Sometimes, you can overshoot trying to shock and end up showing yourself to be the POS you really are. That’s what this band Sparklefight is doing, and we have dealt with one of the members before when they were in the band Call the Paramedics.
One People’s Project
When the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton was released last month, rapper and former TV host Dee Barnes penned an op-ed piece noting how the movie did not touch on the assault on her or other women in the lives of the rap group, particularly by Dr. Dre, and she notes how it simply speaks to the disrespect the group has for women. “If you listen to the lyrics of “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” (N.W.A. rapper Ice) Cube says, ‘Now the title bitch don’t apply to all women / But all women have a little bitch in ‘em,’” she wrote. “So which is it? You can’t have it both ways. That’s what they’re trying to do with Straight Outta Compton: They’re trying to stay hard, and look like good guys.”
Indeed, hip hop has seen a lot of criticism because of the misogyny and the violent lyrics and actions against women, but it is hardly a genre that stands alone. There have been acts across many genres of music that have used brutality against women in their music, stage or video depictions, and in real life, as attempts at humor, shock value, or to appear tough. And with that has always come those who have called it out when it happens.
In the case of Philadelphia, a number of bands that have a bit of a following in the punk/hardcore scene have made “joking” about rape a cause célèbre. They all say they are merely trying to shock their audience, but in doing so they end up making light of and, as some have claimed, sexual violence against women. Add to that the fact that the bands have connections to local neo-Nazi groups, and it becomes a problem that growing numbers are campaigning to resolve.
The band in particular that has seen troubles lately is Sparklefight. Formed three years ago, they describe themselves on their Facebook page as “4 dudes that like to play sleazy tunes at everyone else’s expense”. The controversy that the band finds itself in centers around a mock video of a rape whistle commercial that includes a graphic rape scene. The assailant is being played by Martin Jason Schlacter, aka Shlak from the bands Call the Paramedics and Eat The Turnbuckle, as well as the owner of Useless Christ Records and Useless Drunk Productions, which promotes shows in the Northeast, including New York Deathfest on Oct. 3-4.
Sparklefight’s video ends with their song “Habit of Mine”, playing in the background. Mike Beer has said the song was about scenester “Punk Rock Steve” Benford’s June 2010 murder of his girlfriend, 22-year-old college student Gina Schickling, whom he pled guilty of stabbing almost 60 times, ultimately being sentenced to 46 to 92 years in prison for the crime. Benford, who if Facebook is any indication has been and remains friends with members of Sparklefight and Shlak to this day, introduced Call the Paramedics to the stage at New York City’s 2010 Punk Island event just a few weeks prior. The song’s lyrics include the following line:
“She never had a clue what I was about to do / I smashed in her pretty face / her blood all over the place / I guess it’s safe to say that this is just a habit of mine.”
For some of the band members, this is old hat. Drummer Mike Beer also used to be in Call the Paramedics, who once released a song called “It’s Not Rape, It’s Surprise Sex” with hoodies with the title emblazoned on the. Beer also used to play drums for another band called Rape Master Awesome, and in addition to their name and songs like “No Means Yes” (also selling T-Shirts with that title printed on them) and “Rape Master”.
Rape Master Awsome also produced a video since removed from YouTube for their song “Don’t Make Me Turn This Rape Into a Homicide” that featured not only scenes from news reports, movies and staged pictures of women who had been assaulted, but also a picture of the corpse of a 27-year-old Swedish woman named Elin Krantz who was found raped and murdered in a wooded area in Länsmansgården, Sweden, a case that White supremacists rallied around when it was learned that a Black immigrant from Virginia committed the crime, demonizing the victim as deserving of her fate because, according to their propaganda, Krantz was someone who campaigned for diversity in Sweden on Facebook.
| (L-R) Useless Christ Records/Useless Drunk Productions owner Martin Jason “Shlak” Schlacter, then of Call the Paramedics, Cody Hoebel of Atlantic City “Skinheads” and unidentified man. |
It is particularly curious that Beer’s old band went with this photo to begin with, given the history of his prior band. Call the Paramedics was closely associated with the Atlantic City “Skinheads”, one of the older neo-Nazi organizations in New Jersey with a history of violence, including murder. Beer has several over-the-top offensive tattoos on his body, among them one on his leg reading “It’s rape time” with candy and a child’s body parts and one on his rear of a unicorn wearing a swastika with the words “White Power” over it. He denies in an interview about his tattoos that is he a Nazi and that Shlak dared him to get it, but the connections to ACS are such that the band even performed at a benefit show in 2010 for ACS member Chris Arlen.
Because of this, campaigns against Call the Paramedics resulted in their constant removal from show lineups and eventually they broke up. Schlacter and also Beer, in addition to the other bands, joined Eat The Turnbuckle while guitarist Rob Guidotti and bassist Drew Murphy started the band Hammer Fight. All of them still work with each other, with Useless Drunk Productions booking Hammer Fight for shows, and with Hammer Fight going on a tour on the East Coast this October to include stops in Providence, RI, New Brunswick, NJ and Philadelphia with the California band Psychosomatic and Crackhouse, a band that puts out releases on Useless Christ Records.
On August 22, Sparklefight hosted for the second year “Punk Rock Sextravaganza” at Philly venue Connies Ric Rac, a show marketed as harmless sexual debauchery, including mens’ and womens’ wet clothing contests. In fact, many who either wanted to attend or did saw it as nothing more than that, since it was promoted as such, but Sparklefigh
t were the ones putting it together, and while not all were familiar with the band’s history many who attended were. This was especially an issue for the Philly band BATHASSAULTS, who posted a public message on Facebook calling out their friends who attended the event as hypocrites for supporting it when pretending to be aware, considerate people. “Sparklefight trivializes sexual assault for shock value (and) this has gotten them either kicked out or banned from venues,” the band said. “However, their singer and frontman owns all of the gear in Connie’s Ric Rac allowing them to use the venue as a way to fester their way back into the scene as they see fit”
Soon after, a Facebook event was created calling for a boycott of Connie’s until they severed ties with Sparklefight and especially Mike Gallagher, the band’s frontman who also works as a soundman and promoter there. Gallagher responded by posting private messages to vocal proponents on the event page as well as its creator, saying that he was going to discuss his legal options against them with his attorney.
“I own $7,570 worth of sound equipment that is currently in Connie’s Ric Rac,” he also posted. “They are contracted by me until 2017. legally they cannot get rid of me unless I fail to uphold my current obligations towards the that contract…. So good luck trying to get rid of me there.”
As expected, fans of the band and the venue began posting onto the boycott page to begin arguments against the efforts. The usual defenses of their freedom of speech was a regular go to, but those defenses rang hollow when those supporting the boycott – who were also using their freedom of speech – started receiving rape and death threats, some even posted on the boycott page itself.
Eventually Connie’s employees also came on to harass the boycott event page, including employee and promoter Jade Anna who within a few days went from a post saying, “I do not book this band and I do not feel comfortable with their music, their stage presence or their stance of ANYTHING,” to one saying, “To be honest with you, because most of you don’t understand the intricacies of our business: Gallagher is a key member of our work. He makes the venue a venue, being one of the most competent sound people I’ve ever met.”
After about a week, the Boycott Connie’s page was taken down, reportedly after persons reported it to Facebook, and Mike Beer went to the punk podcast Dying Scene to defend his band and while he did not talk about the associations with neo-Nazis and the seemingly glorification of rape in his past work, he did particularly defend the Rape Whistle video as satire and that they were not removing from their You Tube channel. “We don’t support rape. We don’t want anyone to get raped,” he said. “We don’t any women getting hurt or men getting hurt. We don’t want anyone getting hurt. We try to keep things fun, especially at our shows we keep things pretty positive.
“We do understand that the video is very touchy for some people,” he continued, giving a rather ironic reason for making it considering his “Rape Time” tattoo. “That was kind of the whole point. Without getting too much into it, one of the guys in our band was molested when he was a child, and maybe it was his way to cope through it. I don’t badger him too much about it, but he seemed pretty adamant about making the video, and if it helps him that’s great, you know. I guess what it boils down to is you can’t really tell someone how to cope with something like that.”
But it might be too late for the overtures. An increasing number of bands and organizations have signed onto the boycott of Connies over the Labor Day weekend, Local staple Erik Petersen of Mischief Brew canceled an upcoming gig there, and Pink Mass, one of the bands that performed Sextravaganza, also said they are removing themselves from the Sept. 21 bill at Connie’s they were asked to play on. One band member, Trevor Pason, has close ties to the anti-fascist circles, and has been identified on the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, threatened by local neo-Nazi groups such as Keystone State “Skinheads”, and even pepper-sprayed at the age of six when he participated in the 2000 One People’s Rally in Morristown, NJ, the rally that would eventually result in the formation of One People’s Project. His father is Greg Pason, Executive Director of the Socialist Party USA. Pink Mass reports that this stop was the last one on their tour and they were not aware of the issues with Sparklefight – particularly their associations with ACS.
| In memory of Gina Schickling, please donate to:
The Gina Schickling Scholarship Fund Citizens Crime Commission |
N.W.A. managed to do well this year. Straight Outta Compton was the No. 1 Movie for three weeks, earning $150 million domestically until the Christian movie War Room took the top spot over the Labor Day Weekend. It is currently on track to make $150 million domestically. Sparklefight commands a sizable following in the Philadelphia area within punk circles. Still, Dee Barnes says she has been blacklisted from the entertainment industry after Dr. Dre assaulted her. Gina Schickling’s family is still mourning her loss five years after her brutal murder. And there are songs that make light of what happened to them. Dr. Dre and his protege Eminem made millions off the song Guilty Conscience that includes the line “You’re going to take advice from somebody that slapped Dee Barnes?” which although sounds contrite, was according to Barnes’ article a source of humor for Dr. Dre. Meanwhile, Sparklefight continues to promote their song “Habit of Mine” that makes light of what happened to Gina Shickling. Despite the apologies from Dr. Dre and the overtures (but no real apology) made by Sparklefight to at least soften the blows they are receiving, like saying they will never talk about rape again, the damage is done and there has not been any real effort to repair it. A petition has been launched on Change.org supporting the boycott of Connie’s. One of the signers there expressed the sentiment that drives all this in the first place: “No one should support a band who objectifies women and portrays rape as if it were a humorous situation. Rape is unbearable physical pain like knives tearing through you. The physical and emotional trauma is serious and I refuse to support a venue that supports the disgusting little boys who have published videos and music encouraging rape.”
Boycott Connie’s Ric Rac Website
Petition
If you are someone you know is a rape survivor and in need of support in Philadelphia, contact Women Organized Against Rape at www.woar.org or via their 24-hour hotline: (215)985-3333.
Bands & other Organizations in Support of the Boycott (as of Sept. 7, 2015)
185668232
Assless Chaps (Baltimore)
ANTIFA Philly
Andromeda Sky
Bad Canoes
BATHASSAULTS
Black Orchid
CCR with Skulls
Creepoid
Dangerbird
DIYPHL (event listing)
Ex. by V.
Flufftronix
Flyherder
Girl Army
+HIRS+
Hound
Hulk Smash
Influx Photography / Bernard Jones
Jenna and the Pups
Jim FOD (of Flag of Democracy)
Kississippi
Mannequin Pussy
Mike Kickme (of Pushin’ It 2 The Limit)
Nemesisters
One People’s Project
Rizumu
Ruby the Hatchet
Shakey Lyman
Sean Thomas
Sing Your Life Karaoke
Sheer Mag
Soul Glo
Space Chumpy
Station (Baltimore) Taupe
Teenage Chainsaw
The Pretty Greens
TOSKA
War Emblem.
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