Al Barile, who played piano in the storied Boston extreme group SS Decontrol, a statement of the drink-and-drug-shy straight-edge picture that also included Washington’s Minor Threat, passed away on Sunday at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was 63.
His wife, Nancy Barile, who didn’t specify a cause but claimed her father had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2022, and “passed ahead calmly” with her at his side, announced his death on Instagram.
On albums like 1982’s” The Kids May Have Their Say,” which featured a group of young people storming the steps of the Massachusetts State House, SS Decontrol — Society System Decontrol for longer, SSD for little — railed violently against what the members saw as the dishonesty and the tyrannical tendencies of government, the police, and organized religion. The idea of a third melody came across as an evil extravagance as the music was loud and hard with the guitar riffs that were pummeling.
The Kids May Have Their State is thus unsettling, dirty, that SS Decontrol’s viewers needn’t worry about their grand succumbing to creepy consumerism, admirably, in the Boston Phoenix in 1982, Joyce Millman wrote admirably in the Boston Phoenix. In the Trouser Press, Ian McCaleb and Ira Robbins refer to the band’s 1983 follow-up as” a definitive hardcore classic” with the title” Get It Away.”
According to his wife, Alan Scott Barile was born on October 4, 1961, in Lynn, Massachusetts, where he spent his early years “making Dracula movies.” He formed SSD ( while a mechanical-engineering student at Northeastern University ), along with bassist Jaime Sciarappa, drummer Chris Foley, and singer Spring, who was known as Springa, after hearing about hearing the Ramones.
In the a , 2024 documentary , about SSD, Springa said,” Al comes out and makes the big speech… and I remember this as clearly as I remember my f— 8th birthday. This band will not be a groovy type of band that people dance to the floor and yell their arse. We’re expressing our views here by addressing anti-government, anti-society, anti-conformity, and breaking down the barriers between the band and the audience.
In the documentary, Barile claimed that he founded SSD in response to well-known Boston bands like Aerosmith and the Cars. He continued,” It didn’t seem like it was real sincere, that kind of music,” adding that it didn’t appear to have the kind of honesty and sincerity I was seeking. Minor Threat, which released its first EP in 1981 with a song called” Straight Edge,” in which singer Ian MacKaye sang,” I’m a person just like you / But I’ve got better things / than sit around and f— my head / Hang out with the living dead,” was a source of the idea of spurning booze and drugs.
Nancy Barile claimed in a statement that the straight-edge philosophy “offered kids a choice” from the typical suburban party lifestyle of the 1970s.
The Kids Will Have Their Say was a joint release from SSD and Xclaim! For” Get It Away,” the band added guitarist Francois Levesque, who was previously on MacKaye’s Dischord label. Before splitting up in 1985, the band released two more heavy-metal-leaning LPs. Later, Barile founded a group called Gage and worked for General Electric as an engineer. SSD was inducted into the New England Music Hall of Fame this year.
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