by Seth Olenick
Two decades and change into an apocalypse they’ve been warning about since year zero, New York’s Leftöver Crack still feel like a roving resistance cell: a loose family of ska-core survivors armed with distortion, gallows humor, and hard-earned political clarity. But what about the movement that spawned them?
In conversation with PureHoney, frontman Stza questions how punk rock and radical activism are faring today, years removed from a downtown scene of hand-printed zines and all-ages shows centered around Tompkins Square Park and the squatter strongholds of the late ’90s. “I feel like the political DNA of punk has been eroded at a fast pace ever since I can remember,” he says. “I’ve noticed a dangerous lack of punk bands with politically relevant content.”
Leftöver Crack’s forté is dispatches from the underbelly of empire, songs combining staccato verses, roaring refrains, anti-imperialist rage and street-level storytelling that resonates far beyond the band’s old Alphabet City haunts. When their second album, Fuck World Trade, dropped in 2004, its warnings about American hubris — couched in 9/11 imagery — felt incendiary. Now they’re part of the discourse, and an album that retailers once banned is on streaming services.
Stza bears scars from the backlash he faced back then even among ostensible allies, but hindsight has only sharpened his viewpoint. He describes a modern world awash in 9/11’s and false-flag atrocities, both utilized to entrench oligarchy. And he wonders about the state of the mobilization against these forces. “If the left-wing activist culture is going to cherry-pick their causes to fit their own agenda of empowerment while avoiding confrontation with the real enemies, things will get increasingly worse,” he says.
“All I see is every honest and sincere effort to change things destroyed by people postering for a spotlight,” Stza elaborates. “I tried to help and paid a price that is impossible for me to put into words. I hope someone can come along and expose not only corporate corruption but also the activist corruption, and remain immune from being vilified and ostracized.”
Leftöver Crack and openers La Pobreska play 7pm Saturday, January 17 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach. leftovercrack.rocks ~ Abel Folgar
