Music History, Part 4: The Early Boise Years: 1983 to 1984

Originally posted on My Space, March 23rd, 2007

Attention new readers. Please read previous blogs before reading this one, or at least see the disclaimer on any one of them. Also, a thank you shout out to my old friend Ken Cole for helping my old brain remember bands and events!

Update to earlier blog: In doing some research (yes, I am actually doing that now!) I saw that Dissident Militia's and Septic Death's first show was actually before the Moose Lodge show, at Brass Lamp, a pizza parlor (which will be part of later blogs). I found it here: http://www.septicdeath.com/1stshow.html . The 'Cathe' mentioned here was actually a friend of mine (and an unrequited crush) when I was a sophomore in high school, who sang in a new wave band that played mostly covers called The B-Sides. The B-Sides will also appear later in the blog. Onward!

Soon Pushead started putting on some great gigs in Boise, and as I mentioned before, they were headlined by the best bands in hardcore punk at the time. The first of these shows were held in an awesome hall, The American Legion Hall, located right across the street from the Boise State University campus, a boxy, open building with a large stage (complete with the American Legion 'code of arms' and creed on the wall behind it).

The first of these shows were packed, 175-200 people each time, by folks from all walks of life. Besides the usual punk crowd, there were curious cowboys, bikers, college kids…You name it. All coming to gawk and see what the hell this was all about.They were fun shows to play. Tons of kids in the 'slam pit', everyone singing along. Septic Death was fun to watch, too.

While seeing the out of town bands, the 'big city' punks, we were taking mental notes on what they wore, how they acted. And of course, we took notes on the music. In previous blogs I listed many of the bands that played at the American Legion hall, most of whom Dissident Militia played with. Here is a list of all I can think of/dig up (in no particular order):

7 Seconds, The F.U.s, Youth Brigade, The Freeze, Tales of Terror, The Faction. Some lesser known bands were the Bad Yodelers and The Potato Heads from Salt Lake City, UT, a city whose scene would become important in our lives down the road, and we would come to befriend The Potato Heads as well.

Some photos of the slam pit at the 7 Seconds show ended up on the inserts in some of their 7 inch records, one of which had this scary looking kid buried in the crowd with a brutal grimace on his face. It was me! I had no idea I made that face, a face that would come back years later when I started playing drums.

The author (center) at a 7 Seconds show, American Legion Hall, Boise, ID, 1983 - Photo by Hillary Smith

The F.U. s show was also great, I remember. They did a cover of 'Takin Care of Business' and had a guest from the audience hold the cow bell for the drummer (Ken Cole…was that you? I forget…). As well, Pat was back from school, and he guest sang with Dissident Militia on a cover song, 'Latch Key Kids' by Bad Religion. Pat being on stage was a hint of things to come for us.

The FU's at the American Legion Hall, 1983

FU's Flyer - Artwork/flyer by Pushead

Dissident Militia (from left, Erik, Scott, Wayne and Brad) at the American Legion Hall, Boise, ID, 1983

Youth Brigade was one of the best shows, they really got the kids singing along. They stayed at Scott and Pat's father's place, where there was a player piano there and we all sang along then, too, to 'Paper Moon'. Some 'in house skanking' resulted in Pat falling and breaking his wrist somehow. He had a cast on the rest of that summer and he looked funny when he street skated.

Flyer for the Youth Brigade show, which was the best of all the American Legion Hall shows, hands down - Artwork/flyer by Pushead

Because of the shows, many kids attending were inspired to form bands of their own, and began playing some of these shows as openers. Some of these bands were; Blind Acceptance, Shades of Gray (from Twin Falls, ID), Cri Du Chat…

There were also many out of town bands that were supposed to play Boise but didn't, for one reason or another, usually it was 'the van broke down' but it was pretty obvious much of the time bands were just going straight to Salt Lake City, bypassing Boise at the last minute. Many times, we made it work anyway, often Septic Death and Dissident Militia came to the rescue, in addition some other local bands.

Some of the bands that were scheduled to play Boise but did not were; The Misfits (yes, how cool would that have been?) Poison Idea (though they did play Boise a couple times years later, and befriended us) Code of Honor, Suicidal Tendencies (oh, how bummed we were about this one! We loved them.)

Flyers from the shows that never happened (or rather, happened as they were billed, the openers often still played) - Artwork/flyers by Pushead (except Suicidal Tendencies flyer, artwork/flyer by Erik Payne)

Once, around this time, Dissident Militia went on our first road trip with Septic Death to Portland, OR. Details are fuzzy, but according to some things I have read, we were not originally on the bill for the show and that Pushead managed to get us on it last minute. This seems confirmed by the fact that none of the flyers from the show list Dissident Militia.

We all rode out together in the same van, owned and driven by a friend of Septic Death's, we'll call him Nick. Nick was a bit neurotic, to say the least. Right off the bat, he was very stressed about taking us all on the 5+ hour drive to Portland. The thing I remember most about the drive was that Scott had to take a piss and asked Nick to stop, and Nick refused. So Scott pissed into an empty bottle. He went to open the sliding side door so he could dump out the piss and Nick lost it. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING???CLOSE THE DOOR!!!" So as a result, Scott had to hold his piss, literally, all the way to Portland, and suffer our jeering.

The bill for the Portland show was pretty impressive. Besides Septic Death, The Rejectors, Civil Defense, Final Warning and Poison Idea were playing. Poison Idea (from Portland) was legendary, not just in the Northwest and West, but worldwide. They were the real deal. Hard and fast and tough. They lived the lifestyle, were the anti-poser. The guitarist was massively overweight and went by the handle 'Tom Pig'. The singer, Jerry, was notoriously tough, also of substantial girth. Their music was in your face, undeniably punk.

Portland is a tough little river town [more correctly, it was at that time, not so much now, in the era of 'Portlandia'] initially a logger town, with a long standing tradition of heavy drinking, even more so than the usual small town. Though it is not a major metropolitan city, it feels like one, more so even than Seattle, which is much larger. Portland has grit to it, and even the urban design of the buildings is more along the lines of an east coast city than other Northwestern cities. All of this is probably why so many east coasters settle there when they escape the crowded east.

Also, because of this grittiness and urban feel, the punk 
scene there thrived, as it tends to naturally in this kind of environment. Adding to this, the economy wasn't very strong, and there was considerable poverty, especially during Reagan's 80's. (Because of this and war mongering, incidentally, Reagan became our natural evil enemy, as punk rockers).

After we arrived in town, we stopped to touch base with Poison Idea, who were putting on the show that night. This was during the period where we had realized we didn't want to be straightedge, but we stayed under the radar of Pushead and his crew. For some reason we thought Poison Idea were straightedge too, I guess because Pushead was friends with them. In retrospect, this notion is completely laughable. Anyone familiar with the band is getting a kick out of our mistake, I am sure. And when we stopped to touch base with them, it was Dissident Militia who went to their door, while the rest of the crew took off to go to the record store and do some errands.

We knocked on the door and no one answered for awhile. Then we heard loud, heavy footsteps on the stairs and saw Tom Pig tromping down them with a king size bedspread around his shoulders, which wasn't even close to touching the ground, so massive was he. He was extremely hung over, which we were relieved to see. Once he let us in, we saw the aftermath of a night with Poison Idea in the living room; empty beer cans and bottles, booze bottles, piled everywhere. A massive bong on the coffee table. Our kind of guys.

So here we were, small town boys in the big city, seeing real punk rockers for the first time. We were intimidated a bit, mostly I was, since I was the one singing, the one who had to project the attitude. When we were doing a sound check, there were two punk girls in the audience wearing full-on leather coats, skirts and torn T-shirts. One of them had on one of those old school biker captains hats and her arm was in a cast with punk stickers and graffiti all over it. She looked me up and down, whispered something to her companion, and they giggled and kissed. Then the girl with the cast looked at me and said "You'll do." I was terrified.

But the show went on. We played fairly well until one song that we fucked up in the beginning and stopped. Then we tried again, but Brad was horribly out of tune. We tried a few more times and gave up. We had already played most of our songs anyway. I remember that someone had told Pushead that he hadn't seen a band play that kind of blistering fast hardcore in a long time.

The show was at a hall called The Pine Street Theater, where many punk shows were held at the time (I think the building is still there and is a club now). When Poison Idea took the stage, we were floored. They were so fucking good, so loud and fast and furious. To this day I consider them one of the best live bands I have ever seen.

Portland, Oregon's infamous Kings of Punk, Poison Idea

After the show, I was standing in the front of the hall with Jerry, the singer of Poison Idea, when someone came up and told him that some windows at the hall had been broken. We followed the person out front, where there was a wall of several small windows. Here and there some of the windows were broken. Spots of blood could be seen on the sidewalk. Apparently, someone's girlfriend had broken up with them at the show, and he lashed out by smashing the windows.

Jerry was furious, and began to follow the trail of blood into the streets, speaking of how he was going to kick this person's ass for trashing a hall they had a good relationship with. I tagged along, as did a couple other people. We were like punk rock detectives, hot on the trail.

Ahead of us at one point, a cop car stopped at a stop sign. Jerry tried to flag him down and the cop took one look at us and sped off. "Fucker!!" Jerry yelled, then, "yeah that's the fuckin pigs for ya when you need em." We never found the culprit, but this was quite an adventure for a Boise Boy.

Building that was once the Pine Street Theater, Portland, OR, site of the first ever out of town show for Dissident Militia

Pat was clearly excited by the fact that his little brother was in a punk band, and he became more and more involved in helping us, designing flyers, helping load equipment. You could tell that he wanted to be more involved. Having him around all the time, to give us shit, show us street skating tricks, and of course, buy beer, changed the direction of what we were doing. Soon, Pat would become the engine behind everything we did.

Tune in next episode: Dissident Militia morphs into State of Confusion. Wayne picks up a bass and falls in love (with the bass). Pat muscles his way into the band and takes it to new heights.