INTERVIEW: LOUIE RIVERA (ANTIDOTE)

This interview with Antidote vocalist Louis Rivera was conducted on January 4th, 2014 for my book NYHC - New York Hardcore 1980 - 1990. 

How did you find out about the bands and people who were the precursors for NYHC?
Louie Rivera: I was working the door at a club named Tier 3, which was just around the corner from the Mudd Club at the time. Working there exposed me to not only the local music but bands that were coming in like the Specials. Bands that were moving and grooving before the whole Hardcore scene. There was that whole pogo thing going on before the Hardcore mosh pit thing had people coming in droves. 

One afternoon I was hanging out on the Lower East Side doing nothing. It was a Sunday afternoon or something like that. I ran into Harley just around the corner from his mothers’ house and asked what I was doing. I told him that I had no plans for the day. He was heading up to Central Park. In the summer back then, they would have the Rock Against Racism shows up there. He was going up to see a band from D.C. called the Bad Brains and that’s pretty much it. When I saw them that day, they gave me that total shock treatment vibe. I had never seen anything like that before. My life was changed from that point on. 

What do you remember about The Mad?
Back then, it was very rare that you saw a Stimulators show that The Mad wasn’t on the bill. They used to play a lot together. The Bad Brains were doing shows with The Mad, too. They would swap off shows between D.C. and New York. By then, the Bad Brains hadn’t run out of venues to play in D.C. This was before they were forced to leave D.C. with no other choice. They had nowhere to turn but New York. Dave Hahn (drummer for The Mad) had a lot to do with them coming to New York. They stayed with him when they came. He and Harley were the ones that introduced me to the Bad Brains. The day they played at Central Park after they played, we all went down to Nick Marden’s house. H.R. came down there with Dr. Know and we all hung out in Nick’s living room. 

How important was Nick Marden to the development of NYHC?
Nick Marden was just this cool fuckin’ kid that a lot of people knew. He was on the scene really deep. He was one of the kids that used to dress up a little bondage-like. He’d have straps on his legs and stuff like that. He used to actually wear a kilt too! He was a real unique individual. When I first saw Nick, I was like ‘Wow, that’s pretty punk rock!’ But he was a very approachable and gentle person. 

At that point, it was still very underground and word of mouth. You’d just pull out a pen and make up a flyer with some writing paper. We didn’t have money to think about going to Kinko’s. It was very family-oriented in the sense that when there was a show, everybody knew each other. There were maybe twenty or thirty people that were coming. 

What about The Mob and the people from Queens?
I used to meet little Ralphie Boy and Jose at their work. It was this little book depository place up on 18th Street in Chelsea. I’d meet them and get on the 7 train and go all the fuck out the way to Queens and watch them dudes rehearse every night. They were jamming in Ralph’s garage in the back of his mother’s house. The beautiful thing about it was at the end of practice, Ralph would invite us into the house and we’d go upstairs and have an herb session. After the herb session, we’d be down in the kitchen and Ralphie would be feeding us. Before we went out the door, before we trekked it back to fuckin’ Manhattan, he’d make sure we had a belly full of food. Those dudes were doing their thing pretty deep for years. That garage got lit up every night. 

Kenny Hearns wound up being the singer for Urban Waste. He and his friends lived right around the corner, so they would come to hang out as well. We just had fun in that garage. They’d be practicing and we’d be bouncing off the walls. 

What about the Ratcage store?
Ratcage is now out of the basement of 171 A where it started out at. He’s got his shop on 9th Street already. Dave Parsons; God bless him. He was never the type of dude who wouldn’t let you hang out if you weren’t buying something. If you had no place to go and it was cold out, he’d make some hot cocoa and invite you inside. 

Dave expanded his thing and opened up the 2+2 space. I was working the door there. The first time I saw Antidote, they were playing there as a three-piece. It was an extension of A7. He had ten or twenty bands at night for three or five bucks. What I loved about that place was how raw it was. You had to be careful, man. You had an elevator shaft right in the middle of the floor. There was an element of danger in the building! 

What about the band Crucial Truth?
The Bad Brains brought Crucial Truth up to New York. They were originally from Florida. They loaded them in the van and the Crucial Truth guys were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s go’. They wound up in New York and never left either. 

How did you become the singer for Antidote?
Antidote had a singer before me named Jeff White. I knew him; he was this little graffiti kid. He was a really cool kid. I had already known Nunzio from him just being on the scene. I was hanging out in front of Ratcage one afternoon and saw Nunzio and Bliss coming down the street. They had just turned off of 2nd Avenue coming towards the shop. They came towards me and we started smoking a spliff. Next thing you know, they’re saying ‘Things aren’t working out with Jeff, do you think you’d want to come to rehearse with us?’ 

A week or so prior to that, they did a show with Jeff singing. Arthur was working on ‘Real Deal’ and wanted to do ‘Real Deal’ that night and Jeff didn’t want to sing the song. I was backstage with them smoking weed and Arthur had the lyric sheet on him and said ‘Louie, just go up there and sing’. I went up and did the song with them. After three or four months of me being in the unit, we were in High Five Studios recording the EP. 

When we went in for the first time to record Thous Shalt Not Kill, we were very unsatisfied with the results. Afterward, we’re hanging out in front of Ratcage Records bumming hard. ‘What are we going to do, man? This sucks! This sounds like shit!’ Just then, we lift our heads up and look down the street, who do we see but this halo of light Jerry Williams coming down the street with his gallon of water in his hands and his licorice root in his mouth. He had just come back from a tour with MDC as a soundman. Bliss didn’t hesitate. He said, ‘Fuck it, I’m calling the studio right now. I’m booking another twelve hours’. It went from something that was not going to work out to something that was. 

I remember when we were mastering it, the engineer was in there saying, ‘If we go another notch louder on the volume, you’re going to have problems with these little kids with cheap styluses’. The needle would just slide across because it wouldn’t be able to handle the volume. So we were like ‘Just tweak it to the point that little kid with the cheap stylus won’t be bumming’. The only thing we brought back in with us from that first session was the one-inch reel we recorded on. We went right over that shit! 

What do you remember about Agnostic Front coming on the scene?
I remember Vinnie as a long-haired kid walking around with a guitar in his hand. He told me how Agnostic Front booked their first show at A7 and he’d be honored for me to be there to see it. I walked in there that night and it was Diego, John Watson, Raybeez, and Vinnie. They could not go through one song without messing it up. It was hilarious. John Watson was moshing with the garbage man gloves and everything. Diego was always the kid who was moshing it up the hardest in the pit. You couldn’t miss him with that bright, red carrot top head of his. 

How did Krishna consciousness become a part of NYHC?
Johnny Joseph used to hang out with this kid Tomas. Tomas was a beautiful kid. He just had a beautiful spirit. He was like a ray of light when you saw him. He just had a really nice aura to him. Never had anything negative to say about anything. He’d go up and hug a tree. If he could stop the death of a mosquito he would, you know what I mean? So it came from him and Johnny Joseph. They planted that seed. 

There was a little friction between the Rastafarian belief and the Hindu philosophy. There was a little conflict once on 9th Street and 1st Avenue. The Bad Brains were getting ready to go on tour. John was going around telling people ‘I’m going out on tour with the Brains. I’m going as their roadie’, but they still hadn’t told him they weren’t taking him. They were taking Kindu and Alvin. There was a verbal thing right on the street. We were going towards 1st Avenue and they were going down to Avenue A. John sees them and says ‘Hey man, how come you never told me anything about me not going on the tour?’ The rastas kept yelling ‘Bloodclot!’ Shortly after that, John put together a band called Bloodclot. That was a pretty good band. He had Jerry on guitar, he had Alvin on drums, and a decent bass player. 

John used to have the books in the 171 A Studio and stuff like that. John used to go to the temple on Sundays. One Sunday, John said ‘C’mon, come with me to Brooklyn’. The next thing I know, I’m in the temple eating free food and stuff like that. Getting exposed and getting my feet wet. 

Within six months, less than a year, we put together the show in Tompkins Square Park called the Rock Against Maya show. We gave out free food and it was a pretty good line-up. I don’t think we even got permission. You didn’t have to go down to city hall and get a permit. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted in that park. The power was still on. 

I remember an article in an early issue of Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll where they wrote about the infiltration of Krishna consciousness into the NYHC scene and named Antidote as one of the bands bringing it in. Why do you think people on the NYHC scene were more open to something like Krishna consciousness rather than the west coast?
New York has people from all walks of life and you’re just going to have people who are more accepting. I would think people into punk would be into an alternative frame of thought like that. The people who weren’t accepting of it just weren’t doing the research. There’s always a fear of the unknown. 

But there were legitimate reasons for those people having questions. There was some stuff that was going on in temples in West Virginia at the time that was not going to do the movement any good. But sometimes you gotta take the rug and give it a good shaking out, you know? 

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