Subhumans Take The Iron Roses On Tour: When Actions Speak Loudest
Dick Lucas shouts at us to get off the internet and go touch grass. photo by kim moenich
It’s no secret that I love and champion all that are the Iron Roses. So when I saw they were playing in my little ole’ hometown, I nearly lost my mind. I reached out to Natasha and Becky, offering a place to stay, long before I even knew if I had the time off work. Naturally, I got scheduled for when they were going to be in my town, so getting to the show required offering a co-worker my firstborn (hahaha, joke’s on you since I’m menopausal!), getting the switches approved, and flying home from where I’m working in Virginia. I then cooked and cleaned for 3 days leading up to their arrival because, like most punk rock weirdos, I’m a bit cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!
However, it was all worth it once I got to the show, saw old friends I haven’t seen in decades (I still live in this town, by the way!), and the band took the stage. But this story isn’t about the show. The bands absolutely crushed it, it was a totally packed house, and we all probably cried a little bit. And while that was all amazing and I can’t wait to do it all again, this article is about what this show meant on a much larger scale, and why the Subhumans have cemented themselves in my heart forever.
In my last article about the King of the Monsters Fest, I talked a great deal about how special that weekend was because of the representation that Mike brought to the stage. Vique Martin, of Pirates Press Records, gave a speech before Frail’s set, where she talked about the lack of representation in our scene. She told me after the show that her speech was spurred by a text message she had received from Becky Fontaine, of The Iron Roses, after a certain very well-known punk band had announced a large tour and there were not any women in the lineup at all. Vique and I chatted at length about what it was like to grow up as young women in the hardcore/punk scene of the 1990’s, and how little has really changed since then. I also mentioned how much I appreciate bands like Frail, who are unwilling to stay silent when so many bands in our scene have suddenly gone mute. Bands like Bad Religion, who were once the source of most of my left-leaning politics, are not saying a word about the state of our country right now.
That’s where the Subhumans come in. This band formed while I was in Kindergarten, but they haven’t changed their anarcho-punk ways 46 years later. While I have seen Subhumans dozens of times over the years, they were never really high up on my radar. Of course they are OGs in the punk world, and I love their tunes, but they were not a band I would run out to see. All of that changed earlier this year when I found out about the accusations of sexual assault against the founder of CY Fest. I reached out to my editor who then reached out to Dick, the singer of Subhumans, who were supposed to be the headliners for the Fest. According to Vique, numerous people informed Dick of what the women were saying about the Fest’s founder, and the next day, Subhumans announced they would not be playing the Fest. Within a few days, pretty much every band had dropped off the lineup and the Fest was cancelled.
As I started to pay more attention to Subhumans, I realized that they truly practiced what they preached. Take a look at who they’ve brought on tour with them, even just going back the last few years, and it reads like a Who’s Who of the marginalized punk community. In addition to The Iron Roses, Subhumans have gone on tour with 1876 Band, a group of Cheyenne and Blackfoot Natives whose songs speak to the lack of representation in the punk world and the struggles still being faced by Natives in this country. Subhumans have shared the stage with other queer groups like Cop/Out, as well. Then there are the women forward bands like FEA, The Venomous Pinks, Bad Waitress, and War on Women. The list goes on and on, but the point is that the band purposefully chooses to give exposure to bands that are otherwise underrepresented in the scene.
I stood in my dive-y club, in my small town of Wilmington, NC, and I saw trans people present whom I had never seen there before. I saw openly queer people standing beside biker dudes and rednecks wearing Grateful Dead t-shirts. Goth kids rocked out in the pit as old heads either moved out of their way or joined in. Some young girl felt it was her solemn duty to protect me as I tried to photograph around the arms she kept throwing up to shield me from moshers. And all these people came together in this room on a Tuesday night because they had been summoned by the Subhumans.
Best of all, regardless of the fact that they were in a small, Southern town which had been the last Fort to fall in the Confederacy, and was home to the only successful coup to ever occur in the US when a group of racist white men overthrew our predominantly black-run town, Dick and the boys sang their anarchist anthems and Dick ranted about the current fucked up state of affairs, and everyone raised their fists in the air in agreement. There were no fights, no one batted an eye at those around them who were quite different than their usual friends, and everyone sang along. Subhumans reminded us that night what it means to be human after all.
Thanks for the hangs, friends! Can’t wait til next time!!!
Help keep In Spite Magazine free of fees and corporate ads by purchasing this very ugly and highly controversial t-shirt, or any number of other very ugly and highly controversial items we have in our very ugly and highly controversial merch store over on our beautiful and not at all controversial website.