Radio Clash
It was the first and only public debate that hardcore has ever seen. Is there anything left to discover from the Born Against versus Sick of it All clash of 1990?
I.
I’m not sure if there has ever been another formal public debate in the hardcore scene before or since, but the Born Against versus Sick of it All debate on WNYU’s Crucial Chaos in 1990 is still one of the most instructive historical documents from the era that we have. I say that not so much because either side “won” or “lost”—truth be told, both sides took turns at being cringeworthy—but because it showed how two groups of hardcore kids could inhabit such different worlds, and how easy it was to create division in a scene that, up until that point, never shut up about unity.
If you’ve never listened to it before, the premise for the debate was simple. Sick of it All had recently signed with In-Effect Records, a fledgling label started by former Agnostic Front guitarist Steve Martin and longtime scene staple Howie Abrams, who had been working for In-Effect’s distributor, Important. The band’s first album under…