I’m not sure how to start this post. I originally wanted to say that Doc Dart and his iconoclastic punk band, The Crucifux, were one of the more interesting stories in the US hardcore scene in the 1980s. But they were also pretty marginal. Dart’s screechy vocals, although tame by today’s standards, were definitely an acquired taste at the time. A guy I went to high school with kept comparing him to Jello Biafra, and I guess I could see the comparisons, with the, ahem, unusual vocal stylings. But in the end, The Crucifux were not nearly in the same class as the Dead Kennedys, either musically or philosphically. Despite all the craziness that surrounded the Dead Kennedys, there was always an underlying intelligence behind everything they did. The Crucifux just seemed crazy. But having said that, they were a band I wished I liked more, because, even to my teenage ears, there was a sadness to them that was compelling.

Sam McPheeters captured all this in a huge article on the man formerly known as Doc Dart.  McPheeters, a veteran of the scene himself, having been the frontman for the highly influential hardcore band Born Against in the early ’90s, and a columnist for Maximum Rock N Roll and the former editor of the fanzine Dear Jesus, is an excellent choice to tell Dart`s story. Having been an important  and controversial voice in the scene himself, McPheeters is one of the few writers from the scene that could relate to Dart, now given himself the unusual name 26, in a perceptive, yet sensitive and unjudgemental way.

He traces 26`s roots from when he was a young bank executive working at his family`s bank, to his dismissal and starting the Crucifux in his late 20s. What it most striking is the juxtaposition between the descriptions of the notoriety of being in a popular punk rock band and the life he subsequently fell into, which, frankly, sounds about two degrees removed from Unabomber territory.

If nothing else, this article made me depressed. This is a story of a man who is clearly unhappy, possibly mentally ill, with an unhealthy need for confrontation for its own sake.