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This is the kind of writing that attracted me to Substack. I am grateful to have read your comparison of these two scenes.

My band at that time was not quite cool enough for the Middle East. Instead we drove from Richmond to play an empty show in the basement of The Rat. I remember that failure with unadulterated joy.

For what it’s worth, I can’t help but wonder if the “arch, smart, poisonous” atmosphere of a certain corner of 90s music left a lot of us floundering in a sea of irony. We were a hard people! On the other hand—at least we thought the culture had enough value to bother being snobs about it.

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I love "scene" documentaries, thanks for covering these. I also just the other day was reminded of the Slint documentary, "Breadcrumb Trail," watched the first 8 minutes of it for a taste, and am planning on watching the full thing as soon as I can set the time aside to do so. I also need to re-watch the doc about the old Cleveland hardcore scene, "Cleveland's Screaming" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTJaNIVhumE) sometime soon, though I was never really that into hc myself.

I played at the Middle East, playing bass with Mark Edwards in My Dad Is Dead, in, I think, 1989. I don't remember much about the experience, but I remember the odd decor inside the club. That was my first time going to Boston, and the main things I remember from that trip was learning that in Boston, if you want black coffee, tell them "no" if they ask if you want your coffee "regula," and that home fries there come with red peppers cut up into them.

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Such histories are immensely useful as treasures to be found by those for whom the Official histories of the Nostalgia Industrial Complex are not enough.

Collectives are hard, tho; they were hard then and harder now. Most squats + DIY venues I've interacted with were the desperate, "Final options" for their creators and operators; + lacked the luxury of space for intentional creation and curation. There was simply nowhere else to go for them; + the "arts community" of the times were no help to them at all.

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