The fix

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The fix
General information
origin Lansing , United States
Genre (s) Hardcore punk
founding 1980
resolution 1982
Last occupation
singing
 Steve Miller
guitar
 Craig Calvert
bass
 Mikehabenberg († 2017)
Drums
 Jeff Wellman

The Fix was an American hardcore punk band from the state of Michigan that existed from 1980 to 1982. Despite a rather small work, they are considered a significant band of the first wave of hardcore in the American Midwest .

history

The Fix was founded in March 1980 in Michigan's capital Lansing by Steve Miller and Mikehabenberg . They looked for a singer through a notice in a laundromat; Craig Calvert answered the ad, who then became the band's guitarist, while Miller did the vocal part. Outside of New York , white middle-class youth formed the basis of the burgeoning hardcore scene, so it was unusual for The Fix to have a black guitarist. The band was completed by drummer Jeff Wellman. None of the four had experience as musicians in other bands. The band name The Fix goes back to an idea by Craig Calvert.

In December 1980, Miller and Wellman attended a Black Flag concert in Chicago , and Miller became friends with Black Flag bassist Gary McDaniel. He had McDaniel explain to him how Black Flag organized their tours, and in the summer of 1981 The Fix took a self-organized tour of the United States, which was very unusual for the punk and hardcore scenes of the Midwest at the time - just Toxic Reasons and Hüsker Dü also had national live activities. In the same year the band released a single on Touch and Go Records . Also in 1981 the band was represented with a title on the label's sampler Process of Elimination , which brought together the most important bands of the first hardcore wave from Michigan and the surrounding area on one sound carrier, in addition to The Fix, among others, the Necros , the Meatmen and the Negative Approach . By late 1981 the band members had grown tired of the hardcore scene and drummer Wellman (the youngest member of the band) was pressed by his parents to focus on his graduation. On January 1, 1982, the band broke up at the end of another US tour after a concert with Flipper and the Dead Kennedys in San Francisco . In 1982, Touch and Go posthumously released an EP from the band that was recorded and mixed by SST producer Glen "Spot" Lockett.

Singer Steve Miller began a career as a journalist and writer in the 1990s. A report on the economic development of the African American population in the United States earned him a 2001 Pulitzer Prize nomination . Guitarist Craig Calvert turned away from hardcore after breaking up and now works as a producer and studio musician for blues artists. Mikehabenberg played bass with the Meatmen in the 1980s. He died in 2017 at the age of 60 after suffering from heart disease. Drummer Jeff Wellman quit the music after The Fix ended and became a real estate agent in Charlevoix County , Northern Michigan.

Touch and Go Records and the German label Lost and Found Records released compilation albums in the 1990s and 2000s , on which the band's studio recordings were supplemented by live recordings.

Style and reception

The American music journalist and filmmaker Steven Blush divides The Fix's short career into a germ-dominated and a discharge phase, and believes The Fix embodied the mood of the hardcore Midwestern scene. Allmusic describes The Fix's music as "heavy music at a daring pace"; the band was one of the favorites of the hardcore Midwestern scene because of their wild shows. The Touch-and-Go- Fanzine certified The Fix “irrepressible energy and unrestrained devotion”, the music was “uncompromisingly fast and rough” and reached the “manic speed” of California hardcore bands. As part of the review a demo - cassette certified the fanzine of the band, the potential for "the best punk plate Michigan ever produced" to have. The Maximumrocknroll -Fanzine defined the band's music as “a blunt brew from the raw energy (...) of The Stooges and the dirty (...) tirades of the Dead Boys , squeezed into brutal two-minute songs, played in dizzying songs Speed". The "Punk Archive" Dementlieu pointed out that the band's music was comparable to that of hardcore bands on the US west coast, but that the band had to develop their sound independently because of the initially isolated location in the Midwest. The local magazine City Pulse from Lansing assessed that The Fix's music sounded “more like the turmoil of war than conventional music”, but that the band's focus on precise playing has lifted them beyond the region's punk bands. The magazine stated that The Fix brought hardcore to Michigan.

Discography

Compilation Contributions

  • 1981: Process of Elimination (Touch and Go Records, track No Idols )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dementlieu.com: The Fix: Steve Miller Speaks. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  2. ↑ George Hurchalla: Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989 . 2nd Edition. PM Press, Oakland 2016, ISBN 978-1-62963-113-4 , pp. 132 .
  3. ↑ a b Blast From The Past: The Fix. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b Allmusic.com: The Fix: Biography. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Syr.edu: Carnegie / Newhouse School Legal Reporting Fellows to visit Newhouse Tuesday. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ CraigCalvert.com: Bio ( April 5, 2005 memento in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ TouchandGoRecords.com: Mikehabenberg passed away. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Steven Blush: American Hardcore. A tribal history . 2nd Edition. Feral House, Port Townsend 2010, ISBN 978-0-922915-71-2 , pp. 244 .
  9. ^ Tesco Vee & Dave Stimson: Touch and Go. The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79 -'93 . 3. Edition. Bazillion Points, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-9796163-8-9 , pp. 164 .
  10. ^ Tesco Vee & Dave Stimson: Touch and Go. The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79 -'93 . 3. Edition. Bazillion Points, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-9796163-8-9 , pp. 236 .
  11. ↑ Dementlieu.com: The Fix: Hot Midwest Hardcore. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  12. ↑ LansingCityPulse.com: Remembering Fix bassist Michaelhabenberg. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .