When the opportunity to shoot Scream in DC came along we needed the right photographer for the job. DC has long had a history with the US Hardcore Punk scene and so we need a punk that was up to the challenge. Which is why we sent photojournalist Dominic Gwinn along. More used to shooting riots and warzones we sent him into the moshpit instead.
Scream Returns to the Stage To Tell Us Punk’s Not Dead
Dec 7th 2023
It was the kind of show that, if you’re a good parent, you bring your kids to see. Not just because you want to raise your kids right by chauffeuring them to some obnoxious bubblegum concert with lip-synching dancers, or simply encouraging them to embrace the weird, but by introducing them to some of the best goddamn musicians to have ever gripped a guitar, a pair of sticks or screamed into a microphone.
And, goddamn it, there were some great parents who brought their kids to see Scream at the Black Cat in Washington DC on December 7, 2023.
XK Scenario opened the show with such a blistering performance that their guitarist’s hands were bleeding by the end of the set. And in a testament to the American healthcare system, or lack thereof, the band joked that people should by merch in case there were any medical bills.
Soulside, another DC legend who’s been touring with Scream after releasing their first new album in years last year, didn’t skip a beat. Tearing up the stage with political jams that are as poignant today as they were in the 1990s.
But it’s hard to comprehend the utter chaos that, Scream, one of the pioneers of DC hardcore, can still bring after 40 years. And on a Thursday. The banalities of normal life and the inescapable tragedy of death, like that of drummer Kent Stacks, were set aside when the lights dimmed and the amps cranked.
With the UK’s Gizz Butt filling in on guitar, the band launched into “DC Special,” the titular single off their new album. But once the band started the classic, “Hell ‘Nah,” with the ghostly voice of Stacks echoing through the club, a fucking wormhole opened up in the middle of the club’s black and white checkerboard floor and sucked the crowd into a frenzy.
When one seasoned punk in a faded leather jacket mounted the stage and flung himself into the crowd, he landed with comical thud. The crowd struggled to peel his ass off the floor lest the raging pit swallow his soul. But the bastard just bounced up with a toothless smile and a defiant fist raised to the sky, then leapt into the vortex anyway. There was never a chance to ask if he’d just knocked out those teeth, or if that was just part of his character.
A father and daughter who drove down from Annapolis, Maryland told us her friends in the local School of Rock classes were going to be jealous. Her father said it was his daughter’s idea to see Scream, adding that he liked turning his daughter on to different music, like Scream. And there they stood, pressed against the front of the stage, earplugs be damned.
When asked about going to a show on a school night, they both laughed. “Well,” her father said, “She has a dentist appointment LATE tomorrow morning! I think we’ll be fine.”
It was proof positive that punk’s not dead. It might have more gray hair and look worse than it ever did back when Reagan and Thatcher were making the world safe for the rich and religious right, but good punks don’t die. Some way and somehow, they and everything punk stands for, always survives.
Words and Photos: Dominic Gwinn
