Dirty Rotten Imbeciles obey a ‘Restricted’ sign.

“F--- the system, they can’t have me/I don’t need society.” F’n A right, man. I still get a tingle when I flip my vinyl to side two and hear that first track off D.R.I.’s seminal second LP, Dealing With It. At school I scrawled these lines on every textbook assigned to me. OK, I scrawled these lines on every Pick ‘n’ Save paper bag my mom helped me convert into a cover for a textbook. But when I got home, man, I let the system have it loud and clear … from the speakers buried in my bunker of a bedroom in my parents’ basement. Maybe I was too timid for the revolution. I certainly felt a kind of rage seething inside me, leveled most acutely at the jock creeps who prowled my high school halls and more vaguely at the Reagan/Bush regime. And that’s where D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles) came in: a band who was part of the first wave of American hardcore, a band who defiantly merged their sound with metal to create the equally seminal 1987 Crossover LP, a band who brazenly called their 1989 long player Thrash Zone. It would be maudlin and terribly inaccurate to say they “saved” me. What they did afford kids like me was catharsis. So loosen up those middle fingers and let the system have it on November 21st when D.R.I. overturns the status quo via the House of Rock. Come early to catch supporting acts Fall For Glory, Dresden, and heirs apparent Defenestrator.

D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles) + Dresden + Defenestrator + Fall For Glory • Nov. 21 • House of Rock, 422 Water St. • 6:45pm • $12 in advance, $15 day of show • ages 21+ • house-of-rock.com