Negative Approach.  Good grief.  Where to start...

I was around 13 or 14 when I first heard them, but like most of the best hardcore-punk bands, they had long since passed on to other things by the time I first discovered them.  Being five to ten years too young to have experienced the first generation of hardcore punk bands all of the bands I had been introduced to by relatives and friends were either making horrible records or quit playing altogether.  The "Youth Crew" era was in full swing with images of the same jocks who wanted to hand me a beating for loving the Dead Boys emblazoned on the record covers of what was considered "hardcore" (sans punk).  Admittedly, some of the music on those same albums was great, but I found it incredibly difficult to relate to upper-middle class/rich white boys whose worldview which consisted of standing hard and backing your "crew".  And, I did buy into it to that "scene" to the extent that for a long time I didn't drink, tried my hand at vegetarianism (although for less than altruistic reasons-no one likes colon cancer) and was more than willing to get myself into stupid self-inflicted brawls.  However, I was a poor white trash with anger issues from the east side of Akron Ohio who was ultimately too much of snotty, smart-assed, misanthropic punk to invest that much into the Champion gear wearing set for more than a couple years.John McConnell can tell you that as much as we liked Side By Side, Turning Point and the like, there was always the shadow of the Avengers, the aforementioned Dead Boys and the Dead Kennedys always looming about. 

 My perspective was greatly colored by my surroundings which was fraught with violence, drug abuse, alcoholism and the negative effects of Reaganomics.  As a young kid, I was fairly pissed and not good at expressing myself in a constructive manner.  I was not as smart as Jello, I was not good-looking like Penelope Houston and not as cool as Stiv.  It was difficult not to feel on the outside of a social group that supposedly consisted of outsiders.

Then I discovered Negative Approach.

On most summer days during the mid to late 80's my friends and I would trek from where we lived (a housing project across from the Arlington Plaza) all the way to Firestone Park. On other days we would catch a bus to downtown Akron to hit the ramps at an abandoned BF Goodrich factory.  Several skaters associated with the loose knit A.S.S. (Akron Skate Scene) had built a skate park of sorts on the third floor (or was it the fourth?) that could only be accessed from metal stairs from the backside of the building.  Back then, Downtown Akron was not the quasi-college town, night-life center it is now.  Due to the exodus of the rubber industry beginning as early as the late 1960's-early 1970's, Downtown (and Akron at large) had the appearance of a post-apocalyptic film set.  It was a bombed out and desolate place. The only reasons that you ever went downtown was to either go to the library, catch your transfer bus on the metro line, buy and/or deal drugs, or like any self-respecting punk rock kid, "Fuck shit up".  Mild hyperbole aside, Akron was not always such a pleasant place to grow up as it was a small city with some very big city problems.

 I never skated, but nearly all of my friends did as well as my kid brother Brent, who was an 11 year old phenom.  But despite not being a skater, I accompanied my friends and my brother on those excursions out of the sheer boredom that comes with an adolescence accompanied by near abject poverty.  Any excuse to escape the projects was a welcome one.  On nearly all of our trips to either The Park or BF I always had my boombox and a collection of cassettes for us to listen to throughout the day and Negative Approach was part of the soundtrack to at least a half dozen summers. 

(Negative Approach live - Akronites will note the 0DFX tag in the background)

One of those summers I was given a tape from an out of town cousin of a friend.  I forget his name, but he was visiting from somewhere out west when we were introduced.  He skated and therefore spent the better portion of the summer with us.  As a gift he dubbed a tape that he had brought with him and gave me a copy.  It was a black cassette with hastily scrawled band names on the cover.  There were no titles listed for any of the songs, just numbers, so I never new the names of the songs.  Of course back then there was no internet, none of this stuff could be found at any record stores in the malls, in magazines or anywhere.  One of the bands listed on the cover of the cassette was simply identified as "N.A.".  I found out a while later, after some investigating what the "NA" on the tape stood for -Negative Approach. The tape also had Die Kreuzen, Crucifucks, Necros, Mistfits and Black Flag.  I knew the Misfits and Black Flag, the others were new.  However, of all the bands, new or old, Negative Approach was the absolute best.

Of all the hardcore punk bands, none come close to articulating the frustration and hostility that I felt, quite like Negative Approach.  In spite of all of the anger emitted by the band, it was intelligent without being condescending as so many of the more politically inclined punk bands.  Yet, Negative Approach felt very urban, but without being a suburban gangster cliche characterized by so many of the stompy "noo yawk" hardcore bands.  There was so much about what the band represented, on a purely visceral level, that I could relate to.  Sure a lot of hardcore punk bands sounded and were very angry.  None were as ferocious as Negative Approach.  

Negative Approach achieved their sound without dabbling in metal as so many of their peers (regrettably) chose to do later.  Rather, they looked to their hometown of Detroit, a rust belt, mid-western city decimated by the loss of the auto industry, much like my abandoned hometown.  Detroit was home, of course, to the Stooges and MC5.  The brutish quality of The Stooge's sound can be found in Negative Approach along with other more atypical elements such as blues.  John Brannon's howls can be seen a logical extension of Howling Wolf and the lyrics have an intensely emotional element seldom found in many early hardcore punk bands.  The only band I feel that comes close is maybe, Black Flag.  I sincerely wish I could have seen Negative Approach during the early hardcore era before they broke up initially in 1984.  Unfortunately, I was a mere eleven years old and would not hear them for the first time for another two to three years.

Negative Approach - rehearsal photo(?)

Negative Approach reunited in 2006 and they still play the occasional show, touring sporadically.  I caught them in Cleveland at Now That's Class shortly after.  Typically, with a few exceptions, I don't go for reunions.  They usually smack of a cash grab and I'm always afraid that reality will destroy my own romanticized notions of what a band was really like in a live setting.  But, I was not disappointed.  I may not have the context to judge them in light of their early performances, but I can say, by any measure, Negative Approach is a great live band.  They were loud, angry, tight and I was exhilarated. It immediately took me back to a time when I was much younger and held on tightly to the music that kept me sane.

I went to that show with my friend Josh and my fiancee who had no prior experience with Negative Approach.  She had seen Easy Action (John Brannon's current band, who are awesome in their own right) and enjoyed them, but they are a different animal from Negative Approach altogether.  To give her a frame of reference we listened to them on the way to the show, but she was completely underwhelmed.  She couldn't see why Josh and I were so excited to see this band.  I told her she was crazy and didn't know what she was talking about.  

After the show she told me that we were right, Negative Approach was and is awesome.

Okay.  My favorites?  Well, they did one 7" Ep and an Lp titled "Tied Down" during their first go around.  Both have been reissued in recent years by Touch & Go records.  I'm gonna have to say I favor the Lp because of the songs "Evacuate" and "Dead Stop".  There is also a compilation that Touch & Go put out a number of years ago that contain both the Ep and Lp on one Cd along with their track from the "Process of Elimination" compilation as well as a live set.  If you haven't heard them yet, as I am sure most of the people reading this have,  now is a good as anytime to check them out.

Thanks for checking in.