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N.Y.H.C. - ninety minutes of musical mayhem
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The beauty of a good documentary lies in its ability to expose the viewer to a story, culture or place that they would normally not even know existed. In the case of N.Y.H.C., the New York hardcore music scene of the late 90's gets thrown under the microscope. What can be seen is a collection of interviews with very interesting people, footage of some wild live shows and a bunch of good stories all linked to this one genre of music.
And musically speaking, this genre is very specific. What is hardcore? What do you think hardcore is? Look at that word: hardcore. The people that comprised these bands were just that. Tough, street hardened individuals dealing with their every day lives, and they chose music to be their outlet. And it looks like these folks really needed this outlet. Who know, they could have been robbing houses and stealing cars and doing who knows what to expend all their energy and pent up angst. But you hand these people instruments and a microphone, and you get art. It might not be the art of the masses, but that's the point of the music anyway. It's not meant to be for everyone. And while the music might be alien and hard to listen to for the average movie watcher, the stories told are universal. People into hip-hop will recognize a lot of the stories and the performers' need to "talk about what they see around them." The band members interviewed in this film are mostly street-tough and street-smart type of folks, growing up in rough neighborhoods and dealing with the police and local violence and what not. Because when discussing this extreme style of music, the filmmakers delve into what makes these people tick to begin with, and what compels them to spend so much time and energy working in a genre of music that was guaranteed to take them nowhere commercially.
This film was made in the '90's, and before the internet completely changed the music industry. MTV controlled what music people heard and saw in a large way, and the record companies promoted weaker, more mainstream music while ignoring the fringes of the industry. So these bands all had that super intenseDIY ethic, the whole "Let's make our own t-shirts and CDs and sell them at our shows to kids directly." Now with the music industry dead and completely decentralized because of the internet , this is the way most bands are doing it by default. There are no more large record labels to get signed on to, and why bother anyway? Artists can put their own music up for sale oniTunes and reap all the rewards. This technology mixed with the '90's NYHC mentality would have been a perfect storm of promotion, but alas, the two time periods do not overlap.
Members from about six different bands were interviewed for this movie, and a lot of different subjects are touched on, both within the music scene and deal with life in general. The two standout people: 1)Madball leader singer Freddy Cricien goes into how at the age of seven he toured with his older brother's band Agnostic Front during the 80's and hit the stages with the band and sang songs with them. And 2) the band 108 (One Hundred and Eight), a Hare Krishna themed hardcore band, discussed how their religious beliefs paralleled the ideas behind the New York hardcore scene. For anyone out there who thinks they know what these people are about or thinks they know what kind of people would be attracted to this movie, I submit to them 108 and their views and awesomeness.
N.Y.H.C. is a testament to more than a style of music, but to an ideal, to a movement, to a tidal wave of artistic expression that culminated with spinning windmills and jump kicks in the pit. Anyone can identify with the idea of community, and the New York Hardcore scene of the 1990's was one of the most intense and interesting communities out there, and thank God for these people who recorded some of this madness and captured it in documentary form. This is a very good documentary and one I would recommend to anyone who would be open to hearing (and seeing) something they have never seen before.
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