Biography
Things were tough all over for a straight edge kid in the Long Beach and Lakewood punk scenes in the 1980s. No scene to speak of had existed in Cerritos since Channel 3 and Hated. And for years Jeff Banks had made his bones with punk rock bands The Imps, Dead Tradition and the seminal California alleycore punk rock outfit Visual Discrimination. Sharing the stage with the likes of the Cro-Mags, Uncle Slam, Excel and Blast!, Banks honed his chops and earned a reputation for being a seemingly endless fountain of hooks and riffs. Isaac Golub was weaned on early 1980s punk shows at the Cuckoo’s Nest, catching every act from FEAR to Suicidal Tendencies. A prodigious writer even as a young child, an early stint with Pasadena punk band Short Circuit lit the fire in Golub’s belly to be heard beyond the poet’s pad. He was bitten by the hardcore bug after singing with the band Identity. The infection of hardcore continued to grow.
A chance meeting between these two in Costa Mesa in 1987 would change everything.
While Banks continued to churn out the goods with Visual Discrimination, It was his brief role as guitarist with Long Beach legends Half-Off that brought him and Isaac to a hardcore common ground. Golub and Banks had mutual friends in the Half-Off circle, and their paths were crossing constantly. At practice sessions for the Shoot Guns EP it was particularly evident that Banks and Golub had a kinship for the art of hardcore, and shared a philosophy that straight edge and hardcore were inextricably intertwined.
While Visual Discrimination had its share of straight edge tunes, it was a punk band. What Banks and Golub were looking for was an avenue to get out what was a hard-sell on the West Coast streets in those days: Aggressive, No-nonsense, Non-compromising Straight Edge Hardcore.
“Something was brewing,” said legendary filmmaker Evan Jacobs. “When Banks and Isaac showed up with their bic-bald heads, X fists and oversized XCHORUSX hooded sweatshirts at the Hard Stance show, and just stood in the back and watched, it was ominous. Both are devastatingly handsome, but it was more than that. It was a churning, swirling maelstrom-in-the-making, and lightning struck that night. You could just tell these guys were the face of Southern California Straight Edge Hardcore.”
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