Harley Flanagan
Feral House
2016
444 pages
I read this without really having a lot of knowledge of the NYC Hardcore punk scene. I've never listened to the Cro-Mags and I guess I don't really take NYC punk seriously. To me NYC music is either arty rock or its hip-hop. I remember when I was younger seeing pictures of all these bands like Madball or Agnostic Front, and they all looked like low-level mafia muscle-boy enforcer crews - no fun. I don't doubt that they're tough and can win a fight or whatever, but I like music, and I don't care if a bad band can survive a rumble with the Cobras. I recognize that the realness of an artist can play a role in their audience appeal, but to me that's infantile low-self-esteem stuff, and not only that but I think there's a correlation between how bad ass a particular musician's rep is and how tedious their music can be. Anyways, I know that Harley Flanagan had a lot to do with that muscular, switchbladey, NYCHC scene, so I wasn't expecting much from his memoir.
Flanagan's memoir surprised me in the sense that, while it certainly gave me what I expected: the story of violence, drugs, ego, rivalry, and decline that's typical of musician biographies - the story is laced with enough intelligence, sensitivity, and regret, to give the book enough soul to set it aside from the invitation to hero-worship that these books usually are. Violence is persistent through the book, right up to the end, but Harley almost always, for example, acted violently to defend himself or his friends. Of course, he's the one telling the stories here but he could just as easily be gloating about never losing a fight. He also paints a grim picture of a mean social environment, 1970s lower east side of Manhattan, where violence was a mandatory part of daily life, whether he fought back or not. What would you do?Flanagan turned later in life to Hare Krishna which seemed to make a lot of sense considering his life of chaos.
Hard-Core is reminiscent to Darryl McDaniel's (DMC) recent memoir, 10 Ways not to Commit Suicide, where the rapper opens up about his family background, life of fame, addiction, the pain it's caused, and the deterioration of his relationship with his closest artistic collaborator. While DMC was one of the biggest rappers in the world at one point, Cro-Mags were likely a moderately successful underground band. Flanagan's book represents how life goes on for a figure who was created from a negative environment and who enjoyed limited success that peaked long before the book's publication.
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