How I spent my New Year's Eve 1996: Despair, Battery

Picking up where we left off in the last entry...

On New Year's Eve 1996, I was hanging out at home watching my sister get ready to go to Buffalo with some friends for the evening. I knew there was a hardcore show at Showplace Theatre and I really wanted to go. My sister was always pretty cool so it didn't really take much for me to coax her into letting me go with her. My show wouldn't get out that much earlier than her friends wanted to leave, would it?

I remember being so excited when we pulled up to the Showplace Theatre. Seeing vans parked out front of that snowy club and not buses made so much more sense to me.

Now as we all know, hardcore shows tend to start a little bit earlier than most other club events do. Being that I was mainly going to this show to see Despair and Union, I couldn't really, nor would I want to try to tell you what other bands I missed. This was just before the internet got involved with hardcore and I really didn't know much about this show until a couple days before. As I stated before, I was still relatively new to all of this. I got there and realized I had in fact missed Union. As they were one of the two bands on this bill that I had heard previously, I was bummed that I had missed them.

Now this was my first experience at a hardcore show in another city. I would visit Buffalo again several more times over the next seven years for hardcore shows, including many return visits to Showplace. I remember seeing a couple distros around and being excited at the prospect of picking up some new records and fanzines. On this occasion, I recall picking up the Strong Intention 7" and a copy of Surprise Attack fanzine. This set the stage for a lot of my future endeavors in the hardcore scene. I always loved fanzines and had my own at the time. I would become friends with EMS, the editor of SA fanzine. He is still a stand-up guy to this day.

I only remember seeing Battery and Despair play this show, but I think there might have been another band in between. This would unfortunately be the only time I would get the chance to see them, as I missed them a couple years later at the Showplace. They were a great hardcore band from the DC area who released a couple records on Conversion and Revelation. I really liked their Until The End record, very solid melodic hardcore with some real good mosh. At the time, I would have called them a mix of old school and new school hardcore. Brian Mcternan obviously went on and did other things within the hardcore and punk community. I was still getting a feel for everything and it would be another year or two before this band really grew on me. Too bad.





I finally got to see Despair at this show. I remember Scott Sprigg running around the pit in his underwear with "97" on his chest. I also remember Steve Titus saying "one more year of Demonstrating My Style" shortly after Despair rang in the new year. I had been listening to the As We Bleed 7" a lot before this show and was stoked to sing along to those songs. I think I even stage dove at one point. Unfortunately, Despair was only around for another year after this. Luckily, I got to see them a couple more times. That was when Vogel really started to develop the presence that he would later use in bands like Buried Alive and Terror.

After the show, I was sitting by the front door waiting for my sister and looking at the records and fanzine I had just scored. After about a half hour or so, I realized only myself, the bands, and the people that ran the club were still there. I started to get a little worried. As it was just now 1997, I wouldn't have a cell phone for another four years. I kept waiting as all of the bands and assorted scenesters took off. Then some old lady who said she ran the place came up to me. I ended up waiting with her in her car for about fifteen or twenty minutes until my sister got there. I felt kind of dumb, but I was glad that lady was cool enough to let me sit in her car instead of out in the cold.

I really don't remember much about the drive home. The stage had definitely been set for the next decade of my life.

*Edit 2/11/11
Thanks to Mike Jeffers for the flyer from this show. Sucks to think about how many good bands I ended up missing. I think Turmoil played before Battery, but I could be wrong. That explains why there were so many vans parked outside! Shows around New Years were a tradition in Buffalo and Syracuse for years to come. I even got in on the fun in the year 2000, with Standfast, Every Time I Die, Building on Fire, Premonitions of War, and a bunch of other good bands.