'Hardcore Architecture' art project highlights four MI punk bands

May 19, 2015 at 11:52 am

The premise is elegant and the tumblr well done, so totally check out the site Hardcore Architecture, if you haven't already. The title of the project is a bit misleading, in that maybe half of these bands aren't hardcore. Pussy Galore, Broken Talent and the Honeymoon Killers, for instance, often played at pretty slow tempos and would never be considered hardcore. But, anyway!


What you're looking at is a selection of addresses from records and tapes submitted for review to MRR in the punk fanzine's 1980s heyday. Those addresses are then accessed now, and screengrabs from Google Maps are posted alongside quotes of the reviews for said tapes and records. The project was undertaken by Marc Fisher of the excellent Public Collectors site/publishing enterprise, who themselves have done some pretty nifty 'zines. 


Hardcore Architecture explores the relationship between the architecture of living spaces and the history of underground American hardcore bands in the 1980s. Band addresses are discovered using contact listings found in demo tape and record reviews published from 1982-89 in the fanzine MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL (MRR). Google Street View is used to capture photos of the homes. Street names and numbers are removed to respect the privacy of people currently living at these addresses. 


(NOTE: We couldn't embed the Tumblr links here so basically we recreated them. Toledo punk bands were often lumped in with Detroit ones, so that's why I included Majority of One.)