Fallen Warriors of sXe
- Story by J. Bennett
In Part 1 of How’s Your Edge?, we printed the testimony of several musicians who were formerly straight-edge. They discussed why they adopted the straight-edge lifestyle in the first place, what straight-edge meant to them and why they eventually broke edge.
PART II: FALLOUT FROM THE LIFESTYLE WARS
Motherfuckers are dying half a world away for the most ridiculous reasons—mostly religion—and you’re worried about beer?
—Hope Conspiracy vocalist Kevin Baker
Like many of his friends (Isis’ Aaron Turner, Cave In/Zozobra’s Caleb Scofield) and former bandmates (ex-Botch vocalist Dave Verellen and drummer Tim Latona), These Arms Are Snakes and former Botch bassist Brian Cook used to be straight-edge. “I didn’t really start drinking until we went to Europe after [1999’s We Are the] Romans came out,” he says. “We were all really excited to go and experience all the different cultures as much as possible. We definitely did not want to be the ‘ugly Americans’—we wanted to be willing to try everything. The culture around alcohol there is totally different than here, and it’s a way healthier attitude, I think. So being there, I thought, ‘Being straight-edge sucks, because I’d really love to try all these beers that are made right here in this town.’ I wanted to try absinthe in Prague and maybe have a glass of wine backstage at our show in France, you know? And the reasons I wasn’t doing that was just because I was thinking of all the dudes at my college and how much I couldn’t stand them—which had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with them being rich white kids going to a liberal arts school. So when I got home from that tour, I started drinking, and there’s been no looking back. I was just holding out because I didn’t wanna be a quitter. But I quit anyway. I quit the edge.”
Brian Murphy is a self-proclaimed “generic youth crew guy” who became straight-edge after moving from Maine to Worcester, MA in 1997. “It was just my time,” he tells Decibel via email. “The only thing to do in Maine is drink beers in a field. But I had to stop that crap. It wasn’t for me.” Already a regular at hardcore shows in Portland, Murphy quickly became a fixture in the same Worcester/Boston youth crew scene that spawned Bane, In My Eyes and Ten Yard Fight. In 2002, Murphy assembled and posted the original version of the Edgebreak List, an open-source compendium of ex-straight-edgers, on his website, Howsyouredge.com. Initially begun as a way to generate traffic for the site, the list eventually became a giant online pissing match in which many a lifelong straight-edge commando was erroneously called out. “In the beginning, it was all a funny joke,” Murphy explains. “We added a few people, mostly friends. And then we spread it via underground rumors in hopes of generating buzz and feedback. ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity.’ That’s how we felt on the matter, and we were willing to take some of the negative buzz obtained. Over time, the list grew and grew, and I found myself having to police it due to a ton of bad entries. Kids were using it as a tool of revenge. I wasn’t into that, so I yanked it down.”
The fact that such a list could be used as a way to smite one’s enemies is telling. Depending on who you’re hanging-out-and-not-drinking-with, breaking edge can be tantamount to severing yourself from your own community. “It actually does make me kind of proud that I’ve stuck it out this long when I’ve had numerous friends come and go,” says ex-Undertow/current Himsa vocalist John Pettibone, who has been straight-edge for the last 20 years. “The guys that I’ve shared some of my fondest memories with—especially in helping build a great straight-edge scene here in Seattle—are mostly all gone.”
The way Pettibone refers to these friends—“all gone”—equates breaking one’s edge with a kind of death. “Honestly, it is,” he admits. “When Undertow was starting to do a lot, two of the guys in the band broke edge and I was so bummed out. I immediately got the words ‘True ’Til Death’ tattooed on me. I think I was like 20 at the time, and I was so angry with them. We shared all these memories, went on tour together—we shared this common bond—and because they decided to kind of get away from hardcore and play ‘more mature’ music kind of made me wonder why they were straight-edge in the first place. Obviously, it was just to be a part of something, which is completely the wrong reason.”
One of Pettibone’s ex-straight-edge friends—they even have matching Minor Threat tattoos—is Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum, who drank his first beer last year at age 28. “That was one I was bummed on,” Pettibone laughs. “We went on tour with them last year, and I gave him so much shit. Seeing him drink was like, ‘Goddamn you—no. Dude, you were in Battery! Why now?’ And he’s one of those guys who’s like, ‘You’re one of the old [straight-edge] guys—I can’t drink around you.’”
Still, Schleibaum says he didn’t feel any loss of community when he shotgunned that first Miller Lite on a boat at his bachelor party. “By the time I started drinking, the people I hung out with were so old that they were either no longer straight-edge or they were guys like John Pettibone, who’s a fucking cool dude anyway. I mean, you can’t be 34, 35 years old, look at another dude and go, ‘Oh my god—you decided to change your mind about a decision you made when you were 14? I can’t be your friend anymore.’ You can’t do that and still be an intelligent human being.”
Pettibone obviously has no such issues: He is the only straight-edge member of Himsa, a band comprised primarily of ex-straight-edgers. “Most of the guys in Himsa were straight-edge at one time, before the band started, but now I’m the only one,” Pettibone laughs. “Derek [Harn, bass]—he’s probably gonna kill me for saying this—was in Trial. He’s a year older than me, and he just started drinking two years ago. When he gets drunk, it’s like he’s 18 years old—but he knows that, and he’s actually a funny drunk. The only time I ever really get pissed at those guys is when we have an overnight drive and they’re all drunk. But they’re pretty respectful.”
WHERE'S THE FIRESTORM?
We live in a society where alcohol companies spend millions upon millions in advertising and alcohol and drug use is totally glorified in Hollywood. It’s all a big party, you know? But it’s not a big party. It’s a scam. It’s a swindle.
—Karl Buechner
As one of hardcore’s most aggressive proponents of the vegan-straight-edge lifestyle, you’d expect Karl Buechner to be talking much louder. Over the phone from his home in Syracuse, the former Earth Crisis and current Freya/Path of Resistance vocalist is incredibly soft-spoken, and though clearly unwavering in his beliefs—he’s been straight-edge for over two decades now—he seems surprisingly concerned about coming off like an extremist. “Dude, does all of this stuff make sense to you?” he asks, after explaining the reasons behind his lifelong commitment to straight-edge (as detailed in Part 1 of this article). “Do I sound like a zealot?”
He actually doesn’t—which may surprise anyone who’s actually been to an Earth Crisis show. Certain elements of the band’s audience had a well-deserved reputation for violence, but in the context of mid-to-late ’90s Boston hardcore—the only context in which Decibel has personal experience seeing them—Earth Crisis shows weren’t necessarily any worse than the weekly local-hardcore beatings that took place at the Rat in Kenmore Square. Still, it was clearly different in other parts of the country. “At first we thought straight-edge was cool because we didn’t think it was cool to be a drunken frat boy,” says Cook—who, like Pettibone, hails from Seattle. “When the youth crew stuff started becoming more popular and bands like Earth Crisis started taking over the straight-edge scene, we thought, ‘Ugh—these are the frat boys.’ Other bands we knew might drink, but at least they were fun to hang out with.”
After years of being the mainstream press’ straight-edge go-to guy (in addition to appearing in a CNN documentary, MTV’s Smashed and on CBS’ 48 Hours, he was famously and pointlessly harangued on Fox News in June of 2005 by serial mispronouncer Geraldo Rivera in the wake of straight-edge “gang” violence in Reno and Salt Lake City in the late ’90s and early ’00s), Buechner is understandably wary about doing these types of interviews. “I was a little leery about getting involved in this article,” he admits, “because some people who break edge end up mocking straight-edge, and to me, that’s unforgivable. If it was a phase of your life that you went through and you’re not into it anymore, well, that’s probably the best way to deal with it. I don’t understand why people have to be so disrespectful and try to undermine it. When people do that, I genuinely hate them.”
Generally speaking, Buechner harbors no ill will against those who have crossed over to the Drunk Side. “I just don’t think they understood the power of the commitment—that it really is for life,” he says. “I hold straight-edge just as sacred today as I did when I put that first X on my hand in May of 1986. But it’s not like I look down on people who drink or do drugs and see them as vile or something—it’s not that at all. I wanna separate myself from poisons, not people.”
Still, Buechner believes that people who break edge are setting themselves up for problems down the road. “More so than anything, I see it as a slippery slope for them,” he says. “I’ve heard every excuse: ‘I just wanna drink some wine at this wedding,’ or ‘I wanna have some alcohol at home with my parents during the holidays’—things like that. But fast-forward a few years later and that guy is well on his way to be becoming an alcoholic—or he starts smoking weed because everyone around them does. And weed has to be the most underestimated drug. People who smoke are always saying it’s not a big deal, but there are a lot of very detrimental things associated with it that are medical facts—it burns the cilia in people’s lungs, it causes something called anti-motivational syndrome… and, you know, when I see people smoking more and more weed, I see all the things they were once passionate about start to diminish.”
But even Buechner admits that it’s possible for someone to lead a happy and relatively healthy life while partaking in drink and occasional drug use. “It’s definitely not impossible—there’s proof all around us. There’re plenty of successful people who drink on occasion, or maybe even dabble in something more severe on occasion, and they’re able to maintain control over their lives and have strong relationships. But any step that could lead to alcoholism or nicotine- or drug addiction is one step I will never take, and I don’t wanna see other people take. So I encourage people who’ve broken their edge to recognize that reality and really step back and look at the whole thing. Where could this lead to?”
CARING AND KILLING (FOR A BEER)
As vocalist for Converge, the highly-respected avant-metal outfit that finds their roots in Boston hardcore and counts three of their four members as straight-edge, Jake Bannon is, in his own words, “probably the most anti-straight-edge ‘straight-edge’ person I know.” Despite the fact that he hasn’t had a drink or taken illicit drugs since he was in junior high, Bannon is hesitant to call himself straight-edge—if only because he’s opposed to the concept of lifestyle branding. “‘Straight-edge’ as a definition is just as limiting as any subcategory in music or art,” he tells Decibel via email. “The very notion that I should enjoy music or like a person more because they are defined as ‘straight-edge’ is insane to me. It was and is exclusionary, oppressive and, ironically, non-enlightening. Above all, we are all human beings filled with immense grey area in our moral and ethical balance. Where you find yourself in that is up to you.”
Bannon sees his lifestyle choice as a matter of self-control and survival in light of a family history of alcoholism and drug abuse. But like Buechner, he doesn’t look down upon drinkers or drug users—even those who were once straight-edge—nor does he necessarily think ex-edgers are weak-willed. “People make their own decisions,” he points out. “I am disappointed by people [who] cease living their lives and start medicating their lives so much so that they no longer feel pleasure or pain. But just because someone decides to have drugs and/or alcohol in their lives doesn’t necessarily say anything about their will.”
He also seems to agree with Buechner’s assertion that drinking and drug use are ultimately precarious endeavors. “It saddens me when people let what they put in them dictate who they are,” Bannon says. “It saddens me when any selfish action perpetuates pain in oneself and those around them. We all have enough battles to fight in life—who needs another?”
BRANDED
Even if your commitment to straight-edge is fleeting, tattoos can be forever. And while Pettibone’s “True ’Til Death” still reflects his lifestyle and beliefs, many others regularly enjoy the increasingly common experience of walking around with a straight-edge tattoo on their backs and a drink in their hand. Like Zozobra frontman and Cave In bassist Caleb Scofield, for instance: “I’d be lying if I said I’m happy to have it now, but at the time, there was no fucking doubt,” he says of the large block letters—DRUG FREE—tattooed across his shoulder blades. “It was something that I was excited to brand myself with because I believed in it that much. And even though I was convinced at the time that there would never be a day when I wouldn’t be straight-edge, if there was, I figured I deserved to have this thing on me and be subject to any embarrassment or humiliation that it brings. If you’re gonna take it to that level, you gotta deal with the consequences.”
When Scofield started drinking, one straight-edge “friend” offered him “several home tattoo-removal kits and numerous beatings.” Buechner, who is clearly far less militant than many of his disciples at this point, takes a completely different stance on the nullified straight-edge tattoo: “If it meant enough to them at one time to get those tattoos, then I would hope that they would return at one point to being drug- and alcohol-free,” he says before cracking himself up. “That might be a reminder when they walk by a mirror.”
Isis ringleader Aaron Turner, a regular pot smoker for years now, has a sparkplug with three Xs and the word “straight-edge” etched on his right calf. “It’s something that’s never exposed anyway due to my dislike of shorts,” he laughs. “But even if I get it covered up, it’s still something that’s representational of an important part of my life, whether I’m a follower of those things or not. If I did get it covered up, it wouldn’t be because it said ‘straight-edge’ so much as that it’s an ugly tattoo.”
FULL BLUNTAL NUGITY
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and “straight-edgers” were occasionally still called “teetotalers”—often in an English accent—there was The Nuge. Teddy Fucking Nugent, the torque-bow toting steakhead who wrote such venereal all-American classics as “Cat Scratch Fever” and “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang”; the loudmouthed homophobe and notorious pussy enthusiast who claims to have shot a monkey in Saddam Hussein’s bidet, was straight-edge back when Ian MacKaye was still swimming in his dad’s balls. According to popular legend, he even once turned down a joint offered to him by Jimi Hendrix. As Himsa’s John Pettibone puts it, “Ted Nugent is the godfather of straight-edge. Recognize!”
Pettibone knows of what he speaks: The Nuge never touched a drink, and he hates drugs. Just like KISS bassist Gene Simmons, another loudmouthed whoremaster who spent his career chasing groupies with sluts instead of bourbon with Budweiser. But even sXe OGs fall off, as The Nuge admitted several years ago in an interview with Boston’s Weekly Dig, when he revealed that he gargles with beer before shows because it’s the only thing that “opens up his throat.”
If you can’t even rely on a red-blooded American fuckface like The Nuge to maintain his edge, where does that leave us in the Grand Scheme of Things? At least Uncle Ted wrote a handful of awesome songs before the Damn Yankees and Damnocracy debacles plunged his credibility into the shitter. Modern youth crew bands, on the other hand, seem to be recycling their predecessors’ steez breakdown-for-breakdown. “It’s like, when does the carbon run out?” asks Hope Conspiracy vocalist and former straight-edge adherent Kevin Baker. “To me, punk was about doing something different. But now everyone wants to be categorized. They wanna look like the back of their favorite record with the black-and-white live photo and the college font, doing jumps with their guitars, the kids pointing their fingers up front, singing about the same bullshit every other band sings about. And you know what? Those same kids will be out drinking three years from now.”
“Part of what’s affirming about straight-edge politics is the fact that there are musicians living the same way as you,” says Pelican guitarist and edge-breaker Laurent Schroeder-Lebec. “Even in the punk scene, I feel like there was a barrier broken down as far as the bands I looked up to, and there was admiration there because they were walking a similar path in life. If there are musicians telling you you’re righteous, it’s going to inspire you to keep going. Ultimately, when you drop that music, you realize that your relationship with that kind of lifestyle isn’t as filled with integrity as it once was. It’s like they say: ‘The harder they come, the harder they fall.’ If you have to wear your lifestyle that hard, it probably means you’re really not that comfortable in your skin.”
THE METAMORPHOSIS (HAIL THE LEAF)
It’s unclear if the transition from straight-edge soldier to drinker or power-doper has any bearing on one’s musical output, but it’s certainly worth noting that some of the finest drug music being made today is the work of those who have broken edge. “The first couple of Isis records were composed largely without the use of drugs,” Aaron Turner explains. “That’s not to say that our music hasn’t evolved, but a lot of the basic elements are evident—the songs are long, the tempos are slow—so I guess I’ve always had a ‘downer sensibility,’ for lack of a better term. I’ve always been into things that were more meditative or consciousness-expanding regardless of whether substances were involved or not. But I have to say that pot has always enhanced my experience with music—as both a listener and a creator—so it has played some role, but I can’t say how large, specifically.”
“Maybe it helped in my music to be able to have a few beers before I go onstage to loosen up a little,” says Scofield, “but creatively speaking, it’s hard to say. I have nothing really to compare it to. I didn’t really start writing or become interested in becoming creatively productive until after I had broken my edge. But it’s fun—it’s easy to get stoned and play guitar for hours and hours.”
“Pot meshes really well with most music—it’s always been connected.” Pelican’s Schroeder-Lebec offers. “It’s cliché, but it’s cool when people say, ‘I like your record, but when I smoked weed and listened to it, I loved it.’ When Pelican first started, we used to smoke a ton of pot before practice. Then we’d play the three songs we had at the time and laugh ourselves into the ground.
“But I don’t think being straight-edge got me into the Cro-Mags any more than I think not being straight-edge got me into Pink Floyd,” he adds. “I don’t think there’s any relationship there. When I was straight-edge, I was definitely interested in listening to straight-edge bands, but it never prevented me from listening to anything else. But I will say that the first Goatsnake record made me want to start Pelican—there’s no doubt. We all loved Engine Kid, too—it was like Sabbath playing Sunny Day Real Estate songs. It just goes to show you—everyone brings much more complex musical baggage to their band than most journalists will care to mention.”
It may or may not be a coincidence that both Goatsnake and Engine Kid featured Sunn O))) guitarist and Southern Lord Records founder Greg Anderson, who also used to be straight-edge. “Greg Anderson was in Brotherhood, which was a huge straight-edge band here in Seattle,” Pettibone explains. “I have pictures of him looking like Youth of Today—bowl cut, Champion sweatshirt—and now he does Southern Lord Records. He is one of the oldest guys from Seattle—if not the guy—who sparked straight-edge here.”
The fitting epitaph here is surely Schleibaum’s: “That’s the cool thing about getting older—you get to change your mind.”
