Behind the Quiet: An Extended Interview with Mike Ferraro About the Life of Judge, Part 1

Photo by Ken Salerno

In the late 80s, Judge had a polarizing effect on the Hardcore scene. The combination of Mike "Judge" Ferraro’s hard-hitting lyrics railing against the use of drugs and booze with the covertly metallic riffs delivered by guitarist John Porcelly either left kids gasping for air in joy or running towards the nearest exit to sneak a puff on the hush. But it doesn’t matter what side of the fence you were on then; no one can deny the mark they left on the scene, even almost 25 years after their initial demise.

Nowhere is the proof of their impact more apparent then in the segments we’ve put up so far of There Will Be Quiet; The Story of Judge—the documentary Noisey assembled about the iconic NYHC band and the life and times of their revered front man.

To celebrate the utter greatness of the series, I present the uncut interview I conducted with Mike Judge for my book, NYHC 1980 – 1990. Due to the length of the interview, we will be running it in two parts. In this first part, Mike talks about his entry into the NYHC scene, the crazy nights he spent on the Lower East Side in the early 80s, and his introduction into Straight Edge.

Noisey: So when did you start going into the city from Montville, New Jersey?
Mike Judge: I remember we would get The Village Voice and take it home and see who was playing. We saw there was a matinee going on during a Saturday afternoon at CB’s. The first time I went to a CB’s matinee I saw Agnostic Front. This was back when John Watson was the singer. When I saw that show that was it. Every Saturday, I was there. I had to be a part of that scene. Once I went to my first matinee, I’d go into New York and go to the show no matter who was playing. If for whatever reason I didn’t dig who was playing, I would just hang outside or go down to St. Marks and hang.

When did you find out about A7?
It took a little bit before we decided to check out A7. Unless you were in New York and you saw a flyer pasted somewhere, you didn’t know about them. Sometimes the A7 shows would be a spur of the moment type of thing. Once we got down there and saw all these guys we would see at the CB’s shows were hanging out on Avenue A and Tompkins Square, we started going in just to hang out and it went from there.

Continued below.

Being from New Jersey, why did you latch onto the New York Hardcore bands rather than the New Jersey ones?
One of the first bands I ever saw was Adrenalin OD (pioneering NJHC band) but even that was an Irving Plaza gig. It was hard to see shows in New Jersey for us. You had to drive to them, you couldn’t take a bus to them. I guess we could have taken a bus to them, but then how do you get to the actual club? It was so much simpler for us to take a bus into New York. After going to CB’s three or four times and seeing the same group of people hanging out together, I wanted to be hanging out with these guys. Maybe I was just looking for something to replace my own family.

Were the New York people open to New Jersey guys coming in?
It wasn’t easy for us Jersey guys to be a part of it. There was definitely a clique going on there and they were definitely stand-offish. They would find out you were from Jersey and they weren’t exactly fucking thrilled. It wasn’t until I met guys from Queens that I felt tight with other people. Then I find out a lot of my favorite bands were coming from Queens. Then I find out that Cause For Alarm who are in the New York crew are from Jersey. That’s when things started coming together. I think after a while of standing up for ourselves at the gigs, those New York guys eventually thought we were alright.

Once Vinnie started talking to us, then Roger is talking to us and slowly we became a part of it. We were supporting it. We were going everywhere. We were going to squats to see shows. We weren’t afraid to go where the music was. We would road trip to Philly or Boston to support New York bands.

So who was the first NYHC band that did it for you?
The first New York band I really fell in love with was Kraut. This dude Paul Schraf had that first seven inch Kill for Cash and I really dug that. Then An Adjustment to Society comes out and it was fucking awesome; I loved it. This guy who was a freshman with me told me Kraut was playing a free show out in the park. We got there really early and I think it was some sort of pro-weed smoking festival or something because everyone was smoking weed out in public carrying signs and shit. We sat through some of the craziest, weirdest music I ever heard. We didn’t see any punk rock guys, so we were like ‘Is Kraut really going to play here?’ Right then, Kraut comes on stage out of nowhere and all these punks and skinheads come out of nowhere and start pitting up. Then I saw them at Irving Plaza at the ‘New York Thrash’ show. They were my first love as far as New York bands go. But then I went to CB’s for my first show and I saw Agnostic Front. Somehow, without even knowing, I knew that was the peoples’ band.

Once I started going to matinees, that’s when I started to see all the great New York bands like The Abused, Urban Waste, Reagan Youth, and Major Conflict. Those initial days of those first shows are the heart and soul to me of New York Hardcore. M.O.I (pre-Cro-Mags band) are still one of the most incredible bands I saw back then. We were good friends with Eric Cassanova, so he was turning us onto shit and he introduced us to Harley.

What did you think of the New York Thrash tape compilation when it came out?
We used to listen to that New York Thrash tape a lot, but we did always wonder why the tape came out. I guess it’s supposed to be New York’s Flex Your Head or This is Boston Not L.A. but it doesn’t have Agnostic Front or The Abused or Reagan Youth. Those bands are the heart and soul of New York to me, so I never knew why they weren’t on there.

What about Reagan Youth?
Before I ever saw Reagan Youth, I met Dave Insurgent. He was at all my first shows. He had all these different colored rubber bands in his hair to make dreadlocks and he had this crazy ass shiny shirt he’d always wear. On a sunny day, you could see him from a fucking mile. He always stood out.

We went into the city and it was me and Paul Shaff and this guy Howard. We went into the city to see the Bad Brains later that night at CB’s. We went in early because we wanted to go to the record stores. There was this record store called Free Being. That was my favorite record store because there was this lady that worked there that had black hair with a white streak in it. If you had any interest in a record, she’d find it for you. She was awesome. We’re in there and Dave Insurgence is in there. We split and right when we go out, there’s this little pizzeria. We sit in and Dave comes in and sits down with us. I remember this talk like it was yesterday. We were talking about the Bad Brains. In my little mind, I loved the Bad Brains, but I couldn’t get the reggae. To me, it killed the momentum. I’m feeling so much rage, and then this happens, and I don’t know what to do. I said that and he starts telling me how it all makes sense to him. It was some full-on Joe Strummer shit, man. After that, I was like, "That guy is Punk Rock." His philosophy on music and how to use it as a tool was a big thing to me.

He’s like, "I understand you’re full of rage, but you have to learn to hold it back." I listened to the Bad Brains in a whole different light that night. When I finally seen Reagan Youth, I thought they were fucking great. He was one of the best showman. He was intense.

In regards to the Bad Brains, do you think of them as a D.C. band or a New York band?
I’ve always seen them as a New York band. I didn’t know about their D.C. past until after seeing them. I saw them play at their rehearsal spot at 171A and I also saw them play a squat on Avenue C. No fucking out of town band sets up a gig in a squat, you know? They were meant to come and save New York. You would get a chill the morning you woke up knowing that tonight you were going to get to see the Bad Brains. After the Bad Brains, the only band that gave me that feeling, that chill, was the first time I saw the Cro-Mags live. They just had that intense energy.

What about The Mob?
We listened to that first Mob EP religiously. They had that weird beat that no other band had besides the Bad Brains. They were the standout band.

What was it like coming from some farm town in New Jersey to the Lower East Side in 1982?
I remember having to go into Tompkins Square Park and getting to a certain part and noticing that none of the lights worked. Billy Psych (infamous NYHC scenester) was sitting on a bench and he was like "Hey Jersey! White guys don’t go past this bench. You won’t come back out of the dark." We’d hang out mostly around the park. Across the street, a little ways down was the Pyramid, so there would be people hanging out there, especially when Raybeez started working the door at there. If we had nothing to do during the week, we’d drive in there on a Tuesday if we were bored and hang out and get egg creams and bullshit.

Who were some of the other people down there that were nice to the Jersey guys?
Vinnie Stigma was definitely one of the first guys who started treating us well. There was this guy Ira who was one of the first guys who was very cool to us. That whole Queens crew was cool, especially this guy Kenny Wagner, who is one of my first and best friends, still to this day. Once we became friends with the Queens crew, every fucking weekend was awesome because it was a big get together. Then we slowly got to know the Lower East Side guys and all the guys who were from the city like John Watson. It all came together after that.

But then, you find out that guys who were part of the New York crew that were stand-offish were actually Jersey guys. Then, all of a sudden, I’m going down to Nutley to hang out with a guy who I thought was from New York. I feel if everyone just got together and admitted they were from Jersey, it would have saved a whole lot of time and trouble.

A lot of people mention a Dead Kennedys show in Staten Island in the early days that ended up in a riot.
Dead Kennedys was playing Staten Island and I didn’t even know where Staten Island was. It would have been so much better for us if we just drove to Staten Island, because it’s closer to New Jersey. But since we were these knucklehead guys who wanted to be part of the New York crew, we decided we had to go to New York and take the ferry to Staten Island like everybody else. We got off the ferry and as soon as we started walking to where the club was, you could see people were gathering at the windows of all the bars and looking out. That’s when we knew we were making this scene. Shit started going bad at the show. Locals were coming out and picking fights and throwing bottles. It turned out cops were called and when cops are called, everybody usually scatters, but the thing was there was nowhere to scatter to. We all had to get to one place: the ferry to get back to New York. I remember running to the ferry and the bars were unloading chasing us. It was haywire.

So after Kraut, did Agnostic Front become the band for you in New York?
After seeing Agnostic Front at that CB’s matinee, they became a huge part of my life. At that same show, John Watson made this announcement from the stage they were heading to Philly to play and they were leaving at this time, so if anyone wanted to caravan with them, they could. My friend Steve Yu had his mom’s car, so we asked him if he wanted to do it and they were telling us it was going to be a couple hours ride, but we were pretty stoked for it. That was a huge day for me because Agnostic Front were the peoples band and we were caravanning down to support them. It was the Buff Hall show that with Minor Threat and SSD. Everybody was saying Agnostic Front is going to represent New York and SSD was going to represent Boston and Minor Threat’s going to represent D.C.

You bring up Boston and D.C. Was there any actual rivalry there like every says?
It was going on before I got there. The rivalry was already in place. Between New York and Boston, it was healthy. Boston thought they had the hard bands and New York thought their bands were fucking hard. I loved all the Boston bands though; that was the heaviest shit going. The Boston bands were a more straight laced type of guys. Very jock types. In the early 80s New York, we were a bunch of misguided kids. We were going to hell with ourselves. Thirteen- or 14-year-olds nodding out on park benches. Crazy shit. So, maybe they did kick our asses! I don’t know! Maybe we were too fucked up to know!

So where did the Straight Edge thing come into play with you?
I didn’t go Straight Edge because I heard it in a song. I went Straight Edge without knowing it because I got my ass kicked really badly at CB’s at a night time show that the UK Subs played. I was way fucking loaded. I remember when I came to and got my head together, I promised myself I wouldn’t get into a situation where I can’t defend myself. I decided I wanted to be the guy doing the rag dolling.

There were guys in New York with names like Willy No Edge. There wasn’t a lot of us who weren’t drinking and doing drugs. I was getting my balls busted for it. But then Kevin Crowley from The Abused had this jacket that had ‘Drug Free Youth’ on the back of it and then they had the song of the same name that was fucking awesome.

I remember talking to Kevin from The Abused about that song they had ‘Drug Free Youth’ and he told me "I wrote that song for myself." He said he wrote it to keep himself in check; it was like him screaming at himself. I had never thought of a song like that up until then. Then I ended up doing a lot of that myself in Judge. I don’t have the prettiest background. My family doesn’t have the greatest past. At an early age, I was going down the same road pretty quick myself. One of the first things I ever got in trouble for was bringing booze to a seventh grade dance. I got it in there and half way through the dance, I couldn’t fucking walk. They called my parents, but I never got in trouble for it because they couldn’t get my dad on the phone because he was home in the same state. My dad worked all day and drank all night until he bought a bar, then he was never around. I was definitely a fuck up and it was in my blood to self-destruct. The only way not to self-destruct was to yell about it to myself. So a lot of the things you hear in Judge where people thought I was being militant and telling people how to live; it was basically me trying to tell myself how to live. I was threatening myself so to speak.

Tony Rettman wrote a book on all this stuff. You should check it out. Follow him on Twitter.