Sector 4: Tallahassee’s hardcore desperados
By Linda Hall
Graphics by Bill Otersen
Florida Flambeau
Published February, 1985
Perhaps the only positive thing about Ronald Reagan’s reelection is that local hardcore band Sector 4 will not have to change their lyrics. Their songs aggressively attack many things American’s conservative majority hold sacred.
The band’s members are young: drummer Paul Suhor is 18; lead singer Greg Sapronetti is 20; lead guitarist Roy (no last name) is 19; and bassist Neal Cline is 21. The band has been together for four-and-a-half years and has made quite a name for itself in the southeast. They played backup for Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at Florida State last spring, were featured on an EP called We Can’t Help It If We’re From Florida, and in 1983 they cut their own EP called Disclexia. The band has also played in Miami, Gainesville and Atlanta.
But their main accomplishment is yet to come. Within a month the band’s first LP, Capitalist Underground Deathcause, will be available in record stores throughout the country, mainly in San Francisco, Miami and New York. “A few will be available here,” Roy says.
Emerging from a middle class Tallahassee garage, Sector 4 combines late adolescent “what do I do with my life?” frustration and intense resentment toward the insane future their generation has inherited. The result is music that is passionate, honest and artful.
Drummer Suhor describes Sector 4 as “raw rock and roll that is complex and revolting. It is a complete new age of rock and roll.”
The sound of the music is somewhat paradoxical. Sector 4 uses the simple chord changes of traditional garage rock played at a faster pace. A flat polyrhythmic beat, overlapped with sporadic, simple patterns played differently by each guitar makes Sector 4’s sound complex.
The conglomeration of independent patterns leaves room for excellent accidents that can be compared to a carefully aimed handful of paint hurled at a blank canvas. Every instrument is turned up to full power and each song is like a speeding heavy metal train that overwhelms then abruptly halts.
Instead of a two-guitar lineup, like most hardcore bands use, Sector 4 has three guitars. This adds to the band’s complex sound and stage presence. Lead guitarist Roy, who joined the band six months ago, has added another dimension to the band’s performances. Roy’s tight guitar work complements the raw and quick chord changes of the other two guitarists, and the music has a fuller sound.
According to Roy, Capitalist Underground Deathcause differs from Dixclexia in that the new sound is “more thrash, not as much melody and pop sound. There’s more guitar and it’s more spastic.”
The music, however, is only a feature of hardcore, Roy said. “Hardcore is an attitude – sort of aggressive – saying what you have to say without worrying if it’s going to keep you from being popular,” he said. “William Burroughs was hardcore in his own manner.”
Hardcore music in Tallahassee has a small following. However, on a nationwide, grassroots level, it’s getting stronger. It’s doubtful hardcore will ever be in the musical mainstream, but more and more bands like Suicidal Tendencies, the Butthole Surfers, MDC, and Husker Du are cutting and selling albums.
Roy explains, “Hardcore is all over and coming up strong, especially in the West. In Tallahassee, most people are students or state workers that work within the system. People aren’t into new thought. That’s why we have such a small following here.”
As a musical movement, hardcore is a spinoff from punk which began in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with the Ramones and Iggy Pop. The Sex Pistols emerged from England in the mid-70s. They were influenced by American punk’s pure thrashing guitar with little lead. The Sex Pistols added the hardcore edge with speeding rhythms and revolting lyrics. From that point on hardcore evolved simultaneously in England and America.
California picked up on British punk in the late ‘70s and produced hardcore bands like Black Flag, The Germs and The Circle Jerks. Bands like The Clash and Buzzcocks evolved in England at the same time.
Hardcore, since its beginning, hasn’t been pretty and neither were the social situation it grew out of. In England the breeding ground for punk and hardcore was a youth unemployment rate of nearly 80 percent in overcrowded cities.
Stripping away social standards, like money and vanity, Sector 4 mirrors what they feel is the ugly core of society. They not only reveal these qualities through their music, but through their appearance as well.
Hardcore punks are notorious for wearing torn t-shirts with crudely-written slogans like “No Future” and “There’s something about you that makes me want to punk my guts out.”
Another visual trait of hardcore’s antisocial philosophy is hairstyle. This week, Sapronettis is sporting a mohawk with red tips, and Cline has a half-shaven head with the shaved side painted blue. A Common hairstyle worn by Suhor is the mange-crudely chopped sections of hair cut close to the scalp.
These negative visual statements are made with a peaceful end in mind.
Suhor explains the intentions of the band: “We are striving for a positive peace nation. People in the U.S. are so far gone, we have to sound negative to point out what’s wrong. Society as whole doesn’t act on love – they act on money.”
Roy, who is perhaps the most politically astute of the band members, further explains what moves the band to such drastic ends: “In the ‘60s everyone got stomped all over. They gave up. They fought a losing battle with passivisim. Gandhi was passive, but his follwers were a majority. People that feel the way we do seem to be a minority, so we have to be aggressive to get our point across. Not to say that war is good. Reaganism is what we want to kill in society.”
“People think we are communists,” he said. “I want to get one thing straight. We are not commies. The U.S.S.R. is just as imperialist as the U.S.”
Sector 4 is not entirely political. Sapronetti describes the band as “a rock and roll band that likes to have fun.”
Roy further explains: “We’re not all political like Crass, who almost preaches. We sing fun songs too.”
Sector 4 may not be considered pleasant or even fun by some people, but they are evocative. Although we don’t hear from them often in Tallahassee, they are part of an important, deep-seated feeling that is becoming the expression of a segment of American youth who seem to have gotten the raw end of the deal when it comes to the future.
“What we are trying to do is to get people to think for themselves,” said Roy.
Sector 4 plays tonight and tomorrow night at Nature’s Way on W. Tennessee St., along with fellow Tallahasseans Multifarious Illusions, and Broken Talent, Public Distraction and Toxic Shock from Miami. The show begins at 10:30. There is a $3 cover charge.
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Ed. Note: Very shortly after this article appeared the band's label folded and Capitalist Underground Deathcause was never released. Two of Sector 4's later recordings, "George Washington" and "Destroy", are on the 2018 limited edition compilation record album Trouble With A Capital T.
Sector 4 photo archive
Live on Smitty's farm. Published in the Tallahassee Democrat, May 30, 1983. Photo by Keith Hadley.
A very early photo of Sector 4. From the archive of Paul Suhor.
Sector 4 photo archive
Live on Smitty's farm. Published in the Tallahassee Democrat, May 30, 1983. Photo by Keith Hadley.
A very early photo of Sector 4. From the archive of Paul Suhor.