Straight Edge Hardcore 1988
Many years ago I had a vision which inspired the formation of a musical group comprised of like-minded high school friends. The band was really a further incarnation of explorations within my own consciousness as revealed through the thrashing din of hardcore punk rock. There was a significant variance, however, which incorporated the realm of spirituality and furthermore, religion into the mix. This hybrid of religio-political music may not have been pioneered by my efforts but certainly in the circles I found myself within, the phenomena was neoteric. After fronting a number of straight-edge bands with particularly hard-lined stances, I backed away from the microphone to reconnect with my lifelong passion, the guitar. With a newfound immersion in the eastern philosophy of the Vedas, a mission to liberate the oppressed animalia kingdom and the ever youthful and inquisitive zeal of my best friend Jay, Fed Up! was born.While in its infancy, I found myself at the creative helm, navigating the bands course deeper and deeper into uncharted seas. Fed Up! was effectively the first Hare Krsna hardcore band to date. Later to be followed by the more notorious 108 and Shelter. After a few shows and the recording of our demo, however, Bhakta Jay, lead singer, was on fire with inspiration and renovated the direction of the lyrics. I remember writing those first songs and finding such discontent in the world as I experienced it and needing so urgently a vehicle to carry that disdain onward to some resolve. Pinpointing the problems was easy. The real challenge and quest was the actualization of solutions. This was where Jay ignited with brilliance. It was during this period when we recorded the tracks which were to be pressed on a 7 with the enigmatic One World Records.Needless to say that pressing never manifested and the tracks were essentially relegated to another demo. I was asked to play bass for Four Walls Falling and went on to record a 7 and tour the east coast with these old Richmond friends. Fed Up! was soon faced with a crossroads as our musical and philosophical interests were dramatically changing and an exodus from the youth crew movement was impending. By September 1990, I was married with an infant son and another child on the way. Hardcore was now a well devoured chapter to be shelved for many years to come. I was a father and that became my life.What I have gained from those days, all those years ago, is an unflinching admiration for the spirit of youth, the familial bond we all knew so well, the genius and illumination of the wisdom of the Vedas and the invaluable opportunity to connect as a musician in a uniquely unbridled manner with the crowd as co-participator. I am an integrally richer, more compassionate man for my involvement with the hardcore scene, moreover, the Hare Krsna hardcore movement.When I was approached by Tru, of Malfunction Records, for consent to press the unreleased Solidarity 7 a long untapped adrenaline began to circulate within. I had considered for years finding someone to put the record out but I just never followed through with the whims. My two sons are now as old as I was when I started my first punk band in 1985 and I got a bit nostalgic at the thought of them seeing their old man in a different light with this release. I can only hope that my kids will have the blessing and good fortune of becoming a part of a community which instilled such a sense of purpose at such a pivotal age as the hardcore scene did for me.Our world is faced with a host of renewed evils and myriad challenges which we could not have imagined in 1988 with the newly illuminated threat of global terrorism, multinational corporate scandals, frankenfoods, staggering epidemics of A.I.D.S. and famine not to mention the ever present stigma of civil warfare. To voice my concern for our ailing humanity, I have turned from lyrics to journalism to photography to research to world travel on a perpetual quest for clarity, for transparency, for truth.As I write this I am seated at a small table by a window which overlooks Shahr-i-Naw, a once resplendent park in the heart of Kabul, Afghanistan. What one will now survey in this overgrown, trash-infested crater is the ghostly image of women in blue burqas begging for money to feed their children and displaced people seeking solitude under filthy woolen blankets along with a gaggle of tattered street kids hawking switchblades and bootlegged travel guides to feed their war-torn families. The so-called humanitarian liberation effort of the United States military through its nightmarish strafing missions has further made a desert of this land for most and an oasis for the few NGOs and entrepreneurs who already had. I have been in the country for over two weeks and my heart is broken for what I have witnessed. I came here to see first hand the effects of endless drought, twenty-five years of civil warfare and the horrific retaliatory might of the worlds most powerful military nation on this ancient people and land.We as a nation wield so much responsibility and I pray that providence guides us from the heinous quagmire we are mired within as a result of our self-illusions. We must accept not only personal responsibility, but as well, cosmic responsibility for our thoughts, willing and actions in these current lifetimes. I can only imagine that the real task of bringing unremitting balance to fruition is the work of understanding karma. When I look into the eyes of a hard-lined Talib who garners a legacy of manufactured fear enveloped as piety and see the reflection of my own demons which have helped in dreadful, albeit, unconscious ways to bring ignorance and even blitzkrieg to our planet, I have risked. I have risked a tentatively comfortable life of denial, refusal, irresponsibility and collusion for one of painstaking introspection, fumbling humility and heartbreaking realization. The road less traveled has always been my route and I would rather live out the remainder of my days as a penniless wayfarer with a heart filled with an imagination of love than a statically insular king with a treasure trove of dead foes. I am still searchingThis I am clear on-we can look to ourselves if we merely wish to survive, but only in the company and cooperation of the other can we truly thrive. Hari bol! And peace be upon us all.Caine RoseKabul, Afghanistan
October 11, 2003