Status: Updates every Sunday and Wednesday!
We're Not Listening
Precursor - Hooligans!, pt. 1
To be honest, there wasn’t a lot to be proud of when it came to Jacksonville, Florida in 1990. Nothing really set it apart from all of the other wannabe big cities. The most it had was the St. John’s River and the navy base located just on the outskirts. Within years, violence would spiral out of control, the river would face endless pollution, and a shitty football team would come to be.
There’s a tradition in punk of hating your town – well, if we’re talking about the newer wave of pop-punk that has spread all over the nation, that is. It seems weird to imagine a time in which punks took pride in the city they came from, what with towns like Ocala getting lampooned in between breakdowns and countless other dudes shedding their roots for something bigger.
This is an odd sort of story that started with a ponytailed youth named Raimundo Asbury. In 1990, he was at the ripe old age of twenty-one, and for starters, he found solace in the southeast. (“Southeast First,” a tune by Gainesville natives Hot Water Music, became his anthem in a way.) Being born and raised just outside of Jacksonville had conditioned him for life in the city, but he was a kind of punk who dabbled in other sorts of music. Living in North Florida required a certain level of tolerance for country, for one thing.
Gainesville, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Tallahassee, Boca Raton, Miami – for a kid fresh out of high school with a kind of wanderlust that went unmatched, all of these cities became his second homes. He’d hitchhike to get there when he ran out of gas and his military folks didn’t want to pay for his ride, and for a while, he scraped together a few extra bucks working as a roadie. (Really, with a name like Raimundo, who wouldn’t want him somewhere on the stage?)
And he flourished for three years until he turned twenty-one, his love of poetry and lyrics getting the best of him. Something clicked. He couldn’t sing, but he could shout – and for rock, that was more than enough. All he wanted was to share his words with anybody who would listen to his ditties about questioning your surroundings paired with dirty basslines that could melt your ears with minimal effort. It was ugly, but it was home.
And yeah, he met folks before and after shows, he made some friends, and he made connections that would definitely help him later on. However, that’s not what he needed at the start of that new decade that would usher in grunge and rap – he needed a partner. Someone who would stand by his lyrics and understand them just as well.
Cue the arrival of the Colombian roadie for a Jacksonville Beach-based venue, Kenny Correa. Rai met this dude when he was hanging out at a bar after a Molly Hatchet concert; Kenny tapped on his shoulder and said he’d recognized him floating around at various shows. He said he always had stars in his eyes when he looked up at whatever band was playing. Rai joked and said that he wished he could be one of those guys – well, alright, it wasn’t a complete joke, but he said it with a smile either way.
Kenny asked if he’d ever been in a band and Rai said he hadn’t. He asked the same question and Kenny responded the same way, with a no. He spoke in broken English. Rai later discovered that it stemmed from the fact that the kid had lived in Colombia for seventeen years.
They put their heads and feet together, and sooner or later, that collective foot had wedged itself in the door of the music industry.
There’s a tradition in punk of hating your town – well, if we’re talking about the newer wave of pop-punk that has spread all over the nation, that is. It seems weird to imagine a time in which punks took pride in the city they came from, what with towns like Ocala getting lampooned in between breakdowns and countless other dudes shedding their roots for something bigger.
This is an odd sort of story that started with a ponytailed youth named Raimundo Asbury. In 1990, he was at the ripe old age of twenty-one, and for starters, he found solace in the southeast. (“Southeast First,” a tune by Gainesville natives Hot Water Music, became his anthem in a way.) Being born and raised just outside of Jacksonville had conditioned him for life in the city, but he was a kind of punk who dabbled in other sorts of music. Living in North Florida required a certain level of tolerance for country, for one thing.
Gainesville, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Tallahassee, Boca Raton, Miami – for a kid fresh out of high school with a kind of wanderlust that went unmatched, all of these cities became his second homes. He’d hitchhike to get there when he ran out of gas and his military folks didn’t want to pay for his ride, and for a while, he scraped together a few extra bucks working as a roadie. (Really, with a name like Raimundo, who wouldn’t want him somewhere on the stage?)
And he flourished for three years until he turned twenty-one, his love of poetry and lyrics getting the best of him. Something clicked. He couldn’t sing, but he could shout – and for rock, that was more than enough. All he wanted was to share his words with anybody who would listen to his ditties about questioning your surroundings paired with dirty basslines that could melt your ears with minimal effort. It was ugly, but it was home.
And yeah, he met folks before and after shows, he made some friends, and he made connections that would definitely help him later on. However, that’s not what he needed at the start of that new decade that would usher in grunge and rap – he needed a partner. Someone who would stand by his lyrics and understand them just as well.
Cue the arrival of the Colombian roadie for a Jacksonville Beach-based venue, Kenny Correa. Rai met this dude when he was hanging out at a bar after a Molly Hatchet concert; Kenny tapped on his shoulder and said he’d recognized him floating around at various shows. He said he always had stars in his eyes when he looked up at whatever band was playing. Rai joked and said that he wished he could be one of those guys – well, alright, it wasn’t a complete joke, but he said it with a smile either way.
Kenny asked if he’d ever been in a band and Rai said he hadn’t. He asked the same question and Kenny responded the same way, with a no. He spoke in broken English. Rai later discovered that it stemmed from the fact that the kid had lived in Colombia for seventeen years.
They put their heads and feet together, and sooner or later, that collective foot had wedged itself in the door of the music industry.
♠ ♠ ♠
I'd been writing this like a snail for a few months now, but just last night I finished all of it. This is gonna be fairly short - it's about 22,000 words in total over about 31 chapters, and the chapters should be on the smaller side (save for a few that I got a little too...uh...involved in).But anyways, the bands in this story have been mentioned a hell of a lot in a few other stories of mine, and I just felt like their stories needed to be told. There'll be six bands in all, with five chapters per backstory, and an epilogue. (One band that'll be skipped over is Plaster Caster. I've written four novellas about them already so I think I can go without an in-depth explanation in this ditty. xD If you want to know everything about 'em, start with my story Renny Boy, haha.)