BY GARRETT OWEN | You could hear the savage music only when entering the park, but you smelled the scene well beforehand. It is heavy stuff, with every note a mark of aired-out aggression. It sounded like a grudge.
There aren’t so much melodies to these songs as there are repetitive, crunching guitar riffs and driving, thundering drums, sometimes on beat, sometimes not. The microphone squealed, and screamed lyrics became indecipherable, angry feedback-words while a man named Spike Polite did battle with the PA system. But perhaps that is the point: to be heard and seen and not understood in the regular sense. That’s Puke Island for you.
Now in its 12th year of raucous, scummy life, the annual mini-music festival of hardcore punk music rocked Tompkins Square Park on Sunday. The set list included Dementa, Obscene Humanity, Silence Equals Death, Cortisol and veteran punks from the late ’80s, Iconicide.
The crowd was a mixed bag. Sure, there were your classic white, angry punks in leather outfits and torn black denim “battle jackets,” covered in patches and stains. Teens and young adults make up a lot of the crowd. But there are people of every age and background. For every caricature, there is someone unexpected: a middle-aged man who could pass for a suburban dad out for a day at Home Depot. Someone in bicycle-team attire with a thermos of kombucha. A much older woman with a sun hat, covered head to toe in bright floral designs.
That’s Jill. She’s the wife of one of the longtime Iconicide guitarists, Randy. The pair pose sweetly for a photo. She loves to support him, and he’s smitten with her. Jill records his set from the front of the crowd, making the sign of the horns and bouncing along to the beat.
The event’s organizer is Chris, a founder of Iconicide in 1988. (I could not get his last name. His Instagram page is named “Chris Iconicide,” while an interview from 2017 titles him “Chris the Antimessiah.”) It was created in response to a venue called ABC No Rio buying and acquiring the now-famous progenitor, Punk Island, from its two founders, “Slug” and “Sloth,” in 2008.
“They committee everything to death,” Chris says, but clarifies that he is not trying to “tear down” ABC No Rio. “What I’m trying to tear down is that they committee everything to death! Now, if you wanna play their ‘allegedly’ Punk Island, you gotta submit your lyrics months in advance, have them ideologically combed over to prove you’re part of the same cult!”
Dementa, a duo of guitar and drums, chugged and shrieked right along. Then Obscene Humanity, a five-piece outfit, got the crowd head-banging and thrashing, with the singer entering the fray armed with the mic stand and the bassist running circles around the moshing crowd.
Silence Equals Death unleashed the barely contained fury of the crowd. The New Jersey hardcore punk veterans whipped the crowd into a frenzy of moshing and slam-dancing and a literal circle of running, shoving punks of all ages and backgrounds. But that’s what people showed up for: the music and the dancing.
By this point, the air reeked of sweat and unwashed flesh, but also spray paint and hairspray. Attendees tagged the ground with personal designs and slogans, one saying, “My Mom Sucks… Now I’m High…” The hairspray canisters were made into miniature flamethrowers. The sweaty, unwashed crowd cheered as flames spewed above them. At one point, two people shoved Chris to the ground. They sprayed him with neon-green spray paint and stood over him, keeping him down on the ground. The punk stalwart took it in stride, even smiling on hands and knees as he finally, gingerly, got to his feet.
Cortisol, more metal than punk, took the crowd through a wailing, churning set, getting every last ounce of anger and energy out of the crowd. By the time Iconicide went on, the audience was thinned out and tired. There was little justice for the organizer. “The Antimessiah” himself led the band through a blistering, furiously angry set, wearing a shirt that read,” I HAVE A GUN AND AM SCHIZOPHRENIC.”
Christopher from Staten Island goes to a lot of hardcore shows. He has been coming to Puke Island for 10 years. This year’s installment didn’t disappoint.
“The fact that everyone was dancing,” he said, “was, like, the perfect catalyst.”
Christopher believes the scene is safe, without question.
“If someone falls down in the pit, everyone knows to pick them up,” he said. “If someone’s fighting, I feel like it’s never a big deal. They’re just trying to get their aggression out somehow. We’re all chimpanzees.”
the incident at this show was pre planned and deliberately instigated by another area music producer who also hosts shows at TSP and who told me personally via telephone “maybe some of the kids or people who support me instead of Iconocide will idk – vandalize some stuff or toss firecrackers” – I told that person not to involve or report anything to me that might be illegal in case i was ever directly questioned by the cops or put in a position where I might have to divulge the information. the park is OUR PARK all the roots punks and the publics – not only the maga ones, not only certain producers. — Days after that phone call with that producer – I learned that yes people did do graffiti and throw fireworks to try to start problems at Iconocide’s show and cause him to lose his $1000 bond deposit with, and possibly be banned from doing more shows at TSP by the NYC Parks dept. I have the phone logs and texts between me and that saboteur/producer to prove that this is what did occur. It was pre meditated. Only nyc PARKS can “ban” you from doing shows at TSP and they need a reason and you have due process. Another producer has zero right or authority to ban anyone. Its a public gathering space and we ALL have a first amendment right to peaceable assembly not just one producer and his cronies. Recordings on cameras in and near the park etc show that no one attacked any homeless people nor did anyone attack anyone for being LGBT — these people were doing stuff to sabotage the show on someone else’s directives. Chris Iconocide did not know he was being set up and went to ask these people to stop and when he did so – they attacked him not vice versa. Spray paint to the face and eyes to blind him first then try to beat him up – he defended himself – others went in to try to break it up and these people who were deliberately told to stir stuff up hit them too – when someone comes deliberately to start problems and create hazards for innocent people attending shows (like little kids who can get hurt with those firecraackeers near the pit) and you go to ask them to stop and they go to blind or hit you – a normal person will self-defend. the same people trying to twist it and claim that Chris Iconocide and the sound guys on his show went over and beat up homeless people or trans people unprovoked and only because they are lgbt and houseless are the same ones who set up the altercation on purpose to sabotage the show. For scolding them directly they then smeared my name and tried to also sabotage my show in WSP last August and they have continued to do so with every show and to anyone who will stupidly listen to their lies ever since I called them out on it and told them to grow up and stop behaving like 13 year olds scrapping in the moshpit – we are grown- the park is all of ours and the system is screwing with free speech, free assembly and is coopting our scene and killing our artists and activists – erasing punk from history – wiping it off the books and the map – now is the time to unify and have more shows and various voices of roots punk heard, instead of trying to have a monopoly and claim ‘ownership’ over a scene and a park that is about working as a collective and unified front agains the status quo’s b.s. – that made me an enemy and caused my name to be smeared wrongfully too — and frankly IDGAFF. I will keep doing the work I have been called to do – but let this be a public support – not so much of chris iconocide but of No MAGA MONOPOLY on the shows at our damned park. OUR means everyone not only certain cliques. I do not know Iconocide never worked with him, no opinion either way on what type of person he is etc. But I can say that what he is saying to people – that he did not roll up and pummel homeless people at the park just to be an a**h0le – that is the truth.
and that other producer who orchestrated that situation knows it is which is why he has to talk smack and try to blacklist people even a year later.
And regarding assaulting a homeless person? Never happened. And the reporter was there the whole time.
The fireworks thrown toward the stage area came first, and the flames, and vandalizing the park. The intent was a setup to film for social media, or private gloating. Apparently this has been done before. My friends with mental issues happen to like that shirt.
That shirt is offensive. Mental illness is not a joke, and guns are not a joke. We have recently seen the results of mental illness and weapons when services fail to protect both those with mental health needs and the community around them. What is the message they are trying to project?
Your writer left out a few details. From what I saw, there were several incidents. The one incident your writer mentions fails to state the cause, as if it just happened, all by itself, for no good reason.
Earlier, that guy Chris “Iconicide” pushed and kicked and slapped a homeless person. Then he pushed his body against a trans woman, bodily threatening her. That person’s friends came to her defense and pushed him to the ground where he was worked over by a few people for both incidents.
Later, when his “band” Iconicide was playing, they were met with anger from that person and her friends. Iconicide’s guitar person ran at them with his guitar as a weapon until he was tripped and he fell.
All of the provocation and “instigation” came from that Chris Iconicide. I have never seen anything like this happen at any of the other concerts I have seen in the park.
It’s not “grunge,” it’s the east coast ’90s answer to it called scum rock.
nyc hometown bands like the luna chicks or blood sister are examples.
DONT CALL IT GRUNGE!
Violence was instigated by outside elements unrelated to the event itself who have rendered themselves powerless within their own lives, and are intimidated by anything creative. Their mission is to delude people like you into believing the music, the event, and the scene behind it are inherently violent = DON’T fall for it.
Very well-written piece on the glorification of grunge, but scene seems basically repulsive, veering toward violence, imho, and will probably get me to a Bach cantata after I clean my room.
Me too!