Revisiting American hardcore punk rock

Stagediving
An unidentified man stage dives at a hardcore punk gig. "American Hardcore" filmmakers Steven Blush and Paul Rachman says hardcore was as much about an aesthetic and a code of ethics as the music.
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

During the years between 1980 and 1986 groups of teenagers all over the US got together to play loud, frenzied music, to dance violently, and generally scare their parents.

Steven Blush and Paul Rachman were in the thick of it. Blush promoted punk gigs in Washington DC, while Rachman filmed a lot of the early hardcore gigs in Boston.

Rachman and Blush
Steven Blush and Paul Rachman made "American Hardcore" as a way of documenting what they say is a missing part of musical history
MPR Photo/Euan Kerr

Blush wrote a book about the time, called "American Hardcore." Now he and Rachman have made a documentary of the same name. When the pair came into the MPR studio's recently, Blush told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr they made the film to fill a gap in musical history.