As with my friend David Rosen (see Six of One, Half Dozen of Another #1), I met Adam via adult education. I was in Richmond for a symposium focused on the impact of technology on adult education at the invitation of my dear friend and colleague Bill Muth, stalwart correctional educator. While talking to Bill, I shared how my experience in the punk scene informed my own DIY approach to using digital resources, and Bill said, “Oh, punk? You have to meet my student Adam. He is into punk, too.” Bill connected us, and Adam and I immediately started to figure out what shared interests and history we might have. I was involved in bands that didn’t make it far beyond house parties, but it turned out that Adam had been in some bands that I actually knew. Our conversation about music has continued for nearly two decades, often squeezed in before or after adult education-related events. I believe this was the first time I was asking him to sit down and reflect on his own music at length.

Adam has been involved in music in one way or the other for most of his life. He played guitar in several punk bands, including Life’s Blood and Born Against, a mainstay of the early 90’s hardcore scene in New York City. That band was known for its left-wing politics, which is how they got on my radar. He then served as the lead singer and guitar player for the Richmond-based (Young) Pioneers. This band added a folk influence to the punk sound, as did his follow up band, Teargas Rock. He is currently a member of Shining Sea (photo on the right), whose sound is a mix of rock, jazz, huayno, field recordings, noise and other ingredients. You can check out their recently released debut recordings here. 

     Early on, we discovered that something else we had in common was straight edge. It was really important for me in high school, though I didn’t make it out of college without re-succumbing to the temptations of beer. In sharp contrast, Adam remains straight edge to this day. In addition to the definitional choice to not drink or use drugs, I also see evidence of his straight edge approach in his rigorous self-examination. For example, when I explained that for this project I would like him to pick six of his original songs and six songs that influenced him, he said, “Nothing I’ve ever done is original. Let’s start with that.” OK, then. No time for sentimentality or self-mythologizing. Let’s get to it. 

Six Pairs Equals A Dozen

     For the conversation, Adam spotlighted six songs he has recorded and identified the songs by other people they were inspired by.

Life’s Blood – Catch Our Breath                         Blitz – Someone’s Gonna Die

Why this pair?  “This is our take on oi in the late 80’s NYC, where everything was totally skinhead oriented. We weren’t skinheads, but it was the thing. My friend Neil (the bass player) and I were in high school and we got that Burning Ambitions punk double LP and Someone’s Gonna Die was on it. Everybody was into Blitz in our scene – it was just the zeitgeist. Without even trying we got some of the sound. We recorded at Don Fury’s studio in Little Italy, and he uses no reverb on anything. I mean, their song sounds better than ours. I think every time that I did somebody else’s song, or the idea of somebody else’s song, I wasn’t capable of replicating it no matter who it was. We always ended up doing it our own way. In Life’s Blood, me and Neil, our hands were always bloody because we were just sawing at the strings. This is not something an oi band would do. And then John (the drummer) played fills over fills over fills over cymbal crashes. There’s no oi drummer who does that. It also worth noting that the song had a positive message about the scene, which turned into a schism in the death-throes of the band. Like, ‘Everything is so awful and negative, why would we play such an upbeat, optimistic song?'”

Side Note: Adam talking about the drummer playing the fills reminded me of a backyard show I did in 1982(?) with my high school hardcore band The A Team. We had kicked our annoying drummer out and needed a replacement at the last second. I convinced a friend who played in a band that covered hits of the day to sit in. He had never listened to punk or hardcore, but did his best. That meant lots of unexpected runs on the roto-toms. Shout out to Rich DeCapio for stepping up!

Born Against – Shroud                                           Amebix – Monolith

Why this pair? “I think it’s one of the best Born Against songs. Even if there hadn’t been any words, the music sent the message. It sounds like the times. We were we were just feeling so dark about the state of the world. I thought Sam (the lead singer) had written the song about the Gulf War but he had actually written it about the AIDS crisis. He did such a good job writing the lyrics that you could take it as being about either one.

We wanted to have a song that was like something off of the second or third Amebix LP. They were another band that were very important in the New York City scene. Javier (the bass player) was really into them, and if you listen to the bassline that he put into Shroud, it is almost like one-for-one with Amebix’s Monolith. We recorded it at Wharton Tiers’ studio because we really liked the Helmet record that he did. Shroud’s a good song and it sounds good.”

(Young) Pioneers – We Ain’t Even Married      The Staples Singers – A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

Why this pair? “One of the problems with (Young) Pioneers was that my singing wasn’t very good. I think that this is the one of the more tolerable ones, where the singing wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t listen to it. Even people who said, ‘I wish I could listen to them but the singing is terrible’ were like, ‘OK, I can actually listen to this one.’ 

Musically, We Ain’t Even Married is pretty much one-for-one of A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, even though A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall is about 10 minutes long and We Ain’t Even Married is like one minute. We wanted to be the Minutemen, with those one or two-minute songs. The lyrics mostly came from great lines in the Norman Mailer book Miami and the Siege of Chicago, which compares the Republican convention in Miami and the Democratic convention in Chicago in ’68. We recorded it out in San Diego with our friends while we were on a tour. I was in a relationship with A ¾ [future wife], and I was thinking, ‘Once again, I’m out on a tour. What does this all mean? What am I doing here?’

It is not a big observation to state that A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall is a great song, but it was really the version by The Staples Singers that made me want to write We Ain’t Even Married. Their version has more of a band feel, and the beat is like a waltz. That’s why our song has that waltz flow. I just love The Staples Singers – their voices, their production and they always made great choices in what songs to play. They are also in that category of the best groups ever whose records don’t cost much.”  [Note: As a crate digger, I can confirm that this statement is 100% accurate.]

Teargas Rock – Resign From the City               Chambers Brothers – In the Midnight Hour

Why this pair? “I had a bunch of jobs working for the city of Richmond during my many years of life down there. I’ve worked for the city as a cemetery worker, digging the graves, cutting the grass, putting up the tents for the funerals and all that. At the same time, we were all doing Food Not Bombs.  A ¾ started Food Not Bombs in Richmond. There was one day when some people were just out of control, yelling at us. Then somebody got slashed, and the goop from the slash on the person’s face got on to our friend’s car. Richmond was just corrupt, crazy and violent – that’s why I wrote a song called Resign From the City. But I didn’t really resign from the city because once I got a college degree, I went back and worked for the city.  

The music for the song is really In The Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett, but like A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall, my favorite version is not the original. In this case, it is the Chambers Brothers’ cover that I prefer. Their version blows the roof off. They’re another great group because of their musicianship and choice of songs, and like The Staples Singers, their records don’t cost anything. I also want to mention that Barbara Dane sang with them early on.”

Shining Sea – Bella Ciao                            Giovanna Daffini – Bella Ciao

Why this pair?  “I feel very connected to this song. I went to kindergarten and first grade in Sicily, in the 70s. There were still ruins everywhere and we would play in the wreckage on the beach from the Allies’ invasion. In addition, when we lived there it was what was called the Years of Lead. There were the Red Brigades and everything. We lived in a tall apartment building, and on the ground floor of our building was the unemployment office. There were riots and unrest, just non-stop. Bombings and attacks. The police station was being attacked all the time. The police just guarded the police station, they didn’t go out into the community. Our car was stolen a bunch of times and they didn’t do anything. So, I feel pretty strongly about Bella Ciao.

The other thing is that everybody in Shining Sea has Jewish roots, and that song sounds very Jewish. The chords, the sadness, our futile struggle and suffering – you know, the saga of the radical immigrant. The Shining Sea version has no words. Things are so bad now, and there are basically no words for what it is going on. We just might as well try to express things through the music.” 

Shining Sea – Papel de Plata                                Inti-Illimani – Papel de Plata

Why this pair?  “It represents something I didn’t know I was doing at first. My mom and dad lived in South America and I was there for a little bit. We always had this song and others like it on the turntable, by a bunch of different Andean groups. It is just baked into my psyche the way Beatles’ melodies are. My original idea for starting Shining Sea was noise with these Andean melodies. That is where we started. Then a friend from Peru came to see us and said, ‘You know, this is what is called huayno music.’ I didn’t know there was a term for these types of melodies, but it turns out that what we are doing is interpreting huayno music. And with all those same minor chords, it goes along with all the semitic, Eastern European and Italian sounds that we are playing. These people happen to be from various parts of the world, but they all sound like they go together. 

The guitar line in Inti-Illimani’s original version is really compelling and memorable- it really gets stuck in your head. In our version, we put the sample of the radio from air traffic control running through it. The song is about people travelling, so it adds to that feeling.”

Baker’s Dozen (Plus One More)

Shining Sea – A Las Orillas de Nueva York      Los Incas – A Las Orillas de Titicaca