I held off for years from writing about this story but in the end I feel that it’s not disrespectful to SOB’s memory, if anything it shows him in a realistic way, not in the larger than life, blown out of proportion fashion that sometimes get attached to NYHC characters from those times.
For what it’s worth here are my recollections from that day, which has been corroborated by others, thank you Tommy for contributing to this, these stories appear in the A Fanzine Compilation put out by Shining Life Press, which you can download here.
It’s fall of 1988 and I’m at the Sunday CBGB’s Hardcore matinee watching one of the opening bands, there’s some movement in the pit but not to the point that it’s overwhelming and crowded. I see some of the Sunset Skins in the crowd: one of the twins and SOB plus assorted characters.
At one point, this guy with curly long hair locks, wearing a flannel shirt, gets in the pit during a particularly danceable mosh part. I hear SOB mouth off, "Yo, who’s this long hair in the pit?" and proceeds to push him from the back, trying to shoo him away, said long hair turns around, face twisted in rage, prepping himself to rush the one who pushed him.
There’s a slow motion pause as some of the Skins think they’re gonna have to do a bootstomp party on the unsuspecting interloper. It’s at this moment that someone yells out to SOB, "Hey, chill, that’s Tommy Carroll!"
Ok, let’s backtrack a bit here: Tommy and his band, Straight Ahead, had broken up the previous year, most people remembered his bald head or bleached blond hair when singing for them or playing drums for Youth of Today but no one had really seem him around since the band’s breakup. I think expectant fatherhood and rumors of training for a Golden Gloves boxing tournament kept him occupied or maybe by that point he was just phasing out of the scene.
Straight Ahead wouldn’t actually do a reunion set until January of ‘89 at the infamous benefit for Roger Miret from Agnostic Front. But, getting back to Tommy about to pounce on SOB; people stepped in and held him back, the band finished playing shortly thereafter and it seemed that the matter was over.
Most of the crowd walked out of the club, as was the custom to hang outside in between bands, sometimes the real show was whatever was happening in the street. I saw SOB with a bunch of other guys standing by the curb, Tommy comes out of the club, makes eye contact and does a beeline in his direction.
SOB sees him and goes, "Hey, I don’t want no problems, man." Tommy gives a curt reply, "Too late" and milliseconds later proceeds to punch him in the face, quickly followed by a succession of blows that knock SOB to the ground. Tommy jumps on top of him and proceeds to—this is years before seeing UFC fights—do a classic mounted technique.
All of this happened within the span of a couple of minutes before people stepped in and pulled them apart. Nothing else occurred as the Skins with SOB realized who they’d be fucking with if they decided to retaliate, everyone went back to their respective circles and the show continued, business as usual. I recall hearing that several weeks later they were both at a party and squashed any further beef, something I give SOB a lot of credit for.
Part and parcel of growing in NYC’s concrete playground was getting into scraps, things sometimes things didn’t go your way, you took your lumps, picked yourself up and moved on; at times becoming friends later on with the very person that was raining blows on you. Ironically enough, only about a year or so after this incident, SOB had long hair and was playing some very metal leads in the newly formed Merauder, but that’s another story. I asked Tommy about his recollections of that day, here’s his response:
"When I grew my hair back out, it seemed like I became a target for a new batch of kids. I was picked on by some big Skinhead kid a few weeks before the SOB incident and I got him outside and fought him. SOB was a little different. I got jumped by a few kids inside CBGB’s and when I went outside; I only recognized him.
"I went up to him and asked him if he thought he was tough and do you want do something now. He said, "Yeah," I believe and I hit him a couple of times and stuck two of my fingers in his nostrils and pulled him up. I forget what I said to him after that but I saw that he didn’t want anymore and I let it be.
"A few weeks later, a friend of mine named Brian brought him over my apartment on Rivington Street and we shook hands, hung out for a few hours, and talked music. I liked SOB and I’m sorry he passed way too young. He was a good kid and had heart."
-Tommy Carroll (Straight Ahead, NYC Mayhem, Youth of Today)
RIP Javier "SOB" Carpio (1973-2006)
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The image above has gotten around online for a while now so I wanted to give it a little context: it’s April of 1988 and there’s a hardcore matinee at Nightingale’s on 13th Street and 2nd Avenue, a spot that would gain some fame for being a breeding ground for the burgeoning jam band scene.
The bill was a cool mix of OGs (Mental Abuse) and the new breed (Breakdown/Life’s Blood) and a band not listed on this flyer called 2 Minutes Hate, that opened up. What’s memorable about them is the public displays of nudity their singer exhibited; dude got buck naked trying to swing off the club’s rafters and ran out onto the street at the end of the set, swinging his dick at cars passing by.
As wild as that was, the show is seared in my consciousness for what transpired during and after Life’s Blood set. There were various CB’s matinees characters in the audience, like Minus from the Sunset Skins [also vocalist of Merauder], and the Skinhead with Skrewdriver shirt appears to have been a newcomer from New Jersey that no one had seen before.
It’s kind of hard to explain these, but yes there were some of the Sunset Skins, from a Puerto Rican background, that listened to Skrewdriver and even sported their shirts but at the same time they would beat up any obvious looking White Power Skins and in such a closed off scene in NYC at the time; anyone that wasn’t from around here and came with those outward trappings stood out.
I remember said Skin getting in the pit and maybe showing off for his girlfriend, acting very aggressive and territorial. I don’t think Minus took too kindly to that and decided to teach him a lesson. Once Life’s Blood finished playing and people stepped outside, Minus confronted him, and to be honest, here we had a standoff between someone that obviously came from a suburban background, probably the first time he’d come down to the “city” for a show and then you had Minus, who’d grown up in one of the roughest areas in Brooklyn during the late '70s/early '80s, fighting was literally a way of life for him.
The Skin didn’t stand a chance as he got pummeled in a matter of seconds, shirt getting ripped off his body, left with a black eye and bloody nose. I remember him getting up and assisted by his girlfriend, limping his way back to the Path train station, don’t think he ever came back around after that. I felt sorry for him as it was an obviously uneven match, one can only hope time and distance has made this into an unpleasant but distant memory.
I recently saw Minus and he had no recollection of this particular incident, his response being along the lines of, "I beat up a lot of dudes that were wearing White Power shirts and ripped it off their backs."
On a side note, this Life’s Blood show was one of the last ones their original singer Jason O’Toole would perform with them as he’d quit the band shortly therafter, not being into doing a summer tour, leaving them scrambling to find a new singer with mixed results. I’m in the background of the photo, right hand side, wearing an Adidas jacket, shoutout to old friends Neil Burke, Adam Nathanson, Andrew Scum, and others.
It was quite a memorable year, with the benefit of hindsight, a certain era of NYHC came to a close as the 1980s ended.
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A Fanzine Compilation is sold out but can be downloaded for free via Shining Life Press.
Tagged: straight ahead
