By Benjamin Joe
The seeds of a band such as Pissing Match were at Kendzie’s in Lockport during the early 90s. The bowling alley had become a hub for hardcore shows and highlighted some names like Ignite, Damnation and Integrity.
Joe Villella, bass guitar, and Jay Galvin, lead vocals, were coming out of the hardcore/skating scene that was finding its home as of 1993 in Buffalo and the surrounding areas.
Both of them were involved in other bands at the time, but the foundation was laid for them and the other members of the band: Aaron Adkins, lead guitar, vocals and founder; Aaron Ratajczak on guitar, and Robert Ohlenschlager on drums. They would all keep the energy found in the early stages of their lives going well into the upcoming millennium.
“Aaron recorded some music by himself,” Galvin said. ”He took care of the music and the vocals. He posted it up online and he didn’t advertise it as a one-man-band. He just put it up and said like, ‘Hey this is a new band.’
“I ended up telling him that I really liked it and he said, ‘Well that’s funny because I was going to ask you if you wanted to sing for it.’ ”
This all happened in 2013 and the group, long in the potential of being, was here.
Known for fast and hard, short lyrics, Pissing Match likes to be right on the floor of the show. They like Mohawk Place, a great place to play, they said, but the stage is more of an obstacle to them.
“For Pissing Match I like playing small cramped up punk rock shows in a basement or a tiny club because if you have 30 people at a show like that you can have the energy of 300 people in a bigger space,” Galvin said.
“Mohawk is a great place to play, but for Pissing Match, going up on the stage is a little weird,” Villella said. “We like to be down on the floor with the, y’know, with the people.”
And who were the people? One word: hardcore.
Villella walked down memory lane.
“Lockport had a very rich skateboarding history, a ton of us skateboarded in the 80s, early 90s,” he said. “I was into hip-hop and a lot of thrash metal stuff like that at that time.”
Villella then listened to Underdog, and that got him into more music, pursuing the sounds into Minor Threat and Youth of Today. He wanted to know everything about the music.
And he wasn’t alone.
Hardcore music had flown into Western New York like a warplane. Villella and his friends would visit Home of the Hits, a record store in Buffalo, and spend all their money on hardcore records.
“We were an odd bunch in that day. We stuck out like a sore thumb,” Villella said. “Now everyone looks like a hardcore kid … I think you know the tattoo culture and the beard culture … But there was a point when if you were walking somewhere and you saw a hardcore kid, you knew he was a hardcore kid even if he wasn’t wearing a hardcore t-shirt.”
Galvin’s memory of the time seemed simple enough.
“I started off riding BMX bike. From getting into BMX bikes, I found out about skateboarding through BMX magazines,I got into skateboarding as well,” he said. “And because I got into skateboarding, I got into punk rock and I’ve been into it ever since.
“I consider hardcore to be a sub-genre of punk rock, so when I started out with punk rock, I then I found out about hardcore-punk, which is even more aggressive.”
Because the music is aggressive, Galvin was able to write the lyrics to Pissing Match’s newest album “Crossing Streams” about everything he disliked. He noted if the music was happier, he’d probably write more “happy things.”
“I can’t stand guns so I wrote a couple songs about how I can’t stand guns,” he said. “I can’t stand Trump, so there’s a couple songs about how I can’t stand him.
“I fuckin’ hate cops so there’s songs about how much they suck. I hate people who sit at the same side of the table at a restaurant, so there’s a song about that.”
Villella also noted that there’s a lot of “tongue and cheek” in Galvin’s lyrics.
Despite coming out of that skateboarding scene, looking at skater magazines with punk bands being featured, seeing stickers and eventually clothing, Galvin believed that the music and the activity, stand on its own without going on about a scene or tribe.
“They’re all solitary activities,” he said. “What’s great about skateboarding and punk rock is you don’t need a tribe. You get a skateboard and you skateboard by yourself. You never even meet another skateboarder. It’s maybe less fun, but it’s possible. You can still love that skateboard.
“You and three friends can get in a basement and start playing music as punk as fuck, even if you don’t meet the right people and play a big show. You’re cranking out heart felt music. That is what’s beautiful about those two things. You don’t need permission, there’s no rules to it or regulations. That’s what makes them so great.”
Next Friday night you can hear Pissing Match on 91.3 WBNY and see then play Sept 30 in Rochester at the Rosen Krown.
Those out of town might consider getting the TuneIn Radio App to listen to the college radio station on Friday.
Buffalo Music Players 