RIP MIKE DOWN/LISTEN TO UNITY/MORE DEATH
I’m not going to pretend to have been great friends with San Diego’s Mike Down, vocalist for Amenity and guitarist in Forced Down who passed away on Friday, but his unsung impact on the 1990s American Underground runs deep.
I bought the first Forced Down seven-inch EP Mike self-released on his own Down Side imprint off of future Born Against and Greyhouse drummer Jon Hiltz in my senior year of high school. Both the look and the sound of it didn’t jive with the standards of Hardcore in 1990. Where were the graceful young men flying through the air with X’s on their hands and a song in their hearts? In place of those familiar images was a package made from textured cardstock tattooed with rubber stamps. Removing the packaging from the polybag, I opened up the fold-over cover to see they made a makeshift gatefold sleeve with the right-hand side stamped with an image of what looked like a decrepit landscape. Underneath, stamped in a stencil of swirled inks, it read “RISE”.
The music matched the package in being heartfelt, unique, and intimate; a weird mix of pre-major label Soundgarden and Dischord-inspired punk. Further releases on Down Side – such as the debut seven-inch ep by local band Heroin – shared a similarly meticulous, artful DIY aesthetic.
When Heroin vocalist Matt Anderson and bass player Ron Johnson launched their record label Gravity, they used Mike’s resourcefulness as inspiration and took the concept of handcrafted packaging even further by silkscreening paper bags, manilla envelopes and repurposing magazine pages for record covers. Pretty soon, this arts-n-crafts phenomenon ran like wildfire across America with every quartet in high-water Dickies looking to pilfer the style. If you’re looking for the source and/or culprit for that moment in time, blame Mike.
A year ago this month, I finally spoke to Mike after hovering over each other’s universes for 30-something years. I interviewed him for an article I wrote for The Wire about the San Diego punk scene and the conversation bled over into a series of phone calls with both of us waxing on about music and adult hardships. The last time we spoke, he called me excitedly to tell me about his new idea for a Hardcore Podcast. “It’ll be like Drink Champs, but for Hardcore!” When I asked what you’d do for the Straight Edge contestants to replace booze, the conversation drifted into some other kooky scheme of his.
After finally getting the opportunity to get friendly with Mike over the last year, I now feel like a total ass that I never told him how much I admired him as an unsung innovator for the American Underground. It’s even more painful that the only thing bouncing around in my dummy brain right now is a Unity lyric, “Don’t be afraid to care and show someone that you love”. As simple and cliche as the statement might be, it speaks the truth. We’re all getting older and times move quickly. Let those you care about know you’re there for them. No one is cool anymore, so there’s nothing left to lose.
Sticking with the uplifting theme of death, former Vile Cherub, Circus Lupus-er, and fellow Substacker Seth Lorinczi penned an obituary for Kendall “Lefty” Hall, a female, African-American skinhead whose violent tendencies and confounding racist views made her infamous on the Washington D.C punk scene of the 1980s. Seth’s apprehensive eulogizing for someone who continuously taunted his fellow Jewish punkers and regularly beat up gay men around Dupont Circle reads shockingly genuine, acknowledging her later hard times to humanize Hall for both himself and the readers.
A classic flyer containing Lefty’s artwork.
In the end, Lorinczi’s hesitant empathy stems from Lefty being a fellow freak in the nation’s capital; albeit one who was way more confused, lost, and self-destructive than him. I never had to endure Lefty’s physicality, so it’s not up to me to absolve her from sins against the D.C. scene. There are plenty of people from the punk shows of my youth frozen in time as intimidating, emotionally stunted goons who I know have similarly tragic endings. At some point in my life, I would have chalked it up to karmic retribution. But in the present day, stories such as Lefty’s just come off sad. I think about the burden she had to bear for the stupidity of her youth and it makes me sink further into feeling sympathetic.
What can I say? You lose a bladder and you start to feel for people, you know?