Skatepunk

I found out about New Model Army, like a lot of bands, from my friend O. It was 1986, and their album “The Ghost of Cain” had just come out. O’s ‘zine, 10 Foot Boneless, had a photo of this guy with an acoustic guitar, and at the time it just seemed so foreign—an acoustic guitar? At the time, O. was staying with me at my house in Pacific Beach a lot, and somehow I ended up with the LP. It was pretty epic, and in that drought of punk music that was the mid-80s, they still held the ideals and political energy of the punk scene, even though their music was more rock and folk stuff.

Following are a collection of eight articles from various sources covering and spanning the years 1977 to 1982, with a retrospective Paul Weller interview from 2004. Like many of the articles I've reprinted here, all but the last were written during the band's heyday and the views are unique by today's standards because they are truly written without hindsight, without the scope that time creates. It's been 26 years since The Jam broke up. Keep that in mind when you read these articles and interviews.

Mike Rusczyk was a longtime am for Foundation, but took the plunge and turned pro in 2006. Because he'd be a man-am for a while, Foundation and Mike sorta made a big deal out of his retirement from am-status. It was funny from an outsider perspective, if you got the joke, but may have overshadowed Mike's real talents on a skateboard. Mike's always been a creative person and it shows in his skating as well as in his everyday life--Mike can skate anything with style whether it be rails, blocks, gaps, or transition. Check his parts out in Cataclysmic Abyss right here: