• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

1970s Richmond Punk Band Insinuations Gets Vinyl Reissue

Daniel Berti | June 15, 2018

Topics: Bill Draper, Feel It Records, music, punk, rva music, rva punk, Sam Richardson, The Insinuations

Bill Draper is a fast talker. His grey blazer and slacks are a hair too large, and a worn cap conceals his unruly mop of gray-black hair. He speaks with a sneering, southern-tinged drawl that can be as sweet and funny as it is biting. It has been over 30 years since his band Insinuations called it quits, but he still speaks fondly about the early days of Richmond punk.

“From the very beginning we understood that it was absolutely essential to develop a punk identity,” Draper said. “We wanted to separate ourselves from all these old hippies and leftovers from the 60s and early 70s.”

With that in mind, he formed the band in the late 1970s in Richmond with Linda-Marie Firmin, Lynn Abbott, and Paul Lipscombe. The four-piece liked the punk records coming out at the time, but they also shared a love for old blues records and R&B. They played about a dozen shows alongside notable Richmond punk bands of the era like Beex, The Barriers, and The Heretics, and recorded a single, “Prompt Critical,” in 1980 before breaking up in 1981.

Their songs were politically satirical, influenced by first wave punk but also by R&B, rockabilly and old blues numbers. Their varied musical interests gave Insinuations a unique sound that set them apart from other Richmond bands of the era.

“We weren’t a pure punk band, and punk purists took a dim view of us because we were eclectic,” said Draper.

The sleeve of the record, emblazoned with a bright red nuclear hazard symbol and the words “Radiation Hazard” printed boldly on the cover, cemented their status as an outsider band in the Richmond punk scene. The A-side, “Prompt Critical,” is an off-kilter, new-wave blues number about a nuclear reactor meltdown, written in the wake of the nuclear reactor failure at Three Mile Island in 1979.

The warped guitar playing and bluesy bass lines on the song are played with blatant disregard for punk trends of the time, a rarity in the Richmond punk canon. The B-Side, “(My Head Is Made Of) U.S. Muscle,” is a more straightforward punk number. It is a socially critical piece that rails against nationalistic ideas, and insidious, “my country, right or wrong,” attitudes of the time.

“Satire was my main thing,” said Draper of his lyrics. “I’ve got a political vibe, but I’m not as obnoxious about it as I used to be.”

The band only made 100 copies of the record, and of those, only about 25 are still known to exist. Sam Richardson, owner and operator of Virginia’s Feel It Records, tracked down Draper earlier this year, as well as a copy of the record with the intention of reissuing the single. He said he found out about the record from the owner of Steady Sounds, Marty Key, who scored a copy of the record at a flea market several years ago.

“It didn’t look like any punk records from Richmond at the time,” said Richardson. “It had all the subject matter and style of a cool Killed By Death-esque band, but it was also very local and unknown.”

Bill Draper, Photo By: Daniel Berti

Richardson was impressed by the DIY attitude of the band and the strength of the guitar playing, as well as the cover art and the subject matter. “It all connected for me, and I think it will for other people too,” he said.

This reissue will not be the first for Feel It Records. In the last few years, the small independent label has dug up and reissued records by obscure regional punk bands Lackey Die and The Landlords; seminal punk bands from Richardson’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.

In the years since Insinuations disbanded, Draper has been living and working in Richmond. He occasionally performs and records under the name W.R. Draper, a folky pop project inspired by street performers and traveling musicians. As for Insinuations, a full reunion is not on the table, but Draper said he will be performing some Insinuations songs at the record release show on July 5 at Little Saint.

In the meantime, you can snag your copy of the Insinuations’ “Prompt Critical” 7″ from 1980 here. Its limited to 400 copies so get it while you can.

Gone, But Not Forgotten: The History of Punk House 805 W. Cary Street

Daniel Berti | June 7, 2018

Topics: Chokehold, Flesh Eating Creeps, Four Walls Falling, house shows, IPECAC, punk, rva music, rva punk

Earlier this month, nearly half of the row houses and storefronts on the 800 block of West Cary Street were demolished to make way for the construction of 805W, a controversial $18 million 100-unit apartment complex that will sit at the border of the Oregon Hill neighborhood on the corner of Laurel and Cary streets. The distinctive, historic architecture of those buildings, several of which were built before the Civil War, will be replaced by a hulking residential complex that stands in harsh contrast to the neighborhood surrounding it.

805 W. Cary St. Photo By: Daniel Berti

The erasure of those buildings came as a shock to many, but the loss of historic Richmond architecture is not the only story. The house at 805 W. Cary St., now razed, was the central spot for punk and hardcore shows here from 1992 to 1999, and was part of the vibrant 90s music scene in Richmond. The loss of the building itself is of no consequence to Richmond punk history, but it is indicative of the cultural changes that have happened in Richmond over the last 20years as it has become a more attractive destination for young professionals.

The house was a hub for local and touring acts at the time, and like many long-running house show venues, it was a revolving door for musicians, artists, and activists. Taylor Steele, frontman for Richmond hardcore band Four Walls Falling, lived at the house early on and did much of the booking. He said that the band also practiced in the basement of the house for several years, right around the time they were writing the songs that would appear on their second album, Food For Worms.

Four Walls Falling

“If there wasn’t a show going on, especially in the summer, then there wasn’t anything to do in Richmond,” said Steele. “There were no parties going on, no events going on.”

Steele, who still lives in Richmond, said that the city was not a great place for hardcore in the late 80s, but that all began to change in the 90s. First and second wave Richmond punk acts like White Cross, Beex, and Honor Role began to fade from view, and younger kids moved into the city to start bands that would hint at the modern hardcore style that Richmond is known for today. 805 W. Cary was on the periphery of this cultural shift, and hosted touring hardcore acts from all over the country.

Flesh Eating Creeps, Steve Ritt

“Our place was more for bands who were on tour but couldn’t get a show at a club,” said Steele. “Probably every punk and hardcore band from Canada that went on tour stopped in that basement.”

Occasionally, however, more prominent bands would request a show. Ontario straightedge band Chokehold played there after their concert in Virginia Beach was canceled, and California crust punk band Dystopia played a show there around the same time. Other notable shows that happened there were short-lived Richmond band, Ipecac, and Arkansas pop-punk band Red 40.

Steele said that they often let touring punk and hardcore bands crash at their house, even if they were playing a different venue that night. “When people needed something, we were there for them,” he added.

Flesh Eating Creeps

Elana Effrat was the first person to move into the house in 1992 as a sophomore at VCU. She said that it was an invigorating time to be involved in the punk and hardcore scene in Richmond and that she and her roommates moved into the house with the intention of doing shows in the basement. To organize shows, Effrat said that she communicated with bands primarily through letter writing since cellphones were still in their primitive stages.

“It was such a unique time,” she said. “It was a real community, and everything was done through word of mouth.”

Greg Wells and Chris L. Terry lived at 805 Cary towards the end of its tenure as a show house, in the late 90s. The residents of the house at that time were activist-oriented and held strong political views. Terry, former vocalist for Flesh Eating Creeps, now an author living in Los Angeles, said that the house did not have a reputation as a party house, rather the residents were more focused on playing in bands.

Flesh Eating Creeps

“805 was usually a pretty sober, music-focused environment. We had the reputation of being the fun police because we didn’t want it to turn into a party house,” Terry said. “There was a lot going on in the late 90s though. It was the sweet spot between the early 90s punk, gen X, alternative culture boom and the early 2000s gentrification and VCU expansion that made being an artist in the city harder and more expensive.”

Wells said that the residents of the house at that time were heavily involved in Food Not Bombs and with an anarchist collective called General Strike. They did anti-poverty organizing, produced a quarterly newsletter, and helped orchestrate a massive takeover of Monroe Park in 1998. The legacy of the house, Wells said, stretched out well beyond the 90s, as several of the residents of 805 went on to form an anarchist collective in Oregon Hill and eventually bought the Flying Brick Library in 2002,  a radical lending library and community space on Pine Street which offered books, zines, and periodicals,on class, labor, feminism, sex, queer issues, immigration, anarchism, and more. 

805 W. Cary, Image courtesy Google Maps, 2017

The cultural shift that has taken place in Richmond over the last two decades has been dramatic. At the time, said Terry, “it was cheap to rent a big house with your friends, work a couple days a week at a restaurant, and have a band.”

The gentrification and revitalization of the city in recent years has been a mixed bag for many residents, and it has been particularly hard on musicians and artists, as DIY show spaces like 805 West Cary have become untenable in the current economic climate. Richmond’s rent prices have increased substantially as developers have descended on the city, and the 805W apartment complex on Cary Street is just the tip of the iceberg, which could be anywhere in the neighborhood if $650 to over $1,000 for a one bedroom. 

“It was so sudden and fast that people were caught off guard,” said Steele. “It seems like everyone’s punch drunk on it, like what do we do? How do we fight this thing?”

Terry said that he was not surprised that the buildings on the 800 block of West Cary were being replaced, but that he does not agree with it.

“I do not like it when an organization with a lot of money displaces people with less money by constructing something for people with more money. Capitalism doesn’t help people,” he said. “We thought they were selling and tearing down 805 W. Cary when they evicted us in 1999 so it’s funny that it actually took almost 20 years for it to happen. I’ve been mentally prepared for this for awhile.”

And while the physical house may be gone and already in the process of becoming something different entirely, the memories of 805 W. Cary St., and the legacy it left behind will live on.

 

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

 

Photos: A Glimpse into Richmond’s Hardcore Punk Scene Ahead of Exhibit at Vinyl Conflict

John Donegan | March 1, 2018

Topics: hardcore music, punk music, rva hardcore, rva punk, Vinyl Conflict Record Store

It’s no secret that hardcore punk rock has played a major role in shaping Richmond’s music rich scene and contributed to its culture, evolving and growing over time with more and more bands, and a steadfast fanbase that followed it from its early underground days at small house shows and DIY spaces, to larger venues in town. In September, Richmond photographer Cindy Hicks gave us a glimpse into the fans behind the genre back in the early 80s, and this Friday, Chris Boarts Larson will showcase the Richmond hardcore punk scene from the late 90s to the early 2000s in a photo exhibit at Vinyl Conflict.

The RVA Hardcore Punk Photo Show will run through the end of March and features in-depth archived photos and memorabilia of bands dating back to 1997-2002, the golden years of Richmond hardcore punk. The photo showcase will feature prominent bands such as Avail, Strike Anywhere, Darkest Hour, Ann Berreta, Hatebreed, Municipal Waste, plus many more. Larson, the veteran punk nomad behind the exhibit, has documented the scene in Richmond since the late 80s. 

“Most of the bands are from Richmond but also included are international touring bands that played in Richmond,” said Larson. “This is by no means all the bands that played in Richmond, nor all the bands that I photographed in Richmond during this time.  But it’s a selection of some favorites that represent those here in RVA.”

The photo show will feature handpicked photos from Larson’s beat in Richmond, from zip disks to floppy disks, the material featured are recherché Larson personally handpicked while scouring through the various confines of outdated technology, providing rare interview columns, zine reviews, and timeless live band photography otherwise lost to the dead space of time. And after talking with Vinyl Conflict owner Bobby Egger, she knew the local record store would be the perfect place to showcase the photos. 

Four Hundred Years, Twisters {Strange Matter} June 2000

“Bobby and I have been talking about doing a photo exhibit of some of my band photos at Vinyl Conflict for awhile now and we decided to focus on just Richmond,” she said. “Because it’s a small space and I have deep archives of photos, we needed to start with a narrow focus.”  

Larson is behind punk fanzine Slug & Lettuce, which was based out of Richmond and captured the DIY punk scene and the community that loved it, along with band photography and punk art from 1987 until 2007. She began to foster the idea of creating a zine while attending State College in Pennsylvania around the late 80s, finding a passion with the talent-heavy area of the time and inspiration by earlier works like Maximum Rocknroll and Profane Existence. After a trip to England, Larson came across a pub named “Slug & Lettuce”, and the rest is history.

The free quarterly zine focused around the punk scenes all along the east coast, with Larson making trips to shows in Pittsburgh and New York, seeing bands like Agnostic Front, the Descendents, Fugazi, JFA, and other punk legends still amidst their salad days.

Avail at Twisters {Strange Matter} April 1999

Bouncing around living situations in Boston and Pennsylvania, Larson eventually settled in New York, where the zine took the next step in its own evolution. The fanzine evolved into a ‘newsprint tabloid’, dropping the glue stick and scissors for feature interviews with upcoming bands and endless material from the non-stop punk scene in a sleepless city.But by the mid-90s, Larson was itching to get out of NYC. 

“I did a lot of traveling and touring with bands.  I met the Avail guys, traveled with them, and had a few other good friends living in Richmond. After visiting a few times I kinda fell in love with Richmond,” she said. 

Larson moved shop to Richmond in 1997 and continued publishing Slug & Lettuce for another 10 years until the final release in 2007 with its 20-year anniversary issue, the 90th edition. Since then, Larson has solely focused on archiving the excess of historical treasures online, compiling years of timeless punk history into formatted archives accessible for anyone with WiFi to indulge.

Municipal Waste, Alley Katz, April 2002

And with this RVA Hardcore Punk Exhibit, fans of the genre and fans of those bands and those that were there for all those shows and sweaty, gritty nights over the years in Richmond will get to relive their younger years through these archived photos.

“I spent the last decade reflecting on my years in NYC and my years with Slug & Lettuce, only to realize that I’ve been in Richmond for 20 years, which is longer than anywhere else, so, 20 years of Richmond seemed like the perfect focus for my next project,” she said, reflecting on her project. “Hopefully, this is the first of several exhibits to cover the years since.”

The show is free and open to the public, premiering at the Vinyl Conflict record store at 324 S. Pine St. Prints of the featured photos will be for sale to order, with the first 10 of each being signed and numbered by Larson.

Photos By: Chris Boarts Larson, Top Photo: Strike Anywhere

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Punks for Presents celebrates 11 years with four shows & 12 holiday cover bands to benefit Children’s Hospital of Richmond

Amy David | December 8, 2016

Topics: benefit concert, Children's Hospital of RIchmond, holiday, Punks For Presents, RVA metal, rva punk, World Of Mirth

Metalheads dissatisfied with mainstream Christmas carols can get into the holiday spirit this weekend and next at the 11th annual Punks for Presents concert, a series of shows around town featuring holiday-themed cover bands to benefit the Children’s Hospital of Richmond.
[Read more…] about Punks for Presents celebrates 11 years with four shows & 12 holiday cover bands to benefit Children’s Hospital of Richmond

Punx Picnic VOL. 3 to bring punk, metal and hardcore bands to Strange Matter and 25 Watt 9/11-9/12

Amy David | September 9, 2015

Topics: 25 Watt, music fest, punk music, punx picnic, rva punk, strange matter, Vinyl Conflict

Are you ready for all the face-melting punk your weak little body can handle in two days?
[Read more…] about Punx Picnic VOL. 3 to bring punk, metal and hardcore bands to Strange Matter and 25 Watt 9/11-9/12

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]