Eleven bands into Saturday’s 18-band bill at Chicago Fest, I got to talking with Shawn Creeden, the singer of the New England-based hardcore band Bad Business. “Aside from being in this band, I hate everything about hardcore,” he told me. “The bands are all the same, the politics are totally unrealized–it’s all false awareness.” He smiled, then went back to crocheting the brown scarf he had started working on the day before.
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Chicago Fest 2005: three days, 38 hardcore and punk bands at top volume, Pulaski Park field house auditorium. For 375 fans from all over the world, it was a chance to be amongst their people (be they Canadian male feminists against fascism, skinheads from Bogota, or black-clad 11th graders from Waukesha), affirm their faith in punk, and angrily disavow all else.
Later on, browsing a merch table stocked with handmade vegan soap and xeroxed pamphlets entitled The Anarchist’s Complete Guide to Fascist Gestapo Pig Interrogation, I overheard one teenage boy pep-talking another: “See, everyone here, everyone in this room is your comrade. Well, except that one skinhead girl.”
