Punk Rock Fight Club

From issue 1033, Mark Binelli's look inside FSU. Plus, click for a video slideshow in which Binelli examines FSU life and discusses the controversial Boston Beatdown DVD.

Last week, Elgin Nathan James, the one-time leader of the infamous hardcore crew FSU, was arrested and accused of extorting $5,000 from a musician in exchange for protection from physical attacks. The charges are just the latest development in the odd, brutal saga of James and FSU.

Friends Stand United (or as they were also known, Fuck Shit Up) was born in the late 80s in Boston's hardcore scene. At first, FSU stood as a violent rebuttal to Nazi skinheads, but later the crew used its fists and boots on anyone who crossed them. FSU eventually sprawled out from Boston, taking root in Philadelphia, Chicago, Arizona, Los Angeles, Seattle, upstate New York and New Jersey, and soon tales of violent, sometimes fatal attacks across the nation were attributed to FSU.

Mark Binelli chronicled James and FSU for Rolling Stonein 2007. What he found is here in "Punk Rock Fight Club: The Gang Behind the Mosh-Pit Killings."

The night of the killing, James Morrison and three of his friends made the hour-long drive to Asbury Park, New Jersey. They'd come to catch a hardcore show at Club Deep, a squat, unassuming venue on Ocean Avenue. The location would be prime in most other cities, but the grim, deserted boardwalk in Asbury Park is the kind of beachfront property where the sea gulls make you think of vultures.

From the moment Morrison and his friends walked through the doors of the club on January 14th, something felt wrong. "We were getting stared at by everyone in the place," recalls Morrison's friend Charlie. "You could tell we were outsiders. I told the guys, 'Listen, you gotta watch yourselves. Don't have words with anybody.' "

The club opened in 2003 as the Cadillac Ranch Saloon, taking its name from an old Bruce Springsteen song, but they fired the dancing cowgirls when the place became Club Deep, and soon began hosting everything from jam bands to Eighties dance nights. On this evening, a local hardcore promoter called Hoodlum Productions had booked six bands, including Colin of Arabia, Wisdom in Chains and, headlining, Ramallah, a Boston act whose repertoire includes the gleefully nihilistic "Heart Full of Love" (sample lyric: "I'd love to rape a Hilton sister or kill an FM-show director") as well as more political songs like "Days of Revenge" ("Malcolm was right, the hate that we've sown has come home in the night. . . . Your leaders! They're killers! They're liars!").

January 14th was the night before Alex Franklin's thirty-fourth birthday, and he, too, decided to spend it at Club Deep. Franklin had been going to hardcore shows since the Eighties, earning himself the nickname "Old-School Alex." A thickset Korean-American covered in tattoos, Franklin was a conspicuous presence in the young, overwhelmingly white hardcore scene, where he was also known as a skilled tattoo artist. He worked at a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn and had inked a number of hardcore kids — especially "straight-edgers," hardcore fans who swear off drinking, smoking and taking drugs. Although Franklin himself has been straight-edge since he was a teenager and recently became a born-again Christian, he still cuts an intimidating figure: A pair of daggers are tattooed on either side of his face, the blades poking down like sideburns.

Morrison was also a fan of hardcore. Ramallah was one of his favorite bands, but he was decidedly not straight-edge. A stocky twenty-five-year-old, popular and extroverted, he liked to drink, shoot pool and mess around on the guitar. "Pretty much everyone he met was like, 'Jim Morrison! From the Doors?' " recalls his ex-girlfriend Angela Vetri. "He hated it." A Navy veteran who'd served on the USS Bataan in the early days of the Iraq War, Morrison had moved back to New Gretna, a town in semirural South Jersey near where he'd grown up, in 2004. He worked in yacht building and construction for a while, but he'd become restless, and even though he disagreed with the president and the war, he had begun telling his friends he wanted to re-enlist.

Morrison generally caught shows in Atlantic City, but for Ramallah, he and his friends made the drive to Asbury. By the time they pulled into the parking lot at Club Deep, Alex Franklin had already arrived.

What happened next is still being debated, but everyone agrees that, shortly after Morrison showed up, a violent fight broke out. Morrison, according to witnesses, was hit repeatedly with a bar stool, stomped in the chest while he was on the ground and, as he staggered outside, struck in the head from behind, possibly with brass knuckles. The police, responding to a 911 call, arrived at approximately 5:50 p.m. and found Morrison lying on the sidewalk, unconscious and unresponsive. At 6:30 p.m., he was pronounced dead.