much safer than Philly, which was insane. When I wrote my book [I’m Not Hold­ing Your Coat] I was like, ​‘My God, how did I sur­vive?’ They had a huge scene – it was a col­lege town. I was scared to move because I did­n’t know any­body but Al, but the peo­ple embraced me, the women embraced me. They’re still my dear­est friends.

Phil’s oth­er­world­ly shots from Gallery East and Media Work­shop dri­ve home how impor­tant spaces are to scenes, par­tic­u­lar­ly when SSD would only play all-ages shows, so were shut out of the clubs.

Nan­cy: Al was real­ly into find­ing the art spaces. That nev­er hap­pened in Philly, we nev­er had that option. He start­ed look­ing at these spaces because there were a lot of punk-art bands play­ing there. That music did­n’t speak to him, but he realised the spaces were going to be essen­tial. When hard­core start­ed expand­ing, things hap­pened at the Chan­nel, which has a rich mafia his­to­ry. They did all ages shows. Al was uncom­pro­mis­ing on the fact that the shows had to be all ages and not super expen­sive, and they paid the bands rea­son­able mon­ey. You can see what I got Minor Threat – I have that con­tract framed on my wall. The band did­n’t care about the mon­ey, but they’re gonna come up here from DC, they’re gonna pack that house, and I’m get­ting them what they deserve.

Straight edge can be a prick­ly sub­ject. Jaime talks in the book about the rep the Boston Crew had for being con­fronta­tion­al, or ​‘hard­core straight edge,’ whether that label was fair or not. But, Al, I feel like you’ve often want­ed to take away a lot of the per­ceived lec­tur­ing around it.

Al: I pur­pose­ly tried to be ambigu­ous in my mes­sag­ing over the years. I did­n’t want to give the answers out to the test, you know? I made a deci­sion, when I start­ed to see my mor­tal­i­ty enter the pic­ture, that I should answer some of the ques­tions. So that was my mis­sion. It is often mis­un­der­stood. The mes­sage of straight edge hit me at the same time that I met Ian [MacK­aye] but I was already at a point in my life where that [drink and drugs] was not appeal­ing to me. It was­n’t like I mag­i­cal­ly got hit with a straight edge thing. When I saw these guys, these young kids, exud­ing strength and being proud that they weren’t fucked up, that left an indeli­ble mark on me, more so than the name of the Minor Threat song. I’ll give DC cred­it, I’m sure they had more straight edge peo­ple than any oth­er scene, and I’m not try­ing to throw a zinger at Ian or any­thing, but I believe there was a lot of mythol­o­gy. It does­n’t make a dif­fer­ence. The impor­tant thing I was try­ing to get across was to estab­lish that there’s a choice.

A lot has been made about trib­al­ism in hard­core – not with­out good rea­son – but it’s cool to read here that SSD were down to emu­late what was going on in DC when it came to cre­at­ing a scene. Was there a lev­el of cama­raderie in place that’s been air­brushed out of his­to­ry a bit? 

Nan­cy: In the ear­ly ​’80s, SSD was so well received in New York. You talk to Vin­nie Stig­ma or Roger Miret from Agnos­tic Front. Vin­nie says Al’s his favourite gui­tarist. Roger loves Springa and says that The Kids Will Have Their Say is one of his favourite records. There was a lit­tle ten­sion at that Rock Hotel show [DYS and SSD, both Boston bands, play­ing in New York in 1984], but if no one got 74 stitch­es, or hit with a lead pipe, or the cops did­n’t sic dogs on you, I con­sid­ered the night a huge success. 

Al and SSD were super tight with Minor Threat. They stayed at Al’s house and I booked shows for them. When Fugazi came up here, they stayed at our house. We’re still, to this day, very, very close with Ian, and the same with some of the New York peo­ple. On the SSD Insta­gram, you can see a pic­ture of Harley [Flana­gan, Cro-Mags] with Jaime. I was like, ​‘Wow, I bet nobody thought this would ever hap­pen.’ They need­ed a place to prac­tise and Jaime had the space. They made it hap­pen. A lot of that stuff was kid shit. It’s the Red Sox ver­sus the Yankees.

How Much Art Can You Take? is avail­able to order now.

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