To this day, I have zero talent with an instrument and have never been in anything resembling a good band, though I tried anyway. I was always a “writer,” though. I always had a way with words. Hardly the right ones most of the time, but I was never shy with an opinion.
I always considered my place as future historian of the times, humbly, of course. I kid, this is and was very arrogant of me, but you can’t stop me. I knew that one day, I would be called upon to remember and relate what went down back in the day, so I kept my eyes open. Even when I barely could.
I was never on the stage unless I was jumping off it, but I was rarely not in the pit. Here’s some of that. It may not be accurate all the time, but there’s no test at the end, so relax. — Christian Detres
Tim Barry just reminded me of one of the most impactful punk shows of my life.
At some point in 1992, a date Tim has written down in a notebook somewhere, I went to see my Freeman High School friends Russ Jones, Mark Avery, and Leer Baker join their homie from Godwin, Thomas Barnett, at The Metro to open for AVAIL as Inquisition.
I was already a huge fan, though the only recordings available were piss-poor, and the T-shirt I had just bought from their “manager,” Max, ruined my clothes in the laundry.
I had heard about AVAIL but hadn’t seen them live yet. I was curious, sure, but I was not opposed to just going to the Bidder’s Suite after Inquisition got off stage.
Me, my brother, my cousin James, and Donovan Greer trekked down to Laurel and Broad to get loud, be weird, dance, jump, punch, kick/get kicked, and not stop until we sweated the aggression away.
Inquisition was a riot, of course, as they would continue to be until breaking up and seeding the lineups of Strike Anywhere, Ann Beretta, Sixer, River City High, and others.
But then AVAIL came on.
No, I don’t remember what they opened with, but it was probably “March.” I don’t remember what they closed with, but it was probably “Bob’s Crew.” I’m not sure if they had added “Pink Houses” to the setlist yet.
I do remember, however, that I had never been in a room with that much explosive energy before. A bomb went off as it dawned on me this was the sound Richmond makes when it feels strong. This was Richmond at its most confident, virile, compassionate, and together.
Management oversold the show, and it was shoulder to shoulder, butts to nuts in there. If you remember the space, you remember the hot smell of 500 excited and defiant teenagers with little penchant for bathing. I do know that a bunch of you who were there that night will probably read this article. Collect your ’memberberries, cuz we’re going there.
This wasn’t an NYHC show at 7A, though, where if you fell in the pit, you’d likely get stomped into the beer-stained floor, at least until that song ended. This was Richmond, which famously boasted a community of punks not unlike a militia, a sneering mob of family with their fists all pointed in the same direction.
This was when Richmond could be called Fist City without a hint of irony.
Make no mistake, many fists were thrown, sometimes at the drop of a hat, but it wasn’t rabid violence that gave us the name. It was defined by what I was feeling that night. Community. Pride.
Appropriately, a few blocks away from the long-gone grocery store named, you guessed it, Community Pride.
And that was all AVAIL. Inquisition may have been a silver, surfing herald for me, but AVAIL was Galactus.
Tim Barry growled, stomped, jumped, screamed, and preached unity, solidarity, and action into a shitty mic on a shitty stage to 500 people in a 330-person-capacity room. I’d say you couldn’t catch that lightning in a bottle more than once, but, fuck, they did it at every show. Still do.
One of us, probably James, bought Satiate that night on cassette, and we listened to it full blast with the windows down all the way back to the West End in my brother’s VW Jetta. I’m pretty sure that’s the night I became part of RVA. It was the night I stopped having to preface my story with “I’m from New York.” This was home. These were my people, and AVAIL was the stick figure carrying our flag.
As Tim and I would discuss on the phone, RVA doesn’t mean what it means to most today. That term has devolved from wolf to Pomeranian as the edgy streets of our youth turned into Pantera Breads, Shitpotles, and timid VCU freshmen.
This magazine didn’t adopt that name because anyone respectable called it that, even in 2005. Back then, it was shorthand for what that energy I described above meant. It was us. Us against every single bow-tied, cucumber sandwich-eating, exclusive club of golfers too scared or complicit to raise their voices against Confederate culture. You think it’s bad now…
Our gang of misfits, artists, outcasts, thinkers, drunks, volunteers, and leaders were RVA, a part of your history in this city you should know.
I drive down Broad Street these days and see that awful RVA monument (sculpture?), and I see a jumper on our train, a proverbial “hello, fellow kids.” I see it on the bumper of a police car, and I want to vomit.
Tim’s recollection of seeing the acronym scrawled in spray paint just west of Hell Block in 1988 is the moment he also understood what it meant. The cops and Venture Richmond could never take that away or water it down. It could only be the equivalent of a badass-looking kanji tattoo that says “Bear Cup Airplane.” A joke on them we will always laugh at.
This whole thing I’m writing here is based on a conversation I just had with Tim Barry about his new solo album, his ninth, Clear Blocks Ahead. At his suggestion and inspiration, it’s going to be about a lot more than that. That’s not to say the album doesn’t deserve column inches devoted to its praise, because it does. He and I agree it’s his best since Rivanna Junction (2006). He went on to say if he’s remembered for anything, it would be those two albums.
I’ll pepper my thoughts on the new songs as they bring up memories of Richmond glory, but it’ll be at my pace.
He answered the phone with a typical bright, slap-you-on-the-back friendly way, immediately turning my job into a hangout session. His effortlessly disarming authenticity is the equivalent of a surprise shot of whiskey from a red-nosed stranger at your favorite pub. This is one of his superpowers.
I dare you to find his company anything less than amazing. Unless you’re a fucking dick. In that case, I just dare you to be in his company, period.
Our punk has never been about pacifism. It was a warning of what you’d be facing should you harm someone unjustly. We were dying to throw hands, but only if provoked. But know, we are going to enjoy every second of that fight.
That said, we’d much, much rather just have a beer with you and share the bent joint in our sleeveless jean vest pocket.
Tim has been at the center of our counterculture’s collective identity since bands like Four Walls Falling, Breadwinner, BeeX, and Honor Role were passing the torch in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
His new album is a product of all these times and more since, and is nothing short of metarelevant to the stories and lump-in-throat callbacks to yesteryears.
Right now, he’s on a tour bus somewhere in Mississippi. He doesn’t know where, per se, but as far as he knows, it’s still Mississippi.
He tells me loudly about how we haven’t spoken in so long, and he’s right. It’s been at least a decade. I’ve seen everyone else in his old band a number of times. Joe Banks gifted me AVAIL merch literally the night I moved back to Richmond in 2021. I’ve run into Ed Trask at several art events since, and Gwomper, well, you can’t just name-check Gwomper.
It’s hard not to laugh at the thought of him, and we do. I recall smoking a LOT of weed with Gwomp on my rooftop in Brooklyn years ago, and Tim tells me a hilarious story of Gwomper desperately trying to buy a shoebox worth of it in Gainesville recently.
We talked about the days at the AVAIL house on Grace Street, between Lombardy and Allen, back when those were the borders of the most available flesh trade in town, populated by sex workers of every stripe who doubled as the best community vigilantes, ready to throw hands at anyone who should harass them.
I live on that block now. It’s beautiful, clean, and devoid of lipsticked Batmen/women. It’s diminished in cultural potency but is a nicer place to try to sleep, raise a family, and own a car that won’t get broken into.
There are no more burning couches on Hell Block, just the next block over, either, but those memories are better stories than they were realities. Glad they happened, though.
Funny, one of the “stick man with a flag” stickers from that grip of merch and T-shirts Joe gave me was slapped onto my car bumper immediately upon receiving it. Later that week, parked in front of the old AVAIL house several doors down from mine, I noticed the sticker was mid-peel, obviously a deliberate attempt to steal it from me.
A young punk of colorfully indeterminate gender smiled at me as I was unlocking the car door and said confidently, “I love your bumper sticker! You know, AVAIL used to live here!”
The cheeriness at being able to share this knowledge was adorkable, and I smiled back with an “I know!” and left it at that.
They were clearly the unsuccessful sticker thief, but that just made it all the sweeter. Joe had given me like 50 of ’em. Later that night, on a trip to the Meadow and Broad 7-Eleven, I dropped off a couple on their porch.
Tim laughed as I told this story and dropped a secret on me. He and his friends once hid a time capsule in that house, behind some plaster wall they repaired after busting it open. I promised not to give the address or the location of the bundle of who knows what is in there, but I don’t think he actually remembered either. He divulges doing this all over Richmond for some reason he can’t recall, but mentions it fondly.
Reminiscing always brings the obligation to compare back then to right now. The knee-jerk is always in the direction of the gilded, filthy past. I think we get wistful for the lost memory of “us” and not necessarily the lost city. We’ve changed. The world has changed. Sometimes you just want something to stay familiar.
Especially in these circles, anything that was broken or decrepit will always feel more like home than anything that’s been fixed or improved.
Take, for instance, track seven on the new album, “Miller and Rhoads.” The sign for the long-deceased Richmond-born department store of that name is still on the E. Broad building, so you should all know what I’m talking about.
Maybe it’s something we don’t do anymore, or maybe it’s just done in residential neighborhoods from the privacy of our cars, but Christmastime strolls downtown past this elaborately, yet artfully, festooned edifice are indelible in our memories. The lights and the smiling nods from other families walking by felt like community, too.
We talked about it for more than a minute. When he sings of the lights in the windows and on the facade on this track, I got a little misty. Nostalgia can be a kick in the balls as often as it is a kiss on the forehead.
More later. I’m gonna sit on this for a sec.
Main photo: press photo Avail from the 90s
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