This isn’t going to mean much to most of you, but I think there are a fans of old school punk rock here.
John Stabb, frontman of DC hardcore ban Government Issue, passed from cancer last night. GI never got as famous as Minor Threat or Black Flag, but they were a pretty good band, and got a lot of love.
I saw them a few months ago, for what no one knew would be their final show. For a bunch of fifty something dudes, they still rocked.
On a personal note, I’m not going to lie and say we were really close, but we used to live in the same complex, and we’d hang out occasionally. He was a super nice guy, a great conversationalist and a good soul. I’ll miss seeing him around the neighborhood.
Larry - thanks for posting this update. Hung out with John Stabb on GI’s first (and maybe only tour to the West Coast) at the On Broadway in SF. IIRC 1983 or 1984. It was a good show, and John, his brother and the other GI guys were all cool to hang out with. I remember they kinda freaked out part of the audience by adding a guitarist that looked like a total heavy metal dude instead of a DC straight edge skinhead. Of course, John Stabb had kinda long hair and wore hippie style round sunglasses as well.
A friend of mine worked with him in the 80’s at a record store in Georgetown. He was different from the other punks in that he was friendly and even funny, got along with all sorts, and would still say hello to you even if you showed up in DC Space wearing a business suit.
A man of many talents, he could hock a giant loogie 10 feet in the air and catch it in his mouth, an act which brilliantly encapsulates the mix of hilarious and disgusting elements which made his act unique.
I remember a conversation where a guy mentioned that he was a vegetarian, and Stabb replied how “You must have, like, rosy pink bowels. Mine are like…” and then had everyone gasping with a hilarious description of the things that must be clinging to, and swimming around, his colon - an observation which turned out to be tragically, eerily, prescient.
That is one of the things i admired about him. The Hardcore scene is incredibly conformist and exclusionary, but Stabb went against that with his psychedelic clothes and welcoming attitude. He knew which outsiders were just slumming and which were generally interested in the music, and he made a young awkward Larry Borgia feel relaxed and welcome.
When I saw them in December, they still rocked, even though they were playing to an audience of nostalgic middle aged people. Just a little bit after that he checked himself into a hospital for gastrointestinal issues, which led to a lot of Chortling on FB (Haha, GI issues, huh?) which stopped once people learned how dire the situation was.
