... AND THUS THE SUMMER OF 2007 IS OVER!

... And thus all the great memories are swept underneath my brain of an unforgettable summer. This is the first year of my life that I have been able to attend an incredible amount of live shows by local and touring bands...

I remember I was about 13 years old(this was back in Guatemala City circa 1993) when my older brother Andres Diaz first introduced me to early 80's punk bands such as Black Flag, Dead Kennedy's and Descendents. By this time, Andres was already familiar with the whole early 90's Seattle "grunge" movement: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Mudhoney ; and with some old school rap like Run DMC, Public Enemy, N.W.A. and Beastie Boys. But to have known these bands wasn't enough for us to digest punk/hardcore at first. Honestly we both couldn't handle Jello Biafra's (NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!) nor Henry Rollins's (GIMME GIMME GIMME) deranged singing , and the highly distorted guitars with the fast drum beats were highly shocking. Although with time we both started assimilating punk/hardcore very well. A few years later Andres and I started skateboarding out in the streets of Guatemala City and that's how we met other local skaters that introduced to us bands like Minor Threat, D.R.I. and Sick Of It All; which were a lot faster and heavier. This was it for the Guatemala hardcore/punk scene of the mid 90's: no bands, no shows, no fanzines, nothing but a small group of skater dudes listening to old punk/hardcore bands. It was not until late 1996 I believe when Andres and I met these two aliens from outer space: Cathy Bennett and Rudy Penando (actually Cathy is from California and Rudy is from France but they were so exotic to the Guatemalan youth of that time that they can be considered aliens from outer space). These two had been living in France for a while and were each running and sharing a punk/hardcore fanzine/distro project. This same year of 1996 Cathy was visiting her parents in Guatemala City for the end of the year holidays (I am talking about the Christian year of course) . Cathy and Rudy approached my brother Andres and me at a local shopping center because we seemed like "skater dudes" and started asking us if we knew of any local punk/hardcore shows going on in Guatemala City and of course our response was only laughter. After a few laughs the only thing i could answer was: "there aren't any punk/hardcore bands in this city". This must have been the moment when Cathy and Rudy realized they were in an alien country. Cathy and Rudy must have felt really sorry for us, so they decided to hand me a plastic garbage bag full of fanzines and this moment marked a very important event in my life: I first got in touch with the d.i.y. world, fell in love with vinyl records and started to know about the real underground network. By the year 1997 there was a small group of friends in Guatemala City that knew about the whole "straight-edge/veganism" branches that exploded within the punk/hardcore scene in the United States,Europe and Japan during the late 80's/early 90's. Bands like Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, Wide Awake, Uniform Choice, Rise Above, Nations on Fire started to be on our top lists. Cathy had toured with Youth of Today back in 1989 when she was living in Cleveland, Ohio with her stepfather. After we heard all her stories with the tour we started thinking that it must have been great times in the punk/hardcore scene when Youth of Today was around. Throughout 1997 we also started to get in touch with new subgenres that evolved from punk/hardcore like power-violence, grindcore, crust, sludge and screamo. Bands like Charles Bronson, Spazz, Dropdead, Hellnation, Los Crudos, Palatka, Indian Summer, Asshole Parade, Assuck (U.S.A.) ; Fingerprint, Undone, Vanilla (France) ; Acme, Systral, Morser (Germany) Seein' Red (Holland) . It was just a multiplying series of events what gave birth to a small punk/hardcore community in Guatemala City by the end of 1997.
... And thus I gave a brief introduction to the Guatemala punk/hardcore scene of the late 90's. But it has been around ten years since this happened and all I can think of now is that I am living what I once dreamed of: to support the d.i.y. punk/hardcore community by going to shows and actually try to catch the message that this community is trying to give us. This summer I've been able to keep a record of my experience with live shows and I am hoping they will serve good in the history of punk/hardcore for future generations. This past Saturday 09/22/07 once again @ the Subterranean (Wicker Park) was the closing show of the summer with Total Fury from Japan. This was the very first time I had the chance to watch a Japanese band live and they certainly confirmed all the stereotypes and myths of the Asian punk/hardcore: short, fast and LOUD! But this isn't a myth anymore, is the truth! These guys from Total Fury were going crazy on stage up until the very end when they finished with a cover from SSD "Gotta Stick Together". It had been a while since I jumped in a tall "pile-along" pointing my finger and shouting the chorus. It was a great time in my opinion. Here's the best shots taken: