Deep Wound

VINYL FORMAT. Deep Wound was a strange and powerful unit inside the doctrinaire confines of Hardcore. Although they were all kinda nerdy (excepting secret weapon Charlie Nakajima), they shredded in a very explicit way. There were some obvious structural debts to the Oi! Bands in their compositions, but they approached the exterior textures with stylistic nuances that were distinctly North American. As the Neos did on their Hassiban Gets the Martian Brain Squeeze EP, Deep Wound compressed time in ways that were extreme, and way outside the standard Square Dance beat that had been defined by Robo's drumming for Black Flag.

But Deep Wound's actual story is nothing out of the ordinary. It is but a minor variation on a thousand others. J Mascis lived in Amherst. There was one punk at his high school and it wasn't Uma Thurman, it was Charlie. They were fortunate to have Ken Reed's great store, Main Street Records, in nearby Northampton. And they could get almost any American or UK punk stuff they needed from the racks or by special order.

One day in early '82, J met a Dee Dee Ramone lookalike at the Oi! singles bin. This was bassist Scott Helland. Scott posted a flier soon after looking for musicians into Anti-Pasti, Discharge and the like. J called to audition and had his dad drive him and his drums over to guitarist Lou Barlow's place in Westfield. They had a singer already, but J got them to replace him with Charlie, and Deep Wound was there. They made a cassette, got a few gigs in Boston with the X-Claim bands (SSD, FU's, Jerry's Kids, etc.) and became the Western Mass band most likely to open for Hardcore visitors. They cut an EP, had tracks on Gerard Colsoy's Bands That Would Be God comp and even did a late-period session with Gerard singing that has disappeared into nada.