The Black ’N’ Blue Bowl at Webster Hall was nothing less than a two-day all-out aural assault of extreme agony and ecstasy. The annual hardcore music festival this year featured the likes of The Regulators (with members of the Bad Brains and Cro-Mags), plus Madball, Earth Crisis, Mizery, Sick of It All, Leeway (with Eddie Sutton, who did a surprise takeover of the mic, below), Booze & Glory, Everybody Gets Hurt (bottom), Wisdom in Chains, Heavy Chains and Suburban Scum (second from bottom), to name just a few. “To me, hardcore kind of represents working-class culture,” said L.E.S. photographer Clayton Patterson. “Plumbers, workers, it’s kind of the voice of these kinds of people. It’s about brotherhood, camaraderie. Rock ’n’ roll is about drugs, it’s kind of about privilege. This is working class. All these guys end up being soldiers, thugs, police, plumbers, electricians — you know, blue-collar stuff. It’s a place you would see black-and-blue beads rather than gold chains.”
