A Certain Long-Haired Tendency of New York Hardcore - An Interview with Lewis Dimmick

Part of the allure of hardcore when it was a little baby was the lack of information that existed about it. Without seeing Facebook or Instagram pictures of what your favorite band members were eating, you had to make it all up. I didn't really want to know where Roger Miret lived—the imaginary squat my brain made up (littered with broken bottles, rabid pit bulls, and raw sewage) was way cooler than whatever apartment he probably sublet, and just added to the folklore.

If you didn't know what a record sounded like, your best shot at figuring out what you were getting yourself into was to study the layout. A singer with shaved head, an X'ed up bass player, and a guitarist wearing some questionable Spot-Bilts (but still looking cool) could do enough to establish a mythology. Things generally took a turn when you saw the drummer in a blown-out black-and-white photograph with a ponytail. Wait… they have a longhair in the band? Better to play it safe and buy that seven-inch with the cartoon mosh phantom on it or something.

Back in the mid-80s, Lewis Dimmick was an unapologetic longhair who attended CBGB matinees regularly and played in the band Our Gang who contributed tracks to Freddy Alva and Chaka Malik's (Later of Burn and Orange 9mm) cassette compilation the New Breed"

Now he's got a new book out called This Music, which chronicles the heady days of 80s punk and hardcore in New York. I talked to Lewis about it, and we also touched upon hardcore, New York Hardcore, and why New York Hardcore had such a thing for rats.

Noisey: There are a lot of reflections on being a "longhair" in This Music. Why was being into hardcore and having long hair a statement in the 80s?
Lewis Dimmick: It wasn't cool to have long hair at that time. In 1986, I didn't fit in with the skinheads. In 1987 and 1988, I didn't fit in with the youth crew. Long hair was not one of the accepted looks in the scene. It could mean only one thing: you were a metalhead. But so many metalheads converted to hardcore. Most of them shaved their heads to fit in and probably burned all the pictures they had of themselves with long hair just in case any of their skinhead friends came over for dinner.

Being a metalhead was a past history you were supposed to bury when you got into hardcore. It was an embarrassment. You were into hardcore now. You were no longer a moron. So having long hair was a statement in the sense that you were disregarding the rules of the game.

I never got shit for having long hair. When I first started going to CBGB in 1986 the crowds were still fairly sparse. Of course I had the good sense, being a new person in a new environment, to be respectful, and I'm a quiet person by nature. I'm sure if I entered the scene as a loudmouth I would have been quickly shut up.

Kirk Hammett famously got punched on stage with Nuclear Assault at CBGB, and Anthrax appropriated the NYHC logo. Did you see a lot of tension between punk and metal back then?
With the Kirk Hammett story, I didn't see that firsthand so I can't say exactly what happened. All I know is that Kirk joined the Crumbsuckers on stage at CBGB and while he was doing a lead, Tommy Carroll—from Straight Ahead and NYC Mayhem—started saying stuff into the microphone like "Get this rock star off the stage." According to an interview with Kirk, he hit Tommy in the neck with his guitar and then the two started a spitting match. Tommy got kicked out. I think what might have set him off is that Kirk had bodyguards with him and they were telling people where to stand and where not to stand. Who the hell knows why he did it.

It wasn't any serious kind of tension. No one from the NYHC scene considered Anthrax a NYHC band, and Anthrax seemed like a bunch of jackasses for trying to copyright the NYHC logo--if in fact they ever did that. It was the idea that they were trying to cop the cool of another genre. That made them seem lame. I saw some great metal bands play hardcore matinees at CBGB, like Nuclear Assault and Whiplash, and the place went nuts for them. They dressed in street clothes and they were down to earth. I don't think the crowd would have gone for any band that dressed or acted like rock stars.

Did you ever see something happen on the Lower East Side back then that surprised you by not living up the rough and tough stereotype that's romanticized now?
I remember hanging out in Some Records and being surprised to see a Warzone demo for sale on the counter—the As One demo. The Lower East Side Crew EP was already out, so I couldn't understand why they were selling a new demo suddenly. Raybeez happened to be sitting right there so I asked him about it. I think he said that they just needed a little extra money. He seemed really shy about it, a little embarrassed.

If you've ever seen the cover, it definitely looks thrown together VERY quickly. It's got a drawing of a fist with NYHC written on the knuckles. It's one of the worst drawings you'll ever see. But I remember that moment. Ray was the complete opposite of being shy or embarrassed when he was on stage, so it stands out.

There's a rat on the cover of your book, there's always rats depicted in NYHC flyer/sleeve art. Hell, there was a Rat Cage records. Is the rat the official mascot of 80s NYHC?
One influence was the Rat Music For Rat People compilations. I was really young when I heard the first volume. I was mostly into stuff like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and suddenly I was hearing Bad Brains and Crucifix. It was pretty mind-blowing. I thought the title of the compilation was great and some of the other volumes had rats on the cover, but not the first volume. Then, in a piece in the book about Victim In Pain, I compared the really fast, distortion-fuzzed bass line from the title track to a pack of rats running through the streets. Rats are just cool!

When I was going to NYU we would sometimes (all the time?) go out drinking after class. Sometimes we'd be sitting in Washington Square Park at 3 AM. It was like a circus of rats, hundreds of huge rats streaming through the park. Same thing with the Wall Street area. When it gets really late and things quiet down, they take over. I don't think rats are the official mascot of 80s hardcore though. That would have to be either a cartoon of a skinhead or of a guy wearing athletic gear and jumping in the air with his guitar. And most likely the drawing would be pretty crappy.

You can purchase This Music here from Wardance Records, along with the vinyl reissue of the New Breed compilation.