What first made me interested in studying Attila was his likeness to my favorite literary character, Conan of Cimmeria. Like Conan, Attila was a crude, uneducated barbarian out of the wilds of the far north, that with his own ferocity and cunning dominated a good portion of the “civilized world”. Attila is a name that will never be forgotten and if he hadn’t died young and under questionable conditions, he would have been crowned the first barbarian emperor of Rome years before Charlemagne’s Holy Roman empire.

From what I could gather (considering the endless bickering of historians over their origin) the Huns were a confederation of barbarian tribes that, under the conquest of a powerful tribe (presumably the Xongnu of northern China) gathered in a snowball effect so that when they burst over into Europe after defeating the Alan, they were a massive horde the likes of which the no one had seen since the Persians stared down from their city walls at the coming of Alexander almost a millennium before. By 376 the Huns had conquered all of the Germanic tribes between the Black Sea and the Danube on the northeast edge of the Roman empire and forced the survivors to flee east, causing them to spill into Roman territories and start the Goth wars against the Roman empire. The displaced Goths, fleeing the savage Huns, sacked Adrianople and destroyed two thirds of the roman army they battled there, including Emperor Valen. The arrival of the Huns in Europe came only a decade after Hilary bishop of Poitiers declared that the end of Roman civilization (and therefore the world) was near and that the Anti-Christ had already been born. It didn’t take the highly religious people of the empire long to identify the completely alien horde spreading across there frontier and there Germanic servants as the biblical Magog and Gog storming out of the north as was predicted in Ezekiel 38:1-39:20. many Romans believed that by the end of the century, the Anti-Christ would sit on the throne of an empire and that before that happened untold numbers would perish in the hours of judgment. By the time Attila was born around the year 400, his uncle Rua (also known as Rugila and Ruga) had united all the disjointed Hunnic tribes into a orderly military force. With there superior compound bows and unparalleled riding skills they were able to make lightning raids across the plains of eastern Europe, crushing German resistance and charging huge protection fees to the East Empire. After the death of his father, when he was a young boy, Attila and he brother Bleda were raised by Rua as his co-heirs. As a preteen Attila was part of a hostage exchange between western Rome and the Hunnic empire. This was a custom amongst cultures of the time to learn about one another. He was exchange for the young noble Roman soldier, Aetius. Where Aetius saw the Huns as a potential powerful ally he could learn from and turn to as a tool against the unruly barbarians the thinly stretched roman legion could no longer defend themselves against, Attila saw Rome as a disgusting and decedent culture, fat and rotting from the inside out. He swore to himself that he would some day return to the empire, not as a hostage, but as its new ruler. Ruga formed an alliance with Aetius and together they conquered the rebels in Gaul and many other Germanic peoples. After Ruga’s death in 434, Attila and Bleda ruled together for a time. Attila continued the campaigns with Aetius and his raids on the Byzantines, while Bleda remained a relatively unimportant king on the worlds stage. The siblings hated each other and barely communicated until cold hearted Attila killed his brother and took the whole Hunnic empire for himself in 445. three years later, the historian Priscus accompanying Maximinus (the ambassador of emperor Theodosius the second to the court of Attila) on a journey to meet the Hunnic emperor. Priscus gave the only reliable account of Attila’s physical appearance the world has ever seen. He described Attila as short and powerful with a broad chest, flat nose and a beard sprinkled with grey. Attila wore simple clothes and drank and ate from wooden cups and plates. The food he ate was simple too, mostly meat. He was a wise and grim looking man and the only time he smiled during Priscus’ whole audience with him was when his youngest son came to sit on his lap. It was said that Attila treated the boy as his favorite because an oracle had told him his empire would fail after he died and would be reborn under the descendants of his youngest son. Shortly after Priscus left his court, Attila defeated the Eastern Empire at the battle of Marcianopolis. As a term of the treaty between the two vast powers, extensive territory on the Roman side of the Danube was ceded to the Huns. Then Attila turned his attention to the Western Empire. After years of helping each other attain prestige, Attila and Aetius found themselves on opposing sides of a war. Under the advise of his vandal ally Geiseric, Attila prepared to Attacked Roman federate Gaul. While he was making his plans for attack, Attila received word from the western emperor Valentinian the 3rd’s sister, Honoria. She had been forced into a marriage with a low ranking official after her and a servant and lover tried to plan an overthrow of her dim witted brother. She sought an alliance with Attila and asked his aid in freeing her. To show the authenticity of her message, she sent an imperial ring which Attila took as a proposal of marriage. The bold Hun sent word to the Emperor that Honoria was to be released to him and that half of the Western empire was to be given to him as a dowry. Valentinian refused and Attila proceeded with his sack of Gaul. The barbarian leader swept unchallenged through eastern Gaul until he arrived at Orleans and found that Aetius’ Roman legion and Theodoric’s Gothic army waited within the city’s gates. Rather than tempt fate, Attila ordered a retreat. The two armies pursued him and near Troyes they struck hard at the invaders. The Hunnic cavalry, made useless by the rocky terrain of Gaul, were pressed into their own infantry and the losses the horde suffered were great. Thinking he had proved his point and not wanting to destroy the Huns who had become a political barrier between the empire and the wild Germans in the north, Aetius allowed the Huns to retreat and disbanded the giant Roman and Gothic army and returned to Italy. Not so much intimidated as embarrassed by the loss, Attila continued his rein of terror. This time he didn’t target the outlying territory of Gaul but the Italian peninsula itself. The Huns plundered northern Italian cities unchallenged and when they came within site of Rome herself, they were towing hundreds of carts of treasure. Without the combined armies of Gaul and Rome, the city had no way of defending itself. It was only luck that saved Rome. Plague had broken out within the ranks of Attila and food supplies were running low. To make matters worse their wagons were so full of plunder that the army could no longer maneuver fast enough to do battle and the east empire was sending a fleet of soldiers to aid their western brothers. Attila was allowed the out he was looking for when Pope Leo rode out of Rome to discuss peace with him. Attila took his heavy prizes and retreated from Rome, once again vowing to return as its conqueror. His dream of dominating all of Europe was never realized. Only a year later, he died in his bed. Most believe he choked on his own vomit like so many twentieth century rock stars but others theorize that he had heart failure, was poisoned or stabbed by his new bride. Like Alexander of ancient Greece, Attila’s empire died with him. None of his sons proved himself strong enough to hold the reins of their father’s empire and not long after Attila was buried with a massive treasure under a temporarily dammed off part of the Danube, one of his Alan generals staged a rebellion against his Hunnic masters. Without a strong leader, the horde fell apart and the Huns were scattered. Most of Attila’s people settled in modern day Hungary while others bred in or were hunted down in the lands of their former subjects. Never again would a Hunnic emperor rise to power.

One of the most interesting things I found out about Attila and his people while doing this project was that despite their importance in history, very little is known about the Huns. The most common theory holds that they were descended from the Xiongnu. the Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic peoples that built an empire north of China in the 4th century BC and had mostly disappeared from records by the beginning of the first millennium. This idea was first formulated by Joseph de Guignes in the 1700’s. The theory is re-enforced by the fact that the Xiongnu used similar artifacts such as composite bows and cauldrons buried along side rivers. There were also similarities in language. The most compelling proof is found in the book of Wei a classic Chinese history book compiled by Wei Shou between 551 and 554. Wei states that the Xiongnu conquered the Alans around the same time western history records the Alans being taken over by the Huns. Beyond the Xiongnu theory, there are countless opinions about the origins of the Huns. The two most likely contenders are the idea of the “white Huns” out of Iran and the ethnogenesis theory that the Huns were no one people but rather a confederation of peoples conquered by a small group of noblemen. I find that the latter theory could easily co-exist with the Xiongnu theory and even the Iranian tribes could fit in with the snow ball effect that created the vast horde that slammed into the Germanic people of Europe in the 370’s. Other theories are as varied as the return of the semi-mythical Cimmerian and Scythian races of pre-history as many historians contemporary to the days of the Huns suggested to Jordanes theory of Gothic witches breeding with unclean spirits and even the view of the church that they were the biblical Mogog that would Harold the end of the word under the rule of the Anti-Christ. . Historians can’t agree on where they came from or for the most part how they lived and even though Attila is a name that will live for the rest of western civilization, very little is known for certain about his life. No one knows exactly when he was born,we have no records of his home life beyond his brief meeting with Priscus and scholars can’t even agree on how he died. I love a good mystery and I don’t think the end of this class will be the end of my research on this subject.

The second most interesting thing about Attila in my eyes is the Sheer amount he was able to accomplish in a single life time. In the fifty years of his life he doubled his uncles empire and came within a hairs breath of destroying Rome. The tale of Attila is the ultimate under dog story. its awe inspiring to think that this one man rearranged and entire continent as if it were nothing but a chess board.

What made the greatest impact on me about the story of Attila was the dramatic aspects of the lives of the people involved. In all corners of Attila’s world you have back stabbing siblings, rival tribes, Rival emperors, unfaithful lovers and broken alliances. The mans life played out chapter by chapter like the greatest of Greek tragedies. I find myself surprised that Shakespeare never wrote of the great barbarian king. This has been both the most difficult and the most enjoyable research project of my life and I would like to thank the college for providing me with the resources needed to paint a clear picture of the shrouded but epic life of Attila, the scourge of god.

Whoever built the place either wasn’t a local or was completely out of touch with the community. It sits between the worse neighborhood in the city, a park where people peddle crack and a club for the mentally handy capped. Can you imagine what people must think of us after a layover in Pittsfield? Upon leaving their bus or train, they would first encounter a large room of sub-humans and drug addicts. If They walked to the corner in either direction they would encounter either gang bangers, nut cases or two dollar Nate (the old wino that always asks people for two dollars). If they were female, they would get hit on by frightening creatures or propositioned for sex, burping or any number of odd requests. If they looked lost, there’s a good chance someone would try to rob them. I’ve often encountered Europeans in the city on vacation. When asked why they came to Pittsfield, they express a feeling of having been tricked and say “it looked like such a nice place in the brochures.

Originally bookstores and fast food restaurants were going to set up shop within the building but after viewing the crowd that resided within from day break until 7pm, the franchises pulled out and the city was forced to give the spaces to the store front artist project (a ploy often used to make it appear as if downtown isn’t completely dead). Amtrak was also supposed to have an office within the center, but their financial problems coupled with the dismal profitability of the locale caused them to pull out. The only rep of their company in the entire place is the janitor. Getting a train ticket is damn near impossible. You either need to go to a travel agent or shop online and have it printed or sent to you and the first westward stop in Albany won’t accept under carriage luggage.

On a boring day, it can be amusing to sit around the bus station or go on one of their mobile zoos (BRTA buses). I once watched two giants with a combined IQ of 10 beat each other senseless on the concrete platform outside. On another occasion I watched a drunken elderly man argue with the station employees about bringing his dog into the building. They threatened to call the cops and he threatened to call the president. It was all I could do not to break into uncontrollable laughter. You may encounter such legendary figures as the lady who yells at traffic, the woman who scolds her backpack, the lady with the bunny in a baby carriage, the lady that moves like a lizard, the running man, agent orange, good mosh, burping Joe or any number of others uprooted from the asylums closed down in North Hampton and elsewhere in the 70’s and 80’s. If you have a morbid curiosity about how the insane live day to day this is the place for you.

The guy at the counter is the least helpful transit worker I’ve ever met. That doesn’t surprise me considering he used to run the old bus station with the pay toilets and the open whenever he felt like it hours. Even at port authority, you can ask questions. At the inter model center you’ll either be ignored or directed somewhere else. The upstairs BRTA office isn’t much better. I tried to complain about a driver one time and the lady at the front desk put me on the phone with another woman in the back who was extremely unhelpful and talked down to me like I was one of the missing links sitting in the room below.

The timing for all forms of transportation are absurdly off, as well. I’ve seen local buses off schedule by two hours, trains five hours late and greyhounds that were rescheduled for the next day. It sometimes seems as though the bus patrons run the place. Maybe they do. You could not possibly be surrounded by insanity day in and day out for years with out loosing it a bit, yourself.

I rate the place as follows: the service is ridiculously terrible. Everything from the impossibility of acquiring train tickets to the cost of a bagel in their coffee shop screams inconvenient. The experience of being stuck in the large room where people wait for buses (as I sometimes find myself on cold or rainy days) is sickening. Your ears are violated by the crude conversations of people you would rather assume are A-sexual. your nose is bombarded by the scent of unwashed bodies and soiled underpants and your sense of touch is utterly repulsed by the sticky and crusty surfaces all around. I feel I would find more comfort doing sit ups in a patch of cacti than spending twenty minutes in that hell hole.

To be fair, I have been in worse bus stations. At port authority in New York city, you could be stabbed while stepping out for a cigarette in the lower levels of the cavernous building. Also, the thieves that frequent the labyrinth are far more adept and much easier to lose than Pittsfield’s counterparts. Salt lake’s station is by far the worst. Not because of the thieves and swindlers or because its one giant room is hard to navigate. Rather it’s the city’s unthinkable laws that make Salt Lake the dread of all western travelers. The city’s police routinely check every single bag coming through the station and harass people worse than an airport’s security personnel over harmless things like shaving razors and nail clippers. Its illegal to drink caffeinated soda outside of the station and if you smoke a cigarette beyond the tiny designated square near the entrance, you can be given a $5000 fine and are expected to remain in the city until it is paid. Another terrible place to be stuck is Richmond Virginia. They have buses going in every direction but no times listed and the most backwoods people announcing arrivals and departures. I was once stuck in the place for twenty hours because all I heard was “ rebo’ babadoo baba dou!” every time a bus was announced.

So, compared with these places, Pittsfield’s bus station is great but all in all, on a national level, it’s inconvenient, it smells funny and it makes most of us look bad. If I were grading it for some magazine, I would give it an overall c-. it’s not the worse, but our inter model center is far from the best. Its sad, if handled better, Pittsfield’s in a great position to be a crossroads for most of the North East. Easily reachable from Vermont and Connecticut and on the direct route from Albany to Boston, it would make a marvelous place to stop and rest, but do to its reputation, People go out of their way to avoid it. We can only hope that in the future politicians will do more work on making the city hospitable and worry less about how pretty the granite blocks look on south street.

Suddenly, no body gave a damn about the success of the many. The government and corporations that had supported the industrialist, capitalist way of life that had us constantly improving and reinventing ourselves to keep us above the rest of the world decided they just wanted there piece and the hell with every one else. Rather than teach kids new technology and basic skills for business, the companies shipped their factories over seas and schools stopped pushing the young to be better. Other problems also led to what I see as the possible decline of American civilization
The idea of “no child left behind”, or as I call it “it’s okay to be stupid”, was invented. Under this new system, a child could pass with straight C’s all the way through high school without getting a single paper right, as long as the showed up every day and handed in some garbage answers on their work. This eventually became so bad that I’ve heard a teacher at many high schools isn’t allowed to give an F to a student writing a paper in internet short hand.

Of course all this coincides with one of the other great ideas of the 90’s; “politically correctness”, or as I call it the “we should always be okay with everything” concept. At school, I suddenly found we were playing musical chairs with extra chairs so that “everyone was a winner.” kid’s shows stopped showing anything that resembled conflict, to protect the sensitive little ninnies being raised in our society from the harsh reality of the world. Before all this, cartoons like G.I.Joe had plots about characters turning traitor to afford chemotherapy for there dying parents. A few years later, TV for the same age group was dumbed down to songs about hugging and how everyone should always get along about everything and in no time kids up to eight were watching shows that tell a kid there a genius if they know what the color orange is. The final straw for TV helping a generation become stupider was when the new fad of cute shows where the characters make baby noises and grunts and roll around like idiots hit the networks. Imagine what it must do to a child when he is left alone in front of Teletubbies and Zoom for six hours a day during their crucial learning years.

This attitude of lets all get along is reflected in school. Besides for classifying the ever changing computer short hand (with it’s smiley faces and abbreviations) as a language, they’ve also included Ebonics (formerly Jive) and Spanglish as scripts to use on any high school paper. “Why?”, you may ask. Because it would be mean to tell them they aren’t using real languages. Similarly, you can’t tell a kid that he’s to small to be a football player. Do to lack of nurturing, (I mean talents not feelings) and the it’s okay if you can’t add fifty two and seven attitude, kids are coming out of high school fully ready to push carts for the next fifty years.

Another nail in the coffin of the communal brain of this country was when pop culture began advocating stupidity to make marketing easier. Those selling whats cool found a beautiful gem in “Gangsta Rap.” suddenly, MTV was pushing the image of an uneducated, rebellious drug dealer shooting people and robbing liquor stores so he could be new clothes and luxury cars. None of the young minds that fell victim to this logic realized that most of them were going to end playing don’t drop the soap in state prison or shot by a fourteen year old while selling him crack, rather than living in mansions and sitting in hot tubs full of champagne. The girls of my generation found their moron inspiration in Hollywood’s equivalents of the bar flies you find at any shady dive in the world. I’m speaking, of course, of the teen idols. Paris Hilton, Christina Agulara, Britney Spears and others proved that no brain was needed to be famous. All they did was lip sync and dress slutty and the whole world was open to them. This isn’t the ideal I would want a future daughter to look up to and I would like to point out to anyone that tries this will end up older, not quiet as pretty (and therefore broke) and with a sexually transmitted virus they caught off the a fore mentioned Gangsta Rapper.

Another major problem with the development of young brains in contemporary America is the concept of sheltering. Sheltering is by definition protecting kids by keeping them ignorant to the darker aspects of the world around them. Kids with heads full of misinformation and gaps in their knowledge of the mechanics of the world can only grow to make bad and uninformed decisions. I’m not looking forward to the day when people that think the world is all kitty cats and puppy dogs run the world. Book burners, censors and religious fanatics bother me as much as the ignorance the promote.

This is all based on my rather bias views of the world but I think my opinions speak for themselves. Turn on the TV and you’ll be bombarded with stupidity and half truths. Watch a movie popular with the youth of America and you’ll be confronted with thin plots and happy go lucky Emo vampires. Go online and you’ll find more misinformation than the useful knowledge it was supposedly designed to house. We’re looking at a sad and confused future. The only good thing about it is that I will seem that much smarter in comparison.

Putting up with all the headaches of promoting shows would be far more tolerable if the kids today actually cared.  Far too few care enough to actually leave the safety of the mall where they just picked up designer bondage pants with their parents instead of going to live shows and actually supporting something.  The “mallternatives” can be quite amusing to watch, but it can get old quickly, more on that species later.  Then there are those who quickly do a search on My Space for bands who are playing locally.  After checking out some recordings and conferring with their friends to see if the band passes muster, they either go to the show en masse or support the “parent approved punk scene” otherwise known as staying home.  So-called punks who follow that scene should be referred “paps” instead of punks as its an insult to those of us who actually spent years of getting crap from just about everyone on the face of the earth so these paps could stay at home judging the scene from the outside, because they’re certainly not in it as far as I’m concerned.  It’s better to do what your friends do so you remain cool instead of going to the show.

When I first got into seeing live bands, I would go regardless of the bands playing.  If I had the same lazy attitude as many of the paps and mallternatives, I would’ve missed Gang of Four, Dead Milkmen, Husker Du, Oi Polloi, Sonic Youth, Die Kreuzen, Laughing Hyenas, Nausea, Warzone, Jawbreaker, Gorilla Biscuits, GWAR, Citizens Arrest, Youth Gone Mad, Blanks ’77, fIREHOSE, Billy Bragg, Butthole Surfers, The Replacements, Alien Sex Fiend, Naked Raygun, False Prophets, The Meices, The Skulls, The Radicts and many many more.  Looking back on the bands I’ve seen throughout my life, I’d be really angry if I missed any of them because I felt it was more important to be cool than check out some bands.  We’re not even remotely close to being a minor metropolitan area where kids are spoiled by the weekly show, we don’t have them frequently enough, I just don’t get the attitude of laziness, its weird.

I wouldn’t think twice about driving to NYC, Albany, Northampton or Boston and then driving back after a show.  When I lived in NYC, I’d often have to take a cab to a ferry to a subway and then walk endless blocks only to do it all backwards a few hours later.  These late nights were a pain in the ass, but I’m so happy I was able to experience what I’ve been able to in the punk rock world.  If the paps stopped listening to their stolen Casualties MP3s and the mallternatives stopped looking ridiculous pretending to have a clue as to what emo really is, then the Berkshire County scene would probably be better off.  You never know when a band you don’t know could turn out to be your next favorite band.

Dealing with club and venue owners will never be easy if shows aren’t drawing the numbers.  We will always be a thorn in their sides unless we have the numbers to back our arguments up.  Recently, both Project 413 and I tried to hold events at the Econo Lodge in Lenox and the results have always been disastrous.  We’re not allowed to hold events in the restaurant as they can only be 21 and over.  The days of punk appealing to the hip arts crowd are long gone.  Punk now appeals to teenagers in the heat of rebellion, so promoters are relegated to throwing all-ages shows while hoping for the best turnout possible.  When the venues or adjoining venues (such as the case at the Econo Lodge) have an event abutting your event, it’s not going to run smoothly whatsoever.  You’ll get complaints about everything from what door to use to collect admission to people congregating in the appropriate smoking area outside to the door to the room being closed to the level of volume of your event while their thug-rap-hip hop night is as loud as hell, but that’s okay to them.  Your crowd isn’t buying drinks.  The bar crowd is as the male patrons attempt to buy willing girls drinks in order to get them drunk enough to look good to them before last call.  Have you seen some of these losers at that bar?  Any woman in her right mind would have to either be on pills, serious drugs or drunk beyond her wildest nightmares to go home with some of those “Berksha gangstas”.  It’s quite perplexing.

The most recent show had so many problems; they’re too boring to list.  I was excited thinking the Berkshire underground would come out to support Millions Dead, The Poncherellos and touring bands GDP and Dirty Money.  Was I ever wrong.  I was able to pay the bands their guarantee, but the show turnout was dismal.  Fewer than 25 paid and most of the kids I didn’t know had actually come to see GDP, an underground punk hip-hop act from New Jersey.  You’d think the thugs would come in to check out this exciting performer, but instead they stayed in the bar trying to be “playas”.  Before Dirty Money took the stage, I knew we’d have problems.  The Poncherellos were told to turn down several times because the bar hag said we were too loud.  Well, yeah, we’re loud, we’re a punk rock band and we’ve played there a few times before without problems.  Millions Dead opened without incident.

Dirty Money thought they might have issues because they’re extremely loud to begin with.  Needless to say they were, but they were incredible!  Everyone stayed to see this great band from Florida play…two goddamn songs!  The idiot noise police from the front desk had his handy decibel meter and kept telling us to turn down while he was standing directly next to the speakers instead of being outside the room.  The bar hag kept running in and telling us to turn down all the while we could her their thug crap coming through the walls.  Dirty Money got pissed at the noise police and the bar hag so they wrapped it up after just two songs.  The songs were great and the band is amazing, but I was really upset.  My money is just as good as the thug crowd.  The punk money is just as good as the thug money but between the two Econo idiots, it’s time to find an alternate venue, a sane person cannot deal with the insane.  The fight in the parking lot where the 6 foot tall guy kneed and proceeded to repeatedly pummel this woman in the face was rather fun to see at 1:30 AM.  It’s to know the punk shows bring in all the problems and the thug crowd is so well behaved.  “Look out your windows Econo Lodge guests and see the stupid thug bar fight go awry.”

The situation was even more disappointing because kids don’t go to live shows anymore to check out bands, they just use My Space.  If they don’t like the sound (on the very inferior My Space player and with crappy computer speakers), they’ll stay home missing out on the fun social activity of going to a punk show and seeing live music.  It’s a different time and these kids are from a different generation.  I need to keep reminding myself about this.

After getting the energy kicked out of me at the Econo, I have moved on setting my sites on other alternative venues with varying degrees of success.  The Eagle certainly has avoided what I’ve been up to like the plague, so stay tuned to Project 413.  It’s still a pain in the ass to promote all-ages shows, but it’s getting a little less painful so to speak.

The first show I produced happened after I finished school in New York City.  I’d started my zine, Rebel Sound a year earlier and wanted to have a show to celebrate the first year.  The options of clubs in the area was worse than it is now, if you can believe that.  The early 1990s was a dark time for music, punk was still a threat in these here parts and no one knew what a Hot Topic was.  The now-defunct Woody’s Roadhouse agreed to let me do the show.  Throughout our negotiations, the stage was almost pulled out from under us.  The ad in the Berkshire Eagle simply read “Benefit Concert”.  Benefit Concert?  Why do these things always have to be a benefit?  It should’ve read “Concert to Benefit Clubowner’s Wallet”.  Woody booked another event on the night of my show and we needed to be done and packed up by a certain time to make matters even worse.

Sound Bite House provided the PA (which the club was going to charge me $200.00 to rent) all the way from Long Island and because of their generosity, we were able to host some bands who went on to punk rock fame including Blanks ’77, Submachine, Aus-Rotten and The Casualties along with 9 other bands.  It was crazy, but a total blast.  Woody made it really difficult because he wouldn’t let me control the door and had his thug bouncer ID everyone and charge people over 21 less and under 21 more.  The money that could’ve been paid to the bands went to the club who made money off drinks anyway.  Woody’s was in the middle of nowhere so where else were people going to drink?

The fact that Woody’s was in Washington, made me really nervous, but in the end, a large group of local punks showed up in addition to people from throughout New England who made the trek for this unique show.  It seemed like everyone worked together for the good of the show.  Isaiah made a kick-ass flyer, a bunch of us made food for the bands so they wouldn’t be hungry, people didn’t try to sneak in and everyone had a great time.

I was still left with a rotten taste in my mouth when it came time to divide up the money.  Woody completely ripped me off, as their count of over and unders didn’t match mine, but what was I to do?  I had no back up and that guy was most likely packing some guns.

Welcome to the world of DIY productions kid.

I didn’t give up, even though any sane person wouldn’t have gotten involved with this nightmare to begin with.  My next show of a semi-large scale was at Brannigan’s, which is now Asters in Pittsfield.  The owner and his wife were somewhat cool.  They really only wanted a percentage of the door and sold soft drinks to cover their time.  Alcohol wasn’t to be served, but at the time, it wasn’t an issue.  People snuck in, but all in all, it was a successful event.  For whatever reason, they didn’t welcome us back.  After shows in Adams at the Armory, the Dalton American Legion and Club Carol in Pittsfield, I was exhausted and done.  I moved.  I needed to get out of town for some time.  Well, that was twelve years ago.

Moving back to the Berkshires was something I had in my mind for almost eight years.  I was in Los Angeles and had gained an insurmountable amount of experience booking a punk club called Bollocks.  Working with the owner of Bollocks was excellent!  He owned the building and opened the club in literally one of the worst neighborhoods in Los Angeles.  Years after we closed, actress Daryl Hannah tied herself to a tree in the public garden across the street, but that’s another story.  Bollocks was a true success in an unforgiving world.  Kids came from across Los Angeles and beyond to see bands like Citizen Fish, Total Chaos, The Generators, Jon Cougar Concentration Camp, Final Conflict, The Casualties and Stratford Mercenaries (CRASS) in a real punk club with a stage.  There was one bathroom, no soap, basically nothing to drink or eat and we did gangbusters business!  Kids walked to this dirty and gross bodega with 2” thick bulletproof glass and surly bums begging for change to buy drinks and snacks.

Needless to say, the environment to promoting DIY concerts in the Berkshires has changed and it’s not for the better.  Kids who took the cue from the shows produced, took the lead but something was missing from their equation and it was completely detrimental to the cause.  Concerts at the Girl’s Club were stopped after one person trashed a bathroom.  A couple of genius minds trashed personal property in the Howard Building (where the Cyberian Café once was) and therefore, all underground music activities were stopped indefinitely.  Other businesses did become open to the idea of holding shows, but the end result was always the same:  some jackass or jackasses ruined it for everyone else.  Source of the Nile was the last hope for shows here and because the appropriate permits were never pulled and the shop was a cluttered mess, the police shut it down and Source eventually closed for good.

I was lucky enough to go to perform at Source on one of their final nights.  The store was packed and it really seemed like Pittsfield had finally built a scene that could sustain all-ages shows.  After Source closed, the scene was gone in an instant.  It’s so disjointed and it’s almost like Los Angeles in a way, but on a much smaller scale.  People are lazy in LA because they’re spoiled, but in the Berkshires they’re just lazy.  In the past year since the end of Source, I’ve produced several concerts, as has Berkshire Sound in Adams and Project 413 in Lenox.  Attendance for most of these concerts has been good collectively, but we can all count our financial losses before we can count our financial gains.  This isn’t about making money, but hell, we’d all like to cover our expenses and pay the bands at the very least.

For years, the Berkshires have been ignored by most nationally touring bands appealing to those under the age of 40 who aren’t into James Taylor.  Cover bands that play the same songs as other cover bands continue to thrive for some illogical reason.  These glorified karaoke acts are jobbers:  they play for the pay and then go home.  Writing something original, presenting it and performing it live is something they can’t comprehend.  They laugh at us behind our backs and to our faces.

This is just the beginning of the battle of trying to take something back from those who ruined it for everyone else.  Part 2 will be posted shortly.

Of course, that’s not the case at all. The way the town tells the tale is that South Street has become inefficient and needs to be improved. What?!!?!?!?!? This country road, like many country roads throughout New England is just that: a country road! I concede the intersection at Hubbard, Dalton Division, East and South Streets still manages to confuse lifelong residents of Dalton and Pittsfield, but to destroy property and nature- not to mention claiming homes through eminent domain- is a bit much, don’t you think? Kenneth Walto says it’s a safety issue, and while it is, to some extent, how is the remainder of South Street a safety issue to the current traffic state?

The current state of traffic is just fine. Hubbard Avenue lies right in a flood plain- that is why it has been known to flood over the years- but South Street in Dalton isn’t.

Crane & Company, the town’s biggest employer, made plans a couple of years ago, albeit quietly, to construct (yet another) industrial park on land they currently own. This will be good for Dalton they say. It’s no surprise that since the deaths of all the old major Crane players, the children and relatives couldn’t figure out how to run a company, which essentially runs itself. Mansions and land were sold off for neighborhood residential development, nursing homes and other “cash generators” for a company who claimed financial distress. The kids couldn’t run a lawn mower properly; let alone a company who relies so heavily on government contracts. One of the greatest Crane errors was when they opened a chain of high-end paper retail outlets within the past decade only to close them because consumers were sending more e-mail instead of writing letters. Consumers had no need or understanding of fine paper products; Crane missed that gravy train by bout 40 years.

The industrial park plan is kind of foggy, as the exact location is rather vague, but take one drive along South Street and it all comes together. People are losing land and more importantly driveways (some already frighteningly close into road as it is), glorious maple trees are going to be destroyed and the Berkshire County charm that has existed on South Street for decades will be gone sooner than you can think. Construction rigs are already littered throughout South Street under the auspice of “making the street safer.” Safer for whom? Idiots who can’t maneuver a very well marked intersection with more traffic lights than a Christmas tree? No, not even close.

The intersection and the entire stretch are being made “safer” for the heavy tractor-trailer traffic Crane and the town expects to have once the industrial park is a reality. The low hanging train trestle, for years jokingly referred to as the “Callahan Memorial,” will be rebuilt to allow for tractor trailers to safely pass underneath instead of getting their tops sheared off, which was always cool to see. The flood plain of Hubbard Avenue is just that, a flood plain, and there must have been some reason as to why that trestle couldn’t have been expanded to accommodate the new amounts of traffic. Maybe it would’ve required the creation of a new road through barren land that might’ve caused a furor within the private landowners? Isn’t the Wal-Mart Bridge sturdy enough to handle all the additional traffic? South Street isn’t even a state route, yet somehow this has become state priority. At least Mitt Romey halted the funds for the project, but everyone’s favorite devil approved it, which is of little surprise.

It is going to be a sad day when the grand re-opening of South Street in Dalton occurs. I think people are going to miss what they had once it’s gone. The song “Big Yellow Taxi” is so very typical of the Berkshires. Listen to it and think of the grand structures we once had in Pittsfield, or the field, which is littered with the Berkshire Mall, or the country road, which was once South Street in Dalton. Unfortunately, this isn’t the beginning, nor is it the end, of ruining something that is irreplaceable in the beautiful Berkshires.