Last week I received a comment claiming that I don't cop to any sincerity regarding Youth Crew Tuesday. The commentor then went on to suggest that I feature Verbal Abuse in this installment. The thing is, I don't really even like Youth Crew hardcore.

• Some girl in a Bold shirt at Madison Market.

A few of the original bands were pretty good and I think that I like others because the recordings came into my life at a time when I would have liked almost anything. Similar to when I was 12 and get really into the SST catalog. There aren't many reasons why pre-teens should like records by Zoogz Rift or Crazy Backwards Alphabet, but I think there's a time in a person's life where they'll absorb anything that comes their way. That's how I feel about the early bands of Youth Crew hardcore. The later wave is clunky and thuggish, but I'm also going to add that it's absolutely fucking weird. You know how psych bands go out of their way to be zany and odd? That's how I feel about Youth Crew, except they're not going out of their way. This was a movement of music where teenagers got together and wore college sweatshirts and did that point dance in the pit while stomping their feet really high. Then they got onto veganism and Hare Krishna chanting while beating each other up and then made zines about it. The inter-scene politics of Youth Crew is absolutely fascinating. It's as if a bunch of rich kids from Conneciticult decided to be punkers, but their parents already mushed their brains all up, so they were right wing punkers who played hockey and wore dockers and construction gloves but also ran track and then went to Yale. But, you know, punk rock: WHO CARES.

Unfortunately, I cannot feature Verbal Abuse in this or any installment of Youth Crew Tuesday. While VA's 1st LP Just An American Band absolutely rips, they just don't carry the proper attributes. No baggy sweat shirts, no Xs scrawled on the back of their hands, no arguments about whose turn it is to empty the graywater bucket in the co-op house. YCT is simply a dull dissection of an obscure genre of music, interesting to .000000004% of the people that read this wonderful music blog. But the .000000004% of the people that like it a lot. Just for kicks, here's the definition of Youth Crew taken from Wikipedia:

Youth Crew is a music subgenre of hardcore punk that was pioneered by Youth of Today in the early to mid-1980s, and thrived in the New York hardcore scene of 1988. Youth crew is distinguished from other hardcore and punk scenes by its optimistic, fraternal and more moralistic outlook. The original youth crew bands and fans were predominantly straight edge, and also sometimes advocated vegetarianism. Some of the later spin-off bands delved further into ascetic spiritual and political interests.

Early musical influences included Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Negative Approach, Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front. While some youth crew music is similar to melodic hardcore, youth crew also includes breakdowns intended for the hardcore dancing style associated with live performances. Youth of Today was a very thrashy youth crew band, with abrasive vocals and fast songs too short to include a lot of melody (similar to early Agnostic Front, and contrasting with the other big New York City youth crew band, Gorilla Biscuits). Later youth crew bands took increasing influence from heavy metal.

When I was a youngster I lived next door to Dwid, the singer of Integrity, in Lakewood, Ohio. One afternoon while walking home from school my ex-girlfriend came out of the building where Dwid lived at the time. She was crying and told me that she was in his apartment and they were eating raw meat. I cannot wait to tell you about Cleveland's One Life Crew. ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING + HORRIFYING.

Today's YCT spotlight falls onto Westchester New York's Bold. Originally known as Crippled Youth (whose brilliant first 7" Join The Fight features the prerequisite hockey photo, $600 TEST PRESSING!) with Matt Warnke on vocals, Tim Brooks on bass and Drew Thomas on drums, the group was already steeped in posi-core when they changed their name in 1986. Bold then recorded their first LP Speak Out for California's WishingWell Records, but it wasn't released until 1988 on Revelation Records.

A year later Bold recruited Tom Capone (Quicksand/Shelter) on second guitar and released their arguably most popular recording, a self-titled 7" also on Revelation. Four years later they re-released the 7" with two extra tracks and some time after that broke up. In 2005 they reunited with John Porcelly and release a retrospective CD titled The Search: 1985-1989 which included all of the band's released output. A year later Warnke & Pocelly quit, effectively ending the band for the time being.

Here's a great Bold overview & some photos at the Double Cross Webzine.