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[On February 15, 2022, Lower East Side musician and good friend to us all, Al Landess, best known for fronting the punk band Hammerbrain, died. He would have been 55 years old on May 13. This loving memory was written by Al’s childhood friend and bandmate Ned Lindsay - Ed.]
I met Al in the summer of 1982. He had just moved from Irving, Texas, to Edisto Island, South Carolina, a semi rural coastal community, south of Charleston, where my family lived. His parents were hoping their boy Allen would stay out of trouble there. It didn’t take long for us to find trouble to get into. We used to go into the woods and take the tops off peoples’ weed plants. It was amazing we didn’t get shot. Some of the trouble we got into was not of our own making. One night, we got car-jacked in Charleston, which had high crime then. I was driving and a gun was at Al’s neck. It ended up with a long, sobering walk on John’s Island that night. Al’s father Tom used to confiscate his bong on a more or less weekly basis, to which Al would respond by stealing it back. Finally, Tom put the bong under the wheels of his Fairmont and crushed it, leaving shards of purple glass mixed in with the gravel of the driveway. From that driveway you could hear a steady stream of Al’s future influences: Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Social Distortion, The Partisans, Blitz, GBH, Discharge, The Sex Pistols, and the Clash, but also Judas Priest, UFO and Michael Schenker–blasting from the Panasonic Thrusters in his room. There was a local hardcore band called Special Olympics. We saw them open up in the summer of 1983 for the Circle Jerks and the Dead Kennedys at Charleston County Hall, which at that time was also a Worldwide Wrestling venue. After the Special Olympics broke up, we started our first band with their drummer, Dave Ring, and called it Civilian Chaos Corps, or CCC. Al was the guitarist and our singer was Joe “Skate” Hopke [RIP]. Within two years, we opened up for Corrosion of Conformity in Myrtle Beach, SC, for DOA (Vancouver) in Charlotte, and did a show in Charleston with GG Allin. In 1985, Al moved to NYC to live with his girlfriend, Isadora. She hid him in her Parsons dorm on Union Square. In December, Al came down to Charleston and talked me into quitting my job and the new band I had started with Dave Ring, and move up north. We got on a cheap People’s Express flight. It just so happened that Greg and Elyse from Raging Slab were at the airport that day. We had a great conversation with them as we headed to The City. In 1986, uptown on Broadway, we each had Single Room Occupancy (SRO), the ones where you shared a bathroom with other people on the same floor. They were painted yellow with brown trim and the hallways smelled like curry cooked on hot plates in peoples’ rooms. Rent was $250 a month. During this time, I filled in on bass for Circle Kaos, a Texas band whose drummer and bass player had gone home. Glenn Kearney was the replacement drummer and we got to be friends. In Circle Kaos, Glenn and I played a matinee at CBGB with Nausea and PMS, and another show at Tin Pan Alley. By the end of 1986, the as yet unnamed Hammerbrain had started as a three piece, with me on bass, Glenn on drums, Al singing and playing guitar. In 1987, Al and I got an apartment on East Third and Avenue C. Sergio Vega (Absolution, Quicksand, Deftones) got Al to play guitar in a band called Trauma with John John from Nausea on drums, and Dan from the fanzine Smash Apathy singing. It was a really good band, but we only played two shows. Hammerbrain (which was the name we had settled on by then) and Al’s job at Village Copier took a lot of Al’s time. Sergio found his way into Absolution, and Nausea had gotten really popular, so Trauma didn’t last. By year's end, we had our first Hammerbrain recordings done, with one song coming out in 1988, on On the Rag Records with Roadkill and Tracy Lords’ Ex-Lovers, Asian Doll, and Cheap, which came out on singles later. There were others that never saw the light of day. We did Rosa’s Birthday Scümfest in Brooklyn with Da Willys, Knockout James, Public Nuisance, Porno Dracula, White Mans Grave and Morfiends from Philly. Then we went down to Philly with Knockout James and Public Nuisance to play at The Asylum. Al played drums in White Man's Grave, which featured Ilene (now Corey) Solar, Jenny Lush (RIP) on vocals, Charles Lear on guitar, and me on bass. It was a different kind of beast, moody and chaotic. In 1988, Al turned 21. Shortly thereafter, we got evicted from Third and C. Johnny Stiff booked a show at Hanks Crystal Palace on the Bowery, where we played with Damage, Nausea and Porno Dracula. He booked us another one at the Anthrax in Connecticut with Sacred Denial and we went there in Anthony Trance’s school bus. A woman named Miriam Bendahan (now known as M. Best Known as the PUNK Rock Girl in the Dead Milkmen video) got us a show at the NYU Loeb Student Center opening for Gutterboy, which featured Ditto from Major Conflict and Johnny Feedback from Kraut. Also in 1988, John Fastlane booked a bunch of bands at the Scümfest at CBGB. Some of these were Da Willys, Hammerbrain and Porno Dracula. Mike Alba, from The Press, joined Hammerbrain that summer on guitar. That summer, the Lower East Side was gripped by gentrification, culminating with the Tompkins Square Riot on the night of August 6, in which hundreds of cops from all over the city beat people inside and outside of the park. Al and I were both arrested. He was beaten quite badly. A month or two later, we played a show with Nausea, the Radicts and Public Nuisance at the Lismar Lounge. The soon-to-be-released Crooked Edge documentary captures this period well. Late that fall, we played The World with Blitzspeer, Raging Slab and Sea Monster (Stephen Sprouse Aids Benefit). New Year’s Eve, we played Downtown Beirut 2 with Da Willys, Rogon and others. In 1989, Mike Alba teamed up with Fastlane to bring in more bands for the next two Scümfests. Hammerbrain played with George Tabb, Fastlane, Richie Stotts’ band (formerly of Plasmatics), Walter Lure (RIP) and the Waldos, PMS and Cheetah Chrome’s Ghetto Dogs. A couple months later, we played with The Senders and Walter Lure and the Waldos. It was great to hear Walter’s stories about touring in Britain with the Sex Pistols and the Clash on the 1977 Anarchy Tour. We played at an epic Squat or Rot show for Ralphy Boy at The World late that summer. At various times, Al lived in one of the squats on 13th Street and at C-Squat, where he met Joanie, who would become his life partner for almost 30 years. Al’s connection to squatting was very real. That fall, the chickens came home to roost for the Hammerbrain lifestyle. Al and I both left town to clean up. Al went down to the DC area, where his folks were and ended up driving a cab. I was gone until February and he came back in June 1990. In 1990, Al got a job at Benny's Burritos on Avenue A, working his way from making deliveries to manager. Little did he know he would spend more than two decades there! Many years later, two of his co workers got Al to get ordained so he could marry them. Joanie says that “lines of people off and on all night would be asking Al for money and/or food and he gave to them all, which would leave himself with barely any tips at the end of the night. THAT’S how incredibly generous he was. He was so popular at Benny's he had many regulars who would specifically ask to sit in his section and often bring him gifts, especially on holidays.” In 1991, Al was subpoenaed as a witness in the trial of the notorious Daniel Rakowitz, who had been arrested for murdering dance student Monika Beerle and cooking her remains. Months later, we did a show at Flannery’s with Yuppicide and the Devil Dogs. 2000 saw Hammerbrain’s music included in two films: Katrina Del Mar’s Gang Girls 2000, which has become a cult classic, and Goddass, written and directed by Esther Bell, a coming of age story which has a video clip of Hammerbrain included in it. That year, Hammerbrain played at Joey Ramone’s birthday party and we opened up for Richard Butler’s (Psychedelic Furs) Love Spit Love. Glen Kearney (drums) moved to Seattle and the band went on hiatus until 2009, at which time, my brother David Lindsay picked up drum duties. From 2009 2019, Hammerbrain (or their alter ego Damn Kids) could be seen every summer at Chris Flash’s Shows in Tompkins Square Park, as well as shows up and down the east coast. In 2016, New York Rock: From The Rise of the Velvet Underground to the Fall of CBGB was published. In it Steven Blush writes:
‘Hammerbrain, a nasty LES quartet, revolves around snarly Al Landess…George Tabb from NY Press picked them (as)’New York’s Best Unsigned Band. Joey Ramone raved, ‘They’ll blow your brains out’. The Kings of New York Scum Rock…”
In 2019, Damn Kids opened up for the Pork Dukes (UK) on their final world tour at Bowery Electric and, as Hammerbrain, played at Berlin with Tracy City, which was to be our final show. Under the name Damn Kids, the band recorded tracks that were released at: https://damnkids.bandcamp.com/ . For years, Al also played and sang alongside Joe Hurley at his annual St Patrick’s Day Party, which he loved. This assembly of musicians played at larger venues, even Lincoln Center. I am always finding out about other projects Al was involved in. He loved to play music and made it look easy. Joanie says that Al had a genius IQ and that he “put his talents to his music. Any instrument Al picked up, he was able to play very quickly. He absolutely loved his friends and family and would literally give you his last dollar.” I will miss our friendship, which was more like having a brother that I chose, just as much as I’ll miss collaborating with him creatively.
–Ned Lindsay |
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