Just Another Victim...

There’s been a few times in my life that I was slightly ahead of the curve in getting involved with something that would eventually become part of more popular culture. There are lots of times that’s a great position to be in, I have been able to introduce things to my peer group or just seem a lot cooler than I was by being involved in something from the start (that was a good spot to use the phrase ‘involved from jump street’ but I hate that term so forget it).

One example of this is collecting toys. I’m not as into it as I was a few years back, but when Jeremy and then I first started buying action figures there was a very small group of people, over the age of 8, that were really into it. Now it seems like everyone on an episode of Mtv Cribs has a room full of vintage Star Wars toys or action figures made by McFarland Toys.



Another similar example is comic books & general nerdery. I have been buying comic books steadily for quite awhile now. I (luckily) missed the comic boom of the late 80’s when every Joe Shmo was speculating on the potential future value and setting up at a flea market trying to resell last week new releases at 5 times cover price. The odds pretty good that most of these guys still have a basement full of ‘Death of Superman’ comics and full runs of Wetworks, Wild C.A.T.S. & GEN13 variant covers. The odds are even better that those comics are in discolored long boxes covered in boxes full of early to mid 90’s baseball cards that are now worth less then the powder white sticks of gum they are packaged with.



There is one example of this that I still carry with me today because it was basically beaten into me. It was early 1989 and I was in 9th grade at the Woonsocket Junior High School. I had been introduced to punk rock like Black Flag & the Sex Pistols by Mike & Frenchy hanging around at Music Mania, but I had also gotten a small taste of hardcore from hanging around with Kurt, Chris and a few other people from the ‘Woonsocket Skateboard Crew’. They gave me mix tapes of bands like Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Brains & DRI. This was right up my alley because it was more inline with the songs I had headbanged to with breakneck speed at Roller Kingdom on Friday nights.

It was also around this time that I had my first exposure to real rap music. Prior to this time I had heard and liked the RUN DMC/Aerosmith collaboration on ‘Walk This Way’ and I had the Anthrax ‘I’m The Man’ 12”, but liking those songs was not a popular opinion in the headbanger sect. There was kind of an unwritten rule that if you were a metalhead you hated the ‘rapper kids’ and vice versa. Since I was a metalhead I tried to adhere to these rules, but it was hard and I knew eventually I would have to break them.



I had seen countless pictures of bands in various heavy metal magazines and always wondered about the different bands they wore shirts of. I discovered The Misfits because of Cliff Burtons Crimson Ghost tattoo. I discovered Motorhead because James Hetfield would wear their shirts all the time. I bought a Diamond Head cassette (big mistake) because Lars always talked about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. I even bought an Angel Witch (bigger mistake) record because Dave Mustaine mentioned them in the ‘Cliff ‘Em All’ home video.



I’ll admit when I first saw pictures of Scott Ian from Anthrax wearing a shirt that said Public Enemy with a gun sight on the back I assumed it was some clothing company or record label, but I was wrong. Eventually I found out that Scott was playing both sides… he was catering to us with his music, but he was secretly (or not so secretly since he wore their t-shirts) listening to rap music too! Eventually it got the best of me and I had to find out exactly what Scott Ian and probably the rest of Anthrax were up to! One night that I working at Music Mania I took the ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’ cassette off the rack, made sure none of my headbanger friends were walking up Social Street and I popped it in the tape player. It started with ‘Countdown to Armageddon’ which is just an intro and not really a song, but then there it was… a minute and forty five seconds into side 1 a booming voice like I had never heard… “Bass… How low can you go?”… Wait, what I thought to myself, is this a quiz? Before I knew it the man with the booming voice was introducing himself to me. Apparently he was “The incredible D, Public Enemy number 1”, but I still had no idea who Terminator X was or what the hell the wax that he spun was all about. I sat and listened close understanding only a few words here and there until the end of the second verse. It flew by in a blur, but I was positive I heard him say Anthrax! I probably rewound and played that tape a hundred times that night until I was positive that I had heard him say “Beat is for Eric B. and L.L. as well, hell, wax is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells”. I didn’t know what it meant, but that’s definitely what he said!




After doing some pretty heavy research in back issues of Hit Parader and Metal Edge I found out that Scott Ian and the other members of Anthrax had been fans of Public Enemy for quite awhile and when the guys in Public Enemy (Chuck D., Flava Flav, Terminator X, Professor Griff and the Security of the First World) found out they thought it was so cool that they referenced it in one of their songs.

Now you need to keep in mind that this is years before the Anthrax and Public Enemy actually collaborated on a new version of ‘Bring The Noise’ and years before House of Pain broke the perceived color barrier of hip hop. It was definitely not common place to see a 15 year old suburban white kid with hair down to his ass listening to Public Enemy. So what did I do? I went to T-Shirt City at the Lincoln Mall and I got myself a couple of Public Enemy shirts!

I can totally remember both of them. One was a black shirt with a really big PE in yellow and white with the Public Enemy gun sight logo next to it. The other was my favorite of the 2, it said Public Enemy in a script font like the Chicago White Sox jerseys and had the gun sight logo under it and it was all in silver and white, again on a black shirt!



I proudly wore my PE (fans in the know were allowed to call them that) shirts and they were in heavy rotation right along with my Metallica ‘And Justice For All’ tour shirt, my Ozzy wearing a crown of thorns shirt and my Nuclear Assault ‘Mutants for Nukes’ shirt. It goes without saying that a lot of my metalhead friends were not happy about my new musical taste, but I didn’t care. I remember being in Spanish class and sitting right in front of Joey who was coincidently the same Joey that had first hit me with a pitch during my short lived little league career. Joey was a metalhead and a HUGE KISS fan. I remember turning around during class and drawing the Public Enemy logo on his Spanish book which was wrapped in a brown paper bag probably from Big D or Almacs. He would get so mad and immedialty scribble it out. Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that Joeys best friend Shawn later got a tattoo of a skull with SS (Schutzstaffel) under it. He said he chose it from the tattoo flash because it had the S’s from the Kiss logo on it.



Now even though a lot of my friends didn’t understand why I liked Public Enemy they never caused me any problems about it. Surprisingly enough, my problems came from the other Public Enemy fans. I was walking home from school on one of only 3 days of my school career that I ever had detention. I don’t remember what I had gotten in trouble for, but I had sat in silence for an hour along with my friend Kurt who also had detention that same day. By the time it was over we were leaving school much later than usual.

There was a really steep hill that lead the way to and from the junior high school. Since Kurt was one of the Woonsocket skateboard crew he hopped on his board and skated down the hill while I walked down to meet him. I was probably about 1/3 of the way down the hill when a car slowly drove by and someone leaned out and spit at me. I remember being so shocked that I had almost no reaction at all. No reaction until the car stopped and 3 people got out and walked toward me. I remember them commenting on my shirt and the fact that I was a ‘stupid white kid’ and then all of a sudden I was knocked to the ground and they started kicking me. I’ve never been much of a fighter but back then I was even less capable. I was on the ground in a pose that resembled the fetal position while 3 guys kicked me. Even though I was trying to cover my face I saw Kurt running back up the hill with his skateboard held high over his head. It was about this time that a tractor trailer truck, which was making a delivery or a pick up to one of the many mill buildings that surrounded the school, pulled over. The driver hopped out of the truck with some kind of club and the 3 guys got back in their car and took off.



I was definitely shaken up, but was more or less okay. Kurt and the truck driver made sure I was okay and tried to help get me cleaned up. I remember refusing to wipe my face for some reason. Like I was going to make some kind of ‘tough guy’ statement by showing everyone I had just been beat up. Eventually I continued my walk from school to Music Mania where I went almost every day. By the time I got to the store the blood on my face had dried and the scrapes on my arms and legs had started to scab over.

My mom was working at the store that day and her jaw dropped when I walked through the door. As I explained what happened my friend Jay came in. Jay actually became my friend because my mom was friends with his mom. Now comes the part of the story that I am least proud of. Jay got a hold of his older sister Kim because he thought she might know the guys that had just beaten me up. Well Kim did in fact know the guys and when she found out what happened she went to find them and read them the riot act. Kim was a tough girl and she stood up for her ‘little brother’ and his friends. During Kim’s conversation with the guys it was confirmed that they had stopped to harass me because I was a white kid (they were not) wearing a Public Enemy shirt and they suggested that I not wear it again. She assured them that I would wear whatever the fuck I wanted and that if they ever touched me again they would have to deal with her and that they really didn’t want to go there. Needless to say, they never bothered me again and I didn’t really have any other problems created by my Public Enemy shirts. I did have another similar problem about a year later though.

After I got into Public Enemy I checked out a few other rap groups and had started to listen to Ice T. Once again, keep in mind that this was long before Ice T was on Law & Order and shortly before he presented himself as a metalhead with his band Body Count. Anyway, I wanted to get a new baseball hat so I went back to T-Shirt City and I picked up a black hat that said Syndicate in bold silver letters on it. This was a reference to Ice T’s ‘posse’ the Rhyme Syndicate which I knew, but I also just thought the hat looked cool.



A few weeks later I was at the Our Lady Queen of Martyrs carnival in Woonsocket with Al and I was proudly sporting my new cap! We had probably just had a few rousing rounds of bingo and were walking through the midway area. Without missing a beat a guy walking toward us grabbed the hat off my head, placed it on his and kept walking. I turned to look at him and he looked back with a face that seemed to say ‘come on… try and take it back’ then he continued to walk away. I’m not proud to say it, but I admitted defeat and said good bye to the hat. I did think of a little jingle I learned in 2nd grade that went like this… “Share a friend, share a home, but never share a hat or comb or lice will make your head its home” and wondered if the guy wearing my hat had ever heard it.



I don’t think I had any race related problems after the carnival incident. I think it was probably partially in part to me not having any other clothes that someone wanted to steal and partially because by this time when it came to music, Public Enemy had crossed over with Anthrax and Everlast and Danny Boy had encouraged people of all races to ‘jump around’. I still like and listen to some rap music and even though its one of the most hated musical genres I do enjoy some ‘crossover’ bands that take some rap and some metal and some hardcore etc and mix it all together.



I can’t say that I learned tolerance from getting beat up and having my hat stolen because I didn’t. I can’t say that I learned to not hate or turn the other cheek… I probably can’t say I learned anything except that being a head of the curve isn’t always a good thing!