Vegan Up Yo Ass!

This post was originally for my wife's vegan blog here: http://cuppapixie.blogspot.com/

Hi Pixiepiners! I’ve been slowly educating Leslie on the most important subjects known to mankind and that is the history of punk/metal/hardcore. Sure she already had a fantastic taste in music and who would want to marry a woman that DIDN’T know every word and nuance of Bikini Kill’s “Suck My Left One?” Not me buddy, I ain’t no fool! Although she had some blank gaps in her musical knowledge when it came to “wind milling” and “breakdowns”, it’s just because she, unlike myself, has a more mature and intelligent taste in music. Well, except for Peaches, haha.

Leslie was unawares of the vegan movement in punk and hardcore and so I was showing her stuff on the Interbot one night and how even some metal dudes were all up in it. I offered to do a blog post for her and here it is. Now this is in no way Jose a definitive history or even factual, haha, so take it for it is. Come climb into the time machine as I set the dial to 1986…

Youth of Today

As far as I know, they were the first band to put vegetarianism into hardcore punk. I still love this video!! It’s so corny and hilarious and I still dig the music! Check out the T-shirts in it: Insted, Judge, SSD, Bold. Haha, I love it. NO MOOOOOOOOORE! BMX Youth Crew!! When I was a kid I had to tape a copy of this album off my friends record player and his record player always played everything too fast and I listened to that tape a million times and I still can’t get used to how it really sounds. So just in case you’re not old and getting crusty, like me, or have decent musical sensibilities and never listened to this junk, the singers name is Ray of Today and he went on to start Hare Krishna-core with a band called Shelter. It was a huge deal back in the day with religion getting involved in punk and MaximumRocknRoll had a 1,000 page article and everyone was arguing “scene politics” and crap. We went to go see Shelter play when they came to town and Ray told us about his stance against violence and told us he was now against slam dancing and stage diving. Then he tried to make all of us testosterone fueled teenagers take off our combat boots and sit cross-legged throughout the performance. My memory is a little fuzzy but of course he got heckled relentlessly by the crowd and my sister pegged him with a bottle or something, she had pegged an onstage Ian McKay with Chap Stick around that same time as well, I might be getting it mixed up. My friend Nigel told me that we ran into Ray of Today in London years later when I was living over there and I must’ve had too many pints as I can’t remember that at all, but he said I was nice to him though. I wish I still had my Youth of Today shirt…

No More
Meat eating flesh eating think about it
so callous to this crime we commit
always stuffing our face with no sympathy
what a selfish, hardened society so
No More
just looking out for myself
when the price paid is the life of something else
No More
i won't participate
we've got the power we've got the might
to take whatever is in sight
not even worried, it's an unfair fight
well we've got a heart to tell us what's right
our numbers are doubling in 88
cause the people are starting to educate
themselves their friends and their families
and we'll have a more conscious society



Another more popular vegan underground band in the 90’s that sang about veganism and influenced thousands of kids to kick the meat were Earth Crisis. I had heard their song Gomorrah's Season Ends and knew I had to go see them when I lived in San Francisco as I had been hearing about the East Coast militant straight edgers and plus they were playing with Madball who the singer is the brother of the singer in Agnostic Front who I saw sing one song when Agnostic played with Suicidal Tendencies and he brought down the house. Ok, I am rambling.. so anywho.. Madball were great and then Earth Crisis does their slow brooding thing and the pit is warming up when someone gets in the pit and unloads a bottle of mace on everyone and fights break out and the show is officially screwed up. If I remember right I think they battled through it all and got through a whole set. I didn’t really think San Francisco would be ready for NYHC in the 90s anyways. Econochrist was about as hardcore as the scene got back then.




Seitan Worship!

Carcass and Napalm Death

Both British metal bands are legendary in metal and they are vegan! Actually I think only a couple dudes in Napalm are vegan and the others are vegetarians.




These were the first two metal bands that I had heard about being vegan. There’s a lot more now as you can imagine, and there is actually a list here: http://music.vegan.fr/

Cattle Decapitation are one of the more outspoken metal vegan activist bands around these days.



I even saw that Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy is up for Peta’s “World’s Sexiest Celeb Vegetarian 2009”



Well thanks for taking the time to read my post, I hope that some of you were like Leslie and never heard of this stuff and maybe found it interesting or entertaining. My blog is http://whoaskedya.blogspot.com/ if you want to come over and visit.