There was no more expansive chronicle of hardcore and punk in the 1980s than the San Francisco-based, political punk monthly Maximum Rocknroll. For punk and hardcore fans, MRR was an international lifeline, an essential source of information on new records, tapes, bands, zines, scenes, and internecine drama originating from the punk underground.
Chicago-based artist and teacher Marc Fischer of Public Collectors has given us a strange and revealing new window on MRR and the '80s underground with Hardcore Architecture. Hardcore Architecture explores the relationship between the architecture of living spaces and the history of American hardcore bands in the 1980s. On his Tumblr, Fischer unites band info, demo tape, and record reviews culled from MRR issues from the '80s with Google Street View building images of the original contact addresses for bands. The juxtaposition of punk/hardcore/metal band names, ranging from the familiar (Sonic Youth, Judge, Didjits) to the unsung (Public Enema, Abra Cadavers, Death Puppy) plus text samplings from MRR’s quick hit reviews ("thrash" is inescapable) against images of fairly innocuous, sometimes charming, and often suburban homes (Fischer removes the exact street addresses from his postings for privacy reasons) gives us a different perspective on hardcore and its proponents. Ultimately, the blog tells a story about hardcore as a loose but passionate nationwide cultural network.
The Tumblr launched in May of 2015. Fischer recently mounted a Hardcore Architecture gallery show at The Franklin in Chicago and published a collection of booklets on what he’s been chronicling.
Pitchfork: How did the idea for Hardcore Architecture come about?
Marc Fischer: I like hardcore so making these discoveries deepened my interest in that history. Maximum Rocknroll is also important to me, I have quite a few back issues of the magazine. My wife and I bought our first house a few years ago and I was spending a lot of time exploring houses and neighborhoods on Google Street View. I came to enjoy that way of understanding a neighborhood. I loved the strange details that emerge, like the errors in how the Street View camera pieces together the photos, and the cameos made by gardeners or mail carriers. It's always fun when I find the house for a band like Sex Mutants and it comes with the added bonus of some landscapers. In a way, the project unites my teenage years with where I'm at now. I'm honestly more into growing vegetables than I'm into going to all ages shows, but hey, growing food is DIY culture too.
Pitchfork: Were you a reader of MRR in the '80s? How did MRR make an impression on you?
MF: I first learned about MRR in around late 1986 or 1987, when I was 17, and it opened up a gigantic world of people, music, and activity that I had only seen the tiniest glimmer of. I had seen a few fanzines before MRR, but nothing with that level of information and detail. I started mail ordering demo tapes and zines immediately, and began publishing a fanzine—Primary Concern—not long after. My zine lasted for seven issues and most of those issues were reviewed in MRR. It appealed to me—as a source of addresses—because it was the place to send your release to be reviewed if you made a certain kind of music. And, importantly, they reviewed demo tapes, which are more likely to have a home address than a record that has been released by a label. All of the most important and exciting American hardcore bands from 1982 on were reviewed in MRR at one point or another. I could easily start looking for addresses in other sources, and may do that at some point, but I felt like I should work with back issues of MRR first and then see what might be missing. I still have about 20 issues from the 1980s to go. Later I may inch forward into the '90s, but part of keeping some historic distance is about being mindful of privacy.
Pitchfork: How do you choose what to post?
MF: I post every house I can find on Google Street View, unless I'm unsure that it's the correct house, the image quality is unsatisfactory, or the house is completely obscured by trees. The contrast of the band name and release and the image of each house is practically built into the project. I have yet to tire of discovering completely normal-looking homes that were once lived in by someone from, like, Afterbirth.
Pitchfork: How does one differentiate '80s hardcore/punk nostalgia from a project like this?
MF: Nostalgia tends to favor the biggest and most well-known bands with the most iconic logos, without looking into the cracks in small towns, or those groups that never made it past the demo stage, or those who made one album and then were never heard from again. A group I love that is on the Tumblr is Mannequin Beach from Lincoln, Neb. They made a demo tape or two, and an album on Mordam Records, and that was it. Bands like Mannequin Beach were as important for me in the 1980s as any well known group that is currently tearing it up on the reunion circuit for Riot Fest. As Hardcore Architecture grows and more small towns are featured, my hope is that the project will remind people that this music wasn't only produced in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York City or Chicago. Bands existed everywhere and often in places that are quite isolated. I think many young people that follow the project on Tumblr get this, and it resonates for them when they find a house that is close to their parents' house, where they are still living. It's empowering to learn that cool music came from your suburb.
The second Hardcore Architecture exhibit opens October 3 at The Outhaus in the Urbana, Ill. backyard of Albert Stabler and Katie Fizdale.