Payback Time: Joe Hardcore is Making Up For Years of Being an Asshole.

Image by Sarah Hull. Text  by Lauren Arute.

Joe Mckay’s mother took him to see Metallica when he was 7-years old.

That, in combination with copious amounts of watching Mtv’s Headbangers Ball with his cousins, led to Mckay’s interest in music that went beyond the mainstream.

And his mother booked hardcore shows.

“It was thrust upon me,” he says. “The people who I was interested in were people who weren’t normal, everyday people. They were people who were listening to music that no one else listened to.”

Mckay booked his first hardcore show in Philadelphia when he was only 15-years old.

Now 30, Mckay, known as Joe Hardcore, still books shows, including the annual multiple-day hardcore fest, This is Hardcore. This year’s event is a four-day spectacle starting on August 11.

He recalls being taught to resolve his problems with other children, starting at a very young age, by fighting. His mother would drag him by the shirt to the parents of boys he had issues with.

“Your son has a problem with my son,” he recalls his mother telling the other kid’s parents. “Let them fight and settle it.”

While growing up in rough and tumble Frankford, Mckay’s mother encouraged him to go to hardcore shows to keep him out of trouble. The first hardcore band Mckay saw was Sheer Terror. He was 13. And he quickly discovered that shows were a breeding ground for violence.

“It scared the hell out of me,” Mckay says. “It was street-level violence in a show atmosphere, something I’d never experienced before.”

At the same time, Mckay admits that the experience ignited a part of him that did have violent tendencies. Hardcore shows became an outlet for him to act on these tendencies.

When he was a teenager, he attended local hardcore shows with significantly older men, some who had “Made in Philly” tattooed across their foreheads, he says. Although he and his friends weren’t the biggest guys at shows, that didn’t stop them from starting fights, dancing with bricks in their schoolbags, “ninja-kicking” other show-goers and jumping on people standing in the back of the crowd.

The visible scars on his face and neck hint at the years of violence he had been immersed.

Mckay says he eventually built up a high level of apathy toward the world, which grew to the point of sociopathic violence, comparable, he says, to the mentality that soldiers are forced to take on during a war. He began involving himself in fights that he now describes as trivial.

“There was a reasoning then,” he says. “But 30-year old Joe thinks there was no reason. It was stupid.”

Mckay later became involved with Friends Stand United, which the FBI classifies as a street gang. Its members are anti-racist and straightedge, meaning they abstain from drinking alcohol and doing drugs. They resort to violence with the intent of “defending” hardcore shows from various racist gangs, such as white-power punks.

FSU had chapters in cities across the country, including Philadelphia. It is currently no longer present in Philadelphia’s hardcore scene.

Mckay gained notoriety after appearing on the History Channel’s Gangland program.

“I did that to clear my conscience,” he explains. “Instead, I got 8 minutes of infamy. Nobody saw the part where I took the FSU hat off and said ‘I want nothing to do with this anymore.’”

The violence at local hardcore shows is nowhere near as bad as it was a decade ago, Mckay says. He even periodically brings his 14-year-old daughter to his shows.

The whole hardcore scene has evolved, according to Mckay. When Mckay was growing up, he found out about new bands by going to South Street, looking through boxes and boxes of records, reading ‘zines, looking at show fliers and word of mouth.

“Now you can download an entire hardcore library that took me 20 years to get because of the Internet,” he says.

At every This is Hardcore fest though, there is a table with records for sale. Mckay says that will always be there. He feels the new hardcore culture has lost the ability to see, touch, and look through records.

Mckay toured steadily with several different bands, including Shattered Realm and Punishment, for almost 8 years, from 1998-2005. He says he’s grateful for the opportunity to go around the world despite the fact that he doesn’t come from a family that had a lot of money.

Touring was a humbling experience and was one of the factors that led to him changing his behavior at hardcore shows back home. He recalls being in Serbia and seeing first-hand how little its residents had.

The more he toured, the more he realized that fighting and ruining shows could lead to a small town losing their only venue.

Booking bands that kids never had the chance to see before, or standing at This is Hardcore fest amongst a sold-out crowd and knowing that he was responsible for it gives him a sense of pride.

“That’s ten times more rewarding than hiding from the police,” he says.

Mckay proudly admits he is willing to lose money on a show if it means it can help a smaller band gain some popularity. He helped Agitator, a hardcore band from Boyertown, Pennsylvania, by booking them on This is Hardcore last year. The band was subsequently able to tour the Mid-West.

He also feels strongly about organizing benefit shows in times of need.

“I have to make up for the multiple years of being an asshole, starting trouble, and ruining shows,” he says. “It’s my turn to facilitate and administer what goes on. It gives me a chance to re-live my own youth vicariously.”