FITCHBURG YOUR STORY: Persistence of Underground Music in Fitchburg - Daniel Somers

In the final episode of the Fitchburg Your Story series, Daniel Somers explores Persistence of Underground Music in Fitchburg through the city's and Fitchburg State's storied history as a punk rock and underground music way station.  

Underground music of all genres has been present throughout the past several decades -- with Fitchburg State hosting storied acts from the indie/punk scene like Fugazi, The Breeders, Melvins, and Quick Sand.  Fitchburg State's radio station, WXPL (93.3 FM) has also played a role in hosting underground music acts like Horsejumper of Love, Debt of Love, Prince Daddy and the Hyena, Origami Angel, and Pile.

Daniel explores some contextual history of the underground music in Fitchburg, along with some other connections that go beyond the Burg's borders -- as well as the state of music in Fitchburg presently and the evolution of WXPL on campus.

Daniel is a junior English Studies major with a concentration in Literature and a minor in History.

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Episodes in this series were produced and edited by the students in Professor Kisha Tracy's Storytelling and the Oral Tradition course (ENGL 2890) in the Spring 2025 semester.  

"Saxifrage"  is the Fitchburg Your Story theme music.  Music by Prof. Robin Dinda, Text by Prof. DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld.  Performed by Fitchburg State University Choirs with Alanna Rantala (piano) and Prof. Jonathan Harvey (conductor).

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Episode transcript here.

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Additional mixing and mastering by members of the Perseverantia staff.

Click here to learn more about Perseverantia. Join us for programming updates on Instagram. Or reach out with ideas or suggestions at podcasts@fitchburgstate.edu.

Transcript

[ “Saxifrage” choral music plays, performed by the Fitchburg State University Choirs ] 

Prof. Kisha Tracy (intro): Welcome to the Fitchburg State University Perseverantia Podcast network. This is the Fitchburg Your Story series in which Fitchburg State students tell the stories that make our city and university unique.

[ “Saxifrage” fades out ] 

[ live punk music plays under the transition, fading out under the narrator’s intro ] 

Daniel Somers:  Hey everyone, this is Dan. I'm just going to jump right into it. Today we're going to be talking about the existence, persistence, and I guess growth of Fitchburg State's independent music scene. 

So just as a bit of context here, I just kind of want to do a preface my little talk about this today with some broad cultural background. So there's numerous events, I guess, in Fitchburg today that we can find that incorporate sort of an independent music element. One personal connection that I would definitely like to include and make note of and possibly spread awareness of is Fitchburg's annual Civic Block Party. It kind of promotes a bunch of different cultural aspects especially ones that are popular in Fitchburg as of right now. 

There’s a diverse array of cultures that are represented, and all of these events kind of share a sort of I guess strong bond between cultural heritage and music. But I wouldn't quite say that Fitchburg is city that's defined by its musical heritage. But what we are going to be focusing on a lot in our talk today is sort of the acts in musical groups, individuals, all of the above here that Fitchburg has hosted and some groups that have even come from Fitchburg not just passed through the city. 

Some pretty notable places that a lot of these bands would play at is obviously the Wallace Civic Center. I feel is very well known to a lot of students not just because of its presence as a currently as an ice hockey rink but kind of for some of its more famous groups that it's hosted. That will definitely be a very big talking point later on. 

And there are definitely also some other smaller clubs that I do have a personal knowledge of that I would like to share some light on. Ultimately, the goal of this discussion here today is essentially just to place Fitchburg's, you know, once pretty impressive place in Massachusetts music history in a broader context and a pretty hopefully more open discussion about Massachusetts in terms of music because Fitchburg has definitely fallen out of favor touring musicians’ eyes. It's you know it's no Boston i know Worcester definitely a city that's kind of rivaled Fitchburg at this point.

Now if we're getting very into and connected and aware of the punk rock scene here in Massachusetts is kind of extremely vibrant and pre-m globally famous scene just in the Boston area alone, let alone all of New England. And Fitchburg definitely had a part of that and I think it's something that I would like to you know shed a little bit of light on.

So I guess punk rock sort of had its first start here in Fitchburg probably about the early eighties kind of simultaneously with punk’s evolution from bands like the Ramones and stuff like that it was kind of evolving parallel to I guess you could say I guess it's called hardcore punk which is sort of like a more aggressive evolution of something like the Ramones. 

But bands like the Ramones, Devo, the Stompers, they all pass through Fitchburg's club circuit. Sort of in the late 70s, early 80s period. It’s actually worth noting that the Ramones did play a show at Fitchburg State. It was not during their heyday, but they did play a very interesting show on campus actually in an event sponsored by WXPL. But definitely something to look into there.

So as I was saying previously hardcore punk in the United States was something that was where punk was a I guess you could say it was like somewhat of a movement from this very from the very beginning at least just locally here in Massachusetts bands like SSD, Jerry's Kids, F.U.' Deep Wound, Gangrene, all of these bands all originated in the Massachusetts area not just in Boston. 

And I think almost all of those bands at one point had passed through Fitchburg. Besides from just the music, all of these bands had carried somewhat of a passionate aggression in their music and in their ethics as well. It’s kind of what I was referring to earlier when I said it was more or less a movement. They had brought sort of a DIY ethic to their music culture. There was definitely a level of political activism in hardcore punk there was a yearn for a change.

And Fitchburg was definitely one of the cities that hosted these experiences. In particular, Club 490, the Observatory. Actually the Fitchburg Municipal Airport held quite a few festival style concerts that had on for at least a decade and a half in the 80s into the 90s very briefly in the early 2000’s. And obviously, as I mentioned before, the Civic Center. And all of this sort of took place from roughly 1980 to 2003. Then abruptly, seemingly abruptly, in 2003, as the Civic Center sort of fell into, I guess, both disfavor and disrepair physically the building before it was sort of taken under the wing of the university. Shows essentially were just dropped from all of these places entirely . None of the clubs I mentioned before exist anymore and the Civic Center obviously does not host any more concerts anymore they have not since 2003.

So as I have kind of discussed towards the beginning of the year in one of my interviews with Dr. Keyser we had kind of had a discussion about how Fitchburg State is sort of almost like a disconnected university to the town it exists in in comparison to like an Amherst or a Worcester or a Boston or whatnot ,where university is very much aligned with the town it exists in. Such a thing in Fitchburg is unfortunately not nearly as strong. It's almost like an us and them sort of situation. 

​​But sort of diverging paths here to an example of a university that had an extremely positive influence musically on their campus community. I wanted to look at the story of Anwar Holliday, his story at Howard in the late 1980s. Anwar Holliday was originally from New York City and he sort of was very involved with the hip-hop culture there. He was an aspiring musician himself and was very connected with the individuals in the New York City area that were up-and-coming hip-hop musicians and when he graduated high school in 1989 he decided to attend Howard University in Washington DC, which is a majority black university in DC, and he sort of felt a lack of musical presence on campus at the time and he sort of saw an opportunity to incorporate musical elements that were extremely commonplace and very vibrant in his hometown of New York into what was somewhat of a lacking campus at Howard University. 

So he brought these strong connections he developed in New York to DC. And he sort of retained this ethic we had discussed earlier of DIY sort of, you know, do-it-yourself ethics involving hardcore punk. And Anwar Holiday sort of incorporates the same idea in his own experiences at Howard University. So, bands at the time that were also in DC such as Minor Threat, Black Flag, Bad Brains, they all sort of work to inspire this ethic of DIY.

And also kind of relating to my point, I had mentioned about how hardcore punk was very politicized in both its lyrics, ethics, actions, all the above sort of thing. Anwar Holliday sort of aligns himself with this facet of hardcore punk as well, just by happenstance. on his campus of Howard University, him and a classmate had worked to promote, publish, and keep in print a newspaper called The Final Call, which worked to promote the nation of Islam and its ideals and any sort political injustices that were occurring in DC at the time to sort of keep their message alive.

We can kind of see here on multiple levels and where Holliday sort of runs parallel to that of many hardcore punk musicians in Massachusetts at the time that were passing through Fitchburg as we had discussed. And ultimately the sociopolitical aspects of the music that we can observe in both hip-hop and hardcore are extremely existent in the lyrics and they are almost the sole purpose of the lyrics. If you listen to any hardcore song and many hip-hop songs at the time they're extremely real, they're all political in some way and they're all in some fashion sort of yearning for justice.

So sort of briefly mentioned it earlier, but Fitchburg State was a pretty early and open host to a variety of incoming hardcore acts, both on and off the campus. Even off campus, many of the venues were promoted, booked, and attended by local students.

However, it wouldn't be until roughly 1990-91, where Fitchburg would become a full-fledged, consistent, present touring stop for many hardcore bands. Fugazi, The Breeders, Melvins, Quick Sand, the list goes on. Nine Inch Nails, all making stops just at the Civic Center alone.

And then, kind of more on the obscure and sort of, I guess, deep cuts of punk bands, there was a club called Club 490 in downtown Fitchburg that would host smaller hardcore bands, but would draw in as equally voracious crowd. Drop Dead, Only Living Witness, Overcast were all Massachusetts, or at least New England, based bands that would play at just this one venue on Club 490. 

I was doing some research, there's a website called Setlist FM that essentially cataloged a vast majority of concert setlists. And I observed that Raging Against the Machine played within 48 hours of this band I had mentioned, Overcast. Just in the city of Fitchburg alone - this was in 1994. What this kind of told me was that the city in itself had become of a hot spot for punk rock activity. 

And in the current year I mean this is essentially unheard of, whether or not you want to make an argument that, yeah, I suppose the golden age of punk and whatever revivals followed just died out in central Massachusetts specifically, considering it's pretty alive in Boston to this day and has been since the early 80s. Whatever you want to theorize will always kind of be shrouded in mystery. But doing some research, sociologist Andy Bennet had a quote kind of goes as follows, “While  the growing literature on punk effectively demonstrates both its continuing appeal and adaptation to local issues and circumstances very little effort is made to engage with the shifting demographic of the punk fan base.” 

So I guess in his study of sort of aging punk youth in reference to Fitchburg I would say that the spirit and ethics of punk still kind of exists and a lot of music you can observe in Fitchburg today very much independent and do it yourself. Just walking around the city if you see any sort of flyers for a musician playing in town it's almost always in like a church basement at a random café. You know you name it - an independent musician will attempt to play just about anywhere and this is essentially exactly the route that hardcore musicians were taking in their heyday. I mean this could just be another example of music being a young man's game in terms of punk.  Or if it's just a cultural shift in a style towards a different style of music. 

But I do think it's worth shouting out WXPL as one primary I guess bastion of, I guess almost sort of like a beacon of hope, in preserving and promoting punk rock. at least its values in an effort to hopefully play more independent music and get more independent musicians to play there.

So throughout its entire existence, WXPL has sort of worked to archive, report, record any kind of independent music, punk rock definitely being one of those things. And it's definitely noteworthy to point out a band that is sort of like a born and bred Fitchburg undergrad music band being Wargasm. They were a very notable part in early, I guess, punk ethics in Fitchburg, at least extremely locally, aside from just bands passing through and playing.

This band was like literally from the city of Fitchburg and would play here semi-often. They would even play at WXPL, and I believe their archives are here somewhere on the website. Again, if you wanna go through their archives there is a million awesome things to sift through there – but there's a ton of other things archived on there that I found online, like flyers.

And personally I'm very interested in flyers. I love flyers, the history behind them. They're one of the few things that do get preserved from these shows as well on top of that which makes it sort of so I guess kind of wrapping up here sort of jumping to WXPL's contemporary history.

I guess it's sort of pre-COVID sort of experienced somewhat of a revival in underground music acts. and 2019, a total slew of bands – those bands being Horsejumper of Love, Debt of Love, Prince Daddy and the Hyena, Origami Angel, Pile – I mean the list just goes on and on. These bands all performed both at WXPL – and a couple of them performing at the Hammond Lounge. This was all done right before COVID. And I think the pandemic had somewhat of a hand in putting a halt on this hot streak that the school had going.

But WXPL hosted, promoted, funded all of these events. And it was really unfortunate to see such a brief flash in the pan get put out like that. Made it clear that the punk spirit was definitely still alive within the student body, whether it be through political action, radio station, or the performance of these bands themselves.

I guess the music is just another outlet for musicians who have these ethics to promote their ideals. And kind of going off of this, communications expert Steve Jones, notes how “the personal computer to the internet also brings potential for connection to a wide variety of music broadening the scope of listening possibilities but also potentially overwhelming the listener with choice.” So sort of talking about this quote a little bit. In this quote he's referring to the advent of music in the internet, which kind of goes hand in hand with how these bands were promoted so well at Fitchburg in the first place.

So many of these bands I had just mentioned previously played here right before COVID – this was all done through the internet. I think something like this wouldn't have been possible in hardcore punk’s heyday.  Communication was very loose, in the eighties, in promoting bands, and it was likely that bands like that would not have had a fun time playing a show here just for the sheer inconvenience of planning it. But with the advent of something like the internet, like Jones notes, brings potential for a connection to a wide variety of music in wide variety not just in genre but in communication options I suppose.  

So I guess in closing this is a crucial point to consider in how punk is kept alive. So a key point of separation, I guess, between Fitchburg's once pretty vibrant hardcore scene and the drought that we've sort of experienced with it post-COVID is the internet. I mean, the internet definitely had a hand in bringing these bands here, but it is also possible as a  sort of lasting question to pose to yourself that it had quite the opposite effect on potential followers of punk and followers of the ethics and culture. Whether or not the internet was a more positive effect or a negative one is up for you guys to decide. 

Thank you.

[ live punk music plays under the transition, fading out under the narrator’s intro ] 

[ fuzzy, overmodulated noise version of the Perseverantia Network theme fades in ] 

Lisa Adams: You’ve been listening to Perseverantia, the Fitchburg State Podcast Network.

[ Perseverantia Network theme fades out ]