Hated Youth
In 1980 we hated the jocks and the jocks hated us. Everybody hated us, and they especially hated Eric for his big head, and I carried a golf club with me everywhere I went, for the jocks. That was after a jeep load of jocks attacked me while I waited for a bus. I got the best punches in though, on that one jock, bloodied up his face good. Back then, the only thing a jock was good for was killing, and we had a song about killing them along with all of their hippie counterparts. We had a song about killing all of the kids in Gainesville, the ones who came to see us when we played there along with Terminal Fun and Roach Motel and The Flower Children; that song was called SOCIAL OBLITERATION. My teachers thought I was retarded. And we played songs about killing our parents, and raping Ted Bundy's wife. We didn't give a fuck about Ronald Reagan or world politics, though on occasion we pretended to in our songs. Blame that on Eric who wrote BAN THE BIBLE and, after getting labeled a homophobe, wrote I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE GAY. I preferred songs about stealing babies from shopping carts and fighting with my mother. Gary thought the hamburgers from Wendy's smelled like pussy. We ate a lot of those hamburgers, and it was thanks to those pussy-smelling hamburgers that we met what was to become the baddest and the fastest drummer in the south, David Magoo who, when we were going through the drive-thru asked us if we needed a drummer. It was David who came up with the line, "I wanna join the KKK, kill off the minority." That was from our big hit HARDCORE RULES. One day after practice, driving through the neighborhood, some girl in a Bug shot us a bird and David drove after her, swinging a chain outside of the window and screaming crazy shit. Our parents were bigots. Nazi skins were bullshit, mythical in our town at the time, but could only be, when their time would come, jocks that had crossed over from jockdom into the punky land of stupid kids with nothing to do. Cops whistled at me, told me I was cute. We were the only ones around with weird haircuts, triple mohawks and mange cuts. Naturally, we made fun of everybody, ourselves included. KILL A PUNK ROCKER! Why not? It wasn't that it was a bad world--everything about it could only be perfect--just that we needed a place of sanity to pocket all of our good energy.
-John Hodges, guitarist of Hated Youth, 2000
"Who the hell is Hated Youth?" That's what I wanted to know in 1983. By August 2000, I still had no answer. But let's jump back to 1983 for a second. My friend Chris played me this crucial slab of wax, a five band, thirteen song 7" compilation called, "We Can't Help It If We're From Florida." As I have written elsewhere, this classic piece of plastic defined Florida hardcore punk in 1983. It brought our steamy, dick-shaped state to the attention of the punk rock world. It was our "This Is Boston Not L.A." It was our "Flex Your Head." And what a record! Included on the comp were Sector 4 (Tallahassee), Morbid Opera (Ft. Lauderdale), Rat Cafeteria (Tampa), Roach Motel (Gainesville) and the subject of this essay, Hated Youth. This Tallahassee hardcore quartet had the mighty honor of opening the comp with their one-two-fuck-you, pounding anthem, "Hardcore Rules." And who could forget that opener? Hated Youth had three songs on the comp: "Hardcore Rules," "Ted Bundy" and "Army Dad." But that was their only vinyl conquest. I -- and probably hundreds of others -- hoped that some day this band would release something else. It never happened. There were stories of an unreleased demo, but as far as I knew, the band dropped off the face of the earth.
In August 2000, I used something akin to those exact words in an article about the history of Florida punk and hardcore records. The article was written for Maximum Rocknroll (see MRR #210, November 2000 issue) but, just for the hell of it, I decided to post it on my web page. A day or two later, Hated Youth singer Gary Strickland walked into my record store, introduced himself and handed me a cassette with 13 Hated Youth songs. Three of the songs were those from the Florida comp, but ten I had never heard -- ten more songs recorded at the same time. We talked for a few hours. ("Who the hell is Hated Youth?" Finally, I had my answer.) Gary told me pretty much the whole history of the band. Apparently there is even a full album worth of material recorded in 1985 with a different singer! At some point, I told Gary that I'd love to release the songs as a 7". Gary needed a little convincing; he wasn't sure that anyone would care. I told him that there were lots of people out there, like me, dying to hear more Hated Youth. In November 2000, I took the tape into a Tampa recording studio for some restoration. (Unfortunately, one song, "Five Sides," was too badly damaged to be used.) Hardcore rules!
-Bob Suren, el presidente de Burrito Records
November 2000
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