Punk got me into hardcore and there is no denying it...I used to listen to a lot of the 90s skater punk type shit, you know the likes of NOFX, Pennywise, Strung Out, Lagwagon, Frenzal Rhomb, Guttermouth etc etc...
Frenzal Rhomb did a tour with Toe To Toe and a band called Ballpoint played..the whole show was insane, this band ballpoint played fast melodic punk, but it was alot harder than what i was used to listening to..Toe To Toe just scared the shit out of me, i was only about 16 or 17 but where i grew up in Perth, punk and hardcore weren't really the cool thing..
In fact everyone at my school was into drugs, adidas parachute pants, 2pac and Wu-Tang, and the majority of them are dead shits...Every time i go back there i remember why i moved out of there, even my friends disappoint me with their values and ethics, racism is pretty huge there, something I'm not proud of but i did play a part in it as well...I wont get into the whole thing, but the place is a lot better than it used to be, at least my little brother isn't scared to walk down the street by himself..
Anyway this place called The Pit Theater popped up as a local venue for all sorts of bands..this was before the day the were just hardcore shows in Perth, it was usually a mixed bill of a Punk band, a HC band, a SKA band and even Funk bands...Me and my mates saw a flier for a show there with Ballpoint or Boredumb playing, these two bands where growing to be our favorites at that point in our lives, we would go to any aa festival to see them, like yak it up, or the Scarborough fest
But we went and saw one of these two bands play a show there one night after school, it was only about a km or 2 away from our house, so we all met up there and didn't know what to expect...about 20 kids where there, not including the band dudes, and it was this really small little space, with a stage, and steps to sit on, kinda like a mini amphitheater indoors...we sat down and some band called "Negative Reply" played and that was the first time i saw people floorpunching and doing roundhouses into (onto) the crowd (of about 5 kids at that point)...this was so funny to us, we used to try to copy the dudes because we didn't know what they where doing, so we would just pull the piss and do the same ...

sometime later in 2001 a band from interstate called "MINDSNARE" were set to play there...I heard them off a local radio show run by Dion Boredumb and sXe Pete from the States..it was called Fists Of Fury, and this show is where i heard bands like found my direction, arms reach, reaching forward, ten yard fight, bane, unit pride, the nerve agents for the very first time...i would tape the show each week and than listen to it in my car on the way to and from tafe each day, and than take the tape inside and listen to it some more...I would than catch on to the songs i liked, write em down and try to search for mp3s, but this was before the fast internet revolution so it was hard to track any of it down...buying CD's wasn't really my thing, mum and dad kind of made me think i shouldn't own much shit, i guess because we were fairly poor with a big family, and only dad working...
anyway i took some photos at this show, someone after the show was speaking about me being this hyperactive kid running around from the front to the back trying to take photos...I was kind of frantic trying to take a good photo, because my mate lent me his camera, and i totally forgot how to use it, so i took about 100 snaps, and only a few came out...here they are







there are also more photos from this show that are on Adam Mossman/Annihilate's old online zine..you can check them out
here .