REALISTIC? NIHILISTIC!
Dead End no more.
Hello again, NIHILISTIC readers. Back on Jan. 21 I wrote what I thought was my final NIHILISTIC entry, explaining I couldn’t stick around due to Substack’s Nazi problem. I took my ball and regrettably went home. Since then I’ve done much more reading on the Nazi problem and it appears to have been massively overblown. A narrative was seized upon and instead of waiting it out I went all knee-jerk and decided to fold up the NIHILISTIC tent and revive my See You Next Tue! (SYNT) newsletter. But SYNT isn’t the same entity as NIHILISTIC (feel free to subscribe if you’d like to see for yourself), the way I intended to keep myself on track towards an eventual NIHILISTIC book (after killing off NIHILISTIC there was an immediate drop-off in any new writing: it seems I need this feedback loop more than I knew). On the subject of feedback, I’d like to ask some questions about version 1.0 of the band Nihilistics (the one founded by me circa 1979):
How & when did you first learn of the band?
Did you buy the first EP or LP?
Did you see Nihilistics live prior to 1984? Where & when? What do you remember about the show?
Did you get to know any band members? Can you share details?
What did you think of the band? One of NYHC’s shining lights or…?
Feel free to join the chat, email me at chris@nihilisticbook.com or comment below.
I hope to revive weekly NIHILISTIC installments on Fridays or Saturdays, so keep your bloodshot eyes peeled.
Thanks,
Chris T.
First time I ever heard/of the band was on Pat Duncan’s show of WFMU. He played stuff live off the board and it blew me away. I was 13. I got the LP first. It was a few weeks after I heard the broadcast and maybe a week after my cousin saw the band play at CBGB. The album was dark shit to me. Certain bands just spooked me at that age. The Cold War era doom was strong with that album.
My first show at CBGB wasn’t until December 1984. It was a Flipper show and the Nihilistics did not play. I did see Mike from the Nihilistics fighting someone though and have a memory of him bleeding from his arm. I knew it was him because he looked as threatening and intense as he did in the pictures from the album. That guy straight up scared me! If that was New York hardcore I was happy to be from the goofy New Jersey scene haha!
I never met anyone from the band outright, but did listen to your show on WFMU for many years and sold some records via eBay to Ron.
I got the 7” in 1986 or something and it was sadly stolen in 1989. I found a 13th anniversary reissue when I lived in Berkeley California at Amoeba. It was $5 or something like that.
I don’t know why Nihilistics were sort of downgraded out of NYHC. I suppose it’s because no other band was like them. They were not a “mosh” band and not lower east side enough maybe? When I started going to New York shows everyone was mosh this and mosh that. It got old really fast for me. Then the whole youth crew crowd basically pushed me to other bands and scenes.