This YouTube channel unearths raw footage of ’90s Midwest punk
by Ali Elabbady
June 02, 2023
Guttural screams. Furious bass. Ear-splitting guitar. Breakneck drums. For decades now, these sonic elements have sent crowds swirling in mosh pits, like the ocean’s high tide building and falling away, song after song. The Twin Cities punk and hardcore show scene has always been a tight-knit one, with shows often hosting groups of 50-100 faces screaming, sweating, stage-diving, and moshing it out.
It’s also a subculture with a rugged sense of community, belonging, and an elusive set of ever-changing DIY venues. Once the pandemic came into focus, few spots in the local ecosystem could stay active – aside from punk, hardcore, and metal purveyor Extreme Noise Records’ Lake Street location in south Minneapolis. The DIY nature of the music, shows, and community extends to documentation of such a scene. It takes the often unpaid work of passionate photographers, writers, and tapers to keep the stories alive. Prolific YouTubers UnderCurrentMPLS have documented punk/hardcore/underground shows since 2011. Going farther back, though, another champion of Twin Cities punk/hardcore history of the ’90s and early 2000s is Dan Zimmerman.
“Before hardcore and punk music, I was a small-town, Midwestern, Christian, right-wing, carnivore kid,” Zimmerman says, via Zoom from his home in São Paulo, Brazil. “Once I got introduced to punk and hardcore music, I started learning about social issues and the environment. It changed me as a person in so many ways, and it changed the path of my life completely.”
Born and raised 45 minutes away from the Twin Cities in Faribault, Zimmerman vividly remembers his entry point into the local punk and hardcore scene. This was especially true not only as a patron of those shows, but as a guitarist for local bands, including Harvest and the Hope Conspiracy. “My best friend Justin Kane played drums in a band called Pillar, and another friend, Dave Walker, sang in Harvest and other bands,” he recalls. “They were playing these little punk underground hardcore shows in and around Minnesota, but they didn't travel too much with their first bands. I started going to shows around either 1992 or 1993. The first hardcore show I played was in 1994, although my band Threshold was more of a metal band that was playing within this scene.”
Zimmerman remembers the challenge of finding shows to attend, especially as an outsider from a small town. “Back in the mid-’90s, the hardcore/punk scene was pretty small,” he says. “You would have 50 or 100 people at a show, a lot of times at small basement shows or at the first location of Extreme Noise Records on West Lake Street. It was the same people at all the shows. Everyone knew everyone, so it was a very friendly scene. When I found that scene and started going to shows, I became obsessed with it, and wanted to fully immerse myself in it.”
A DIY venue Zimmerman frequented was the Bomb Shelter, which was run by Felix Von Havoc, singer of Code 13, Destroy, “and a number of more ‘crust punk’ hardcore bands,” he says. A lot of incredible shows were at 1021 Eighth Street, close to Dinkytown, which Zimmerman describes as a strange commercial building turned into a residential building. “There was a house near where the old Metrodome was called the Minnesota Academy of Gung Fu,” he says. “And another venue called Gruzy's Buck & Wing, which were elaborately long names for someone's basement.”
As Extreme Noise Records changed locations, the shows moved along with it. “Their original location, which was on West Lake Street, “ he says, “they would push the records off to the sides, and set up a little PA and play shows there. The second location of Extreme Noise on Nicollet, they had the store part on the ground level, and they had an empty basement and they would do shows down there.”
Around the same time, Zimmerman started to develop an affinity for filming, mainly with a friend’s camcorder. “We would film ourselves recreating Saturday Night Live skits, or film our own band playing cover songs,” he says. “I was going to shows consistently around the fall of ’95 by then, and I was really focused on the scene. I bought a camcorder and I would just film every show that I went to, and every band that I saw.”
He and his friends started to venture beyond the Twin Cities into other states to attend and play punk and hardcore shows – and Zimmerman kept on filming them. “I have around 140 compact VHS tapes,” Zimmerman says, sheepishly. “Recently in August, I went up to Minnesota to digitize a bunch of tapes, so now I have almost all of it digitized.”
Back in the mid-’90s, Zimmerman had wanted to do a video zine. He filmed some interviews with different people in the scene and band members. “I never ended up doing anything with it,” he says. “In the fall of 1997 I went on tour with my band Harvest, and when we were in Toronto, someone broke into the van and stole a bunch of equipment, including the camcorder, and that ended the the phase of me filming my shows for a while, so I just kind of boxed up all the tapes.”
By 1999, Zimmerman had relocated to Boston, to be part of hardcore punk band the Hope Conspiracy, and he continued to document those shows at a steady clip, until he relocated to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for TV work in 2002. From that point on, he became much more focused on his career, including time at MTV Brazil, and family and became “a bit of a hermit.”
When the pandemic hit, and as everyone underwent social isolation, Zimmerman went back into those camcorder archives, and started digitizing them. In April of 2021, he launched a channel called Twenty Five After on YouTube as a way to reconnect with friends and colleagues alike. “The pandemic was a motivating factor to get some shows out there that people could watch, at a time when people weren't actually able to go out to shows,” he says.
The premise for Twenty Five After is simple: Zimmerman tries to post shows exactly 25 years after they happened. “There's a bunch of stuff that I've missed,” he says. “Usually, I try my best to post it on the anniversary date, but it'll be 26-27 years after.”
One of Zimmerman’s favorite shows that comes up is Code 13 and Disembodied at the Bomb Shelter back in December of 1995. “When I watched that, I was blown away by the Code 13 set,” he says. “That's one of the things I love, seeing a band that even when they're playing in a basement with 50 people, they're just on it, you know, they've just got it drilled in. It was like watching Bad Brains at CBGB in ’82.”
Looking through Twenty Five After’s YouTube channel might be sensory overload to a newcomer not overly familiar with the ’90s hardcore/punk scene. However, scroll across some of the videos, and some important moments in history emerge. There’s early footage of California alt-metal pioneers Deftones performing in the parking lot of the Dinkytown McDonald’s for 93.7 The Edge’s Back to School Special. “That show was a really fun one,” Zimmerman says. “My friend Justin was out there stage diving and crawling on people's heads. I'm very fortunate that I've always had friends that are doing cool things, and I was just very fortunate to get to experience everything that I've seen.”
Another show that came up as Zimmerman was reminiscing was seeing Washington, D.C., rock act Bluetip at 1021 Eighth Street. “For some reason, there was a moment where I was filming that, where Jason, the lead singer of Bluetip, was staring me down, but people would play with the camera, run up to the camera and stuff, making use of the limited space of the venue as best as they could,” he says.
Some of the shows also act as a tribute to those no longer with us. Sean Lipinski was part of a supergroup project Zimmerman had started called City of God. Lipinski was also known for his work with Holding On, Regret, and Sunset. “Sean got into the hardcore scene a little bit after me,” Zimmerman says. “He started playing drums in a band called the Real Enemy, which was this fast, hardcore, straight-edge band. We played our first show at the Key in Northfield, and then we played our second show with Sean on drums at the Triple Rock Social Club, which was a really great show.” Unfortunately, Sean died at the age of 42 following complications of an aggressive brain tumor at the end of 2022, and a GoFundMe was started to help his family with living and funeral expenses. Zimmerman attended Sunset’s show in St. Paul in August of 2022, and an old friend came up to me to tell him, “Man, you're you're doing the Lord's work with posting the videos.”
Twenty Five After’s purpose goes deeper than just a pandemic-era reaction to social isolation. It’s keeping memories alive. “I have two daughters, and my youngest daughter, she's 11 now,” Zimmerman says. “A little while ago, she asked if I could keep a journal so that when I die, she could read these things, and learn things about me, which I thought was interesting. It's funny, because she has an interesting, very natural approach to death.”
Mortality is a motivating factor as more record keepers of scenes pass. Treasure troves and memories could go unnoticed, or worse, get forgotten. “That's a big part of me putting all the stuff out on the channel,” Zimmerman says. “ I'm just trying to get that stuff out to the people that it means something to while I have the chance. The power of music to connect and the ability for you to really feel for someone empathize with someone, and understand what it is that they're expressing, if I don't share it with anyone, what good is that? Eventually it'll just end up getting thrown out when someone doesn't realize the value it has.”
Harvest will be perform as part of a memorial to benefit the family of Sean Lipinski on Saturday, June 3, at the Uptown VFW, located at 2916 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis. Sunset will be headlining the show, with Gnaw, Empire Down, Blue Ox, Desperate Acts, and Identity Crisis also performing. This show is for all ages. Tickets are $25 in advance, and $35 at the door. Doors will be at 12:30 p.m, with music beginning at 1:30 p.m. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the Uptown VFW website for more details.
