A handful of decades ago (decades? Has it been that long?), I was given a cassette copy of the Subhumans' first full length album, The Day The Country Died, by a friend and I've been a serious fan ever since. Over the years, I've collected originals of the four EPs that made up EP/LP, all of their full length studio albums and a couple other EPs here and there, which are hard to come by this side of the pond.
Since that first cassette was given to me, I've wanted to see them live and finally got to last night here in St Louis in a small room full of a wide mix of people ranging from teenagers in high school to people in their 60s (much like Dick Lucas is himself). It's something of a statement that the band was playing songs released over forty years ago to a crowd partially comprised of people who could literally be their grandchildren and the connection was still as real as I'm sure it was in the early 1980s.
The first time I was ever in a mosh pit, I was sixteen. And it's fitting that last night, standing next to me, was the same friend who was with me that night so long ago at another show in a another venue that doesn't even exist anymore. Much more than newcomers this time, we enjoyed the mayhem in front of us and, three spinal surgeries and many years of wear later, I knew the pit itself wasn't there for me anymore. I can still bench more than my body weight and I still think I'm in better condition than a lot of folks my age, but it was good to watch the youth enjoy the comradery I had when I was as spry. Its good to know the scene is still in good hands, if not tenuous ones. It still takes me back no matter how many times I see it.
That first night, I hadn’t told my buddy I’d never been in a pit before and I knew he hadn’t (he would have been a ripe 15 years old at the time), but I said out loud “I’m going in.”
I remember a sea of hands waiting for me and the newness of how welcoming it was, even in the mild violence of it.
I didn’t know how to dance, I didn’t know how to stand cool, and for the very first time in my young life, it didn’t fucking matter. To ANYONE. Not to me, not to any of them, not to the band.
I was instantly one of them, and have been since that moment. Without knowing me, they accepted me for what I was and it didn’t matter that I thought they were cooler than me. Suddenly, and at last, I belonged somewhere and felt a primal draw to the tribe, and it WAS primal. We were all circling, chanting...I could feel bodies near me, touching me…some male some female and even that didn’t matter anymore because there was nothing sexual in it, though it was deeply intimate.
It was a group of confused youth needing direction and a sense of belonging all coming together to collectively say “it’s okay…we can touch…we all need a human connection so let’s just give it to each other.” We became one, writhing organism together. As a lost soul, perhaps no more lost than anyone else at that age, I found solace in the tacit understanding that there were other people my age who felt they didn’t belong in the world and that the world really didn’t feel like home. “Home” had been a distant, abstract idea for me anyway my entire life, and the pop culture that had surrounded me was all based on the full package. To be famous and loved I was taught that you had to be talented and clever and good looking or you weren’t worth the price of a single.
But there, surrounded by that sea of hands, I felt for once that there was an entire army of souls saying “No.” Saying, “I’m NOT super talented. I DON'T look good. But god damn it, I am HUMAN and I MATTER. I have worth too.” That first time in the pit, I fell and someone I had never met picked me up. Someone else I’d never met fell, and I picked him up. And that’s how punk rock culture was defined for me in one night.
That is the embodiment of what the Subhumans was always about and in the increasingly turbulent landscape in which we find ourselves today, it was something of a serendipity to experience a little pocket of it last night. Thank you for all who keep that light ignited.
Eaglebauer's Record Collection
A handful of decades ago (decades? Has it been that long?), I was given a cassette copy of the Subhumans' first full length album, The Day The Country Died, by a friend and I've been a serious fan ever since. Over the years, I've collected originals of the four EPs that made up EP/LP, all of their full length studio albums and a couple other EPs here and there, which are hard to come by this side of the pond.
Since that first cassette was given to me, I've wanted to see them live and finally got to last night here in St Louis in a small room full of a wide mix of people ranging from teenagers in high school to people in their 60s (much like Dick Lucas is himself). It's something of a statement that the band was playing songs released over forty years ago to a crowd partially comprised of people who could literally be their grandchildren and the connection was still as real as I'm sure it was in the early 1980s.
The first time I was ever in a mosh pit, I was sixteen. And it's fitting that last night, standing next to me, was the same friend who was with me that night so long ago at another show in a another venue that doesn't even exist anymore. Much more than newcomers this time, we enjoyed the mayhem in front of us and, three spinal surgeries and many years of wear later, I knew the pit itself wasn't there for me anymore. I can still bench more than my body weight and I still think I'm in better condition than a lot of folks my age, but it was good to watch the youth enjoy the comradery I had when I was as spry. Its good to know the scene is still in good hands, if not tenuous ones. It still takes me back no matter how many times I see it.
That first night, I hadn’t told my buddy I’d never been in a pit before and I knew he hadn’t (he would have been a ripe 15 years old at the time), but I said out loud “I’m going in.”
I remember a sea of hands waiting for me and the newness of how welcoming it was, even in the mild violence of it.
I didn’t know how to dance, I didn’t know how to stand cool, and for the very first time in my young life, it didn’t fucking matter. To ANYONE. Not to me, not to any of them, not to the band.
I was instantly one of them, and have been since that moment. Without knowing me, they accepted me for what I was and it didn’t matter that I thought they were cooler than me. Suddenly, and at last, I belonged somewhere and felt a primal draw to the tribe, and it WAS primal. We were all circling, chanting...I could feel bodies near me, touching me…some male some female and even that didn’t matter anymore because there was nothing sexual in it, though it was deeply intimate.
It was a group of confused youth needing direction and a sense of belonging all coming together to collectively say “it’s okay…we can touch…we all need a human connection so let’s just give it to each other.” We became one, writhing organism together. As a lost soul, perhaps no more lost than anyone else at that age, I found solace in the tacit understanding that there were other people my age who felt they didn’t belong in the world and that the world really didn’t feel like home. “Home” had been a distant, abstract idea for me anyway my entire life, and the pop culture that had surrounded me was all based on the full package. To be famous and loved I was taught that you had to be talented and clever and good looking or you weren’t worth the price of a single.
But there, surrounded by that sea of hands, I felt for once that there was an entire army of souls saying “No.” Saying, “I’m NOT super talented. I DON'T look good. But god damn it, I am HUMAN and I MATTER. I have worth too.” That first time in the pit, I fell and someone I had never met picked me up. Someone else I’d never met fell, and I picked him up. And that’s how punk rock culture was defined for me in one night.
That is the embodiment of what the Subhumans was always about and in the increasingly turbulent landscape in which we find ourselves today, it was something of a serendipity to experience a little pocket of it last night. Thank you for all who keep that light ignited.
Final encore song "Religious Wars" below:
6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 1