Major Conflict

"Sounds Like 1983" CD

Major Conflict were THE veritable supergroup of NYHC, featuring members of Urban Waste and Kraut. This cd has the lost sessions of 1983, the ever elusive 7" whose obscurity garnered fame for the band, and live tracks from A7, CBGB's and Max's Kansas City...

Dito of Major Conflict wrote a book called His memoirs, "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" and it's is being made into a major motion picture by Robert Downey Jr.

I met Major Conflict (Billy, Dito Johnny Waste, John Dancy & Nick) in the Ravenswood projects in 1982. They were rehearsing in Johnny Waste's mothers apartment. Living room full of wannabe rappers smoking crack and dust just to the right of Major Conflict blasting straight out NYHC noise with an intensity to match anything out there. Some people may romanticize or get all nostalgic about it but here was the scene. John Dancy banging on Garbage cans, Johnny Waste, Dito and Nick all blasting out of the same amp while Billy and Dito scream to utter madness into a shared microphone plugged into a worn out old boom box. This wasn't a photo op kids this was what it was like in the projects in Queens in 1982. While Punk seems to only be remembered as a Suburban "thing" and documents seem to jump straight from The Sex Pistols to Nirvana, somewhere right in the middle, the middle of the inner-city, New York's inner city was Major Conflict and having been there that's something I cherish.
--BILLY JACK.

This is The Sound of NYHC in 1983: Teenagers. We took our father's overcoats and painted NO EDGE on them Flannel shirts or pajama top. Jeans and combat boot.
We hung out on the Lower East Side before it became the Upper East Side, at CBGB's before it became a brand of t-shirt and we were bridge and tunnel before even that too became cool. We helped Major Conflict carry their equipment in shopping carts, and on the subway, because cars were not an option. And this was when no one would even consider watching MTV or listening to the radio. How could you? Why would you! how could you afford it!!!!! Did it exist?

Would you believe me if I told you people still talk about that show at the Ravenswood Projects? Who played that show? The Mob? Urban Waste? The Psychos? Armed CItizens?
How many of us were really there?
How many of us are still around?
Does anyone else remember it like I do?
I can go on and on about how things were bettter in the old days, but why bother?
I'll let the new jacks do it for me. I'll let them write about it, sing about it, and even dress the part. If you were there for this, then this goes out to you.
--A Friend.


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