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This was a long week for me, with a busy workweek leading into a grueling weekend spent helping at the store during the day and catching shows at Hopscotch in the evenings. I’m not sure how many people outside Raleigh know about Hopscotch, but I enjoy going every year. It’s a corporate music festival, but one with a reputation for booking more interesting indie and underground bands. Hopscotch takes over every venue in downtown Raleigh, and I’m pretty sure hundreds of bands play over the course of the weekend. This year I saw a lot of different stuff, including Pavement, the spiritual jazz ensemble Irreversible Entanglements, and the classic New York dance-punk group ESG. There was a stand-up comedy show this year, and Sarah Sherman’s set had me doubled over. And, in something of a Hopscotch tradition, there was a punk show at the tiny dive bar Slim’s, this year featuring scorching sets from locals DE()T and Paranoid Maniac alongside headliners Cro-Mags. The Cro-Mags set was crazy, but they only played like 4 songs from Age of Quarrel. It was a fun weekend, but it wore me out.
None of that has anything to do with my staff pick this week, which is a formative record from my youth just reissued on Vinyl Conflict Records.
4 Walls Falling: Culture Shock 12” (Vinyl Conflict Records)
I grew up in Virginia, and 4 Walls Falling was one of the first local hardcore bands I heard about. I think my high school girlfriend’s older sister had dated someone who played bass for the band… whether or not that was true, said girlfriend had a CD of Food for Worms that she played to death. I’m not sure how I felt about Food for Worms at the time, but when I started going to shows in 1995, 4 Walls t-shirts were everywhere, probably the second most common shirt at any show after Avail, whose shirts were ubiquitous. I understood they were an important band, which led me to pick up Culture Shock. I remember I was at the Outer Banks on vacation with my family, and I looked in the yellow pages for record stores. I found one and went there, and surprisingly they had a great selection of punk. Browsing the CDs, I came across Culture Shock, having no idea it existed until I saw it in front of me. I remember playing the CD on the tiny boom box I had brought to the beach, and I know immediately this record was the reason people were still wearing 4 Walls shirts several years after the band had broken up.
I played Culture Shock to death over the next few years, and even now I can sing along with all of Taylor Steele’s rapid-fire lyrics. I responded right away to 4 Walls’ brisk tempos, big riffs, and sometimes quirky, always interesting rhythmic changes. While 4 Walls were often viewed as part of the youth crew scene, their music didn’t fit that template comfortably. Unlike the comparatively primitive Revelation bands, 4 Walls’ music sounded progressive, even adventurous. I had little point of reference for their style at the time, but listening to it now, I wonder if Bad Brains’ I Against I was a big influence, particularly its groovy metallic rhythms. 4 Walls also differed from the youth crew world in their lyrical approach, which had more in common with bands like Crucifix and Subhumans. Lyrics often came from a personal perspective, like “Filled” and “Price of Silence,” whose subject of struggling with how to respond to racism had particular resonance for this southern teenager. But more often, Steele wrote about a bigger picture where powerful institutions control and exploit the public and the environment, as in “Culture Shock” and “Greed.” I soaked up Taylor’s message like a sponge, and it helped to prime me for the anarcho-punk I was discovering at the same time. 30-something years later, the lyrics on Culture Shock still sound on point to me.
Familiarizing myself with the rest of 4 Walls Falling’s discography in the pre-Discogs / YouTube age was a slow process. When I was still in high school, a friend put the Burn It b/w Happy Face single on a mix tape and I loved those tracks. Even today, I think this single might be 4 Walls’ shining moment, sounding a little more intense and punk rock than Culture Shock’s more staid production, and with songs that hint at the progressive character of their later work, but keeping, even topping, the intensity of their earlier recordings. Once I got online in 1997 and discovered eBay shortly after that, “4 Walls Falling” was one of my first saved searches. Their shirts turned up way more than their recordings, and at one time I had a pretty gnarly collection of original 4 Walls Falling t-shirts. Eventually I picked up the two EPs that came between Culture Shock and Food for Worms. I remember being blown away when I bought a copy of the Burn It / Happy Face CD single for completion’s sake and it had an extra track! I even reassessed Food for Worms every once in a while. I don’t think I got a copy of their first EP until the late 2000s, and while I think some people consider that their best record, after being weaned on the later stuff, it didn’t do much for me. That record sounds to me like they’re still trying to figure it out.
Another highlight of my 4 Walls fandom was when they played a reunion show in Washington, DC in June 2000. I had missed the band’s original era by a couple of years, so I was super excited to see them live. I thought they played a great set. The show was also a stacked bill with Rain on the Parade, a very early Strike Anywhere, No Justice, and a demo-era American Nightmare.
Vinyl Conflict’s new issue of Culture Shock was a great opportunity for me to revisit this record, and I enjoyed the improved mastering job and the additional inserts, which offer archival material alongside testimonials about the band’s impact. It always intrigued me that Culture Shock was the first release on Jade Tree Records, and there’s an essay from Darren Walters that fleshes out that story. I’m curious to see if younger people respond to 4 Walls Falling’s music. I feel very close to it, and while it evokes a particular time and place for me, it’s also oblivious to the musical trends of its time in a way that makes it kind of timeless, and hence ripe for rediscovery. Check it out and, if it moves you, we have you covered on your very own copy.