Sunday Music: Flood of '72 (Title Fight and Trauma Redemption)

On Title Fight’s first record, Shed, there’s a song called “Flood of ‘72” that I always wondered what anybody from anywhere else in the world would think of. If you’re from Wilkes-Barre, or anywhere in the river valley where Title Fight is from (Kingston, Forty-Fort, Luzerne, and the greater WB area - represent!), the Flood of ‘72, aka Agnes, has been etched into your DNA, no matter how old you are or were. It changed life here. All of it. But, then again, if you’re not from here, you can only know your own version of a similar weight.

Natural disasters destroy a lot, and they destroy a diversity of things. Ecosystems get literally and figuratively washed away in a flood. And, I don't think we give this as much time as we ought to: crisis creates culture. Disasters don't just destroy - they generate new ways of being together.

I’m bringing this to music. This is a Sunday Music post, let me remind you. I just have to unpack the river-mud in the soul of my basement a bit with you.

The first show I ever played, where I got up in front of my peers on a stage, and somebody handed us money made at the door before we went home, was at a half-abandoned hotel in downtown Wilkes-Barre called the Café Metropolis.

Our town, or really our towns, are a bunch of neighborhoods arranged in an illogical network of stream and tributary adjacent side streets that are so densely connected you can ride a bike through endless suburbia for miles (and miles and miles) up and down the valley walls of the Susquehanna River.

As soon as you go anywhere even slightly bigger, in population density terms at least, you realize what a boring and insignificant place you are from. And yet, maybe because of the boredom, maybe because of the chip on our collective shoulder over how insignificant we are, our funny little river valley has always had an absolutely killer underground original music scene.

Café Metropolis, aka Metro, moved to a second location in the mid to late 90s, with more room (and a less condemned parent building). I’d bet money that the walls were covered in band stickers and graffiti within minutes of the first show. Looking back on it now, the room itself was an artifact of a cultural flood. It was all the crap washed up from the valley, but instead of out from the river, it was down from the teenagers who line the walls of the mountains, and it all flowed into that downtown Wilkes-Barre room.

When Ned Russin from Title Fight joined me on Just Press Record (with Keith Morris of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Off!), he told some of his Metro stories too. He experienced the same room I did, offset by about 7 years, but as he explained it, it was “Where people from other places and other cultures would come and, kind of like, show us how other things could exist.”

Whether you were in a band, going to see the local bands, or part of the out-of-town bands who constantly descended on our valley because we had a cool thing going on - our scene was an education in possibility. It was an education in belief building. It was an education in how to be both the educators and the students at the same time.

We may not have seemed like the most cultured place from the outside in, but from the inside out, we made up for it with character, in spades.

Besides Metro, the other room (outside of school) that I spent the most of my time in was also shaped by the flood. Across the river in Kingston sat The Church of Christ United, oddly enough, right in Ned’s hometown. This was the church my parents picked when we originally moved to the area when I was 4. At church, they talked about the flood all the time, probably more than the Noah flood, and all because it was part of its origin story.

The Church, aka CoCU, was relatively new. Every kid in attendance caught onto this, fast, even if the church was older than them by a multiple.

The story goes - quickly after the flood of ‘72, two demolished neighborhood churches were faced with an impossible rebuild. Recognizing they could do together what they couldn’t do alone, they set out to link up. And, just to make it clear, these weren’t the same denominations, which makes this combination plan extra special. While they were both Christian/protestant churches, one was Presbyterian and the other was Methodist. Even if the faith rhymed, the institutional structures - like how you pick pastors and allocate funds - they were very (very) different.

Now I’m not saying they said “f*** it” and jumped blindly into a merger, but I am saying they definitely opted to pick unity at the community level over any prior institutional identity.

I knew Noah was a big deal. But in that church, the rebuild after ‘72 was held in equally high regards for the covenant of committing to the new. The two congregations ultimately picked the physical Methodist structure for their rebuild, and brought the miraculously survived stained glass Tiffany window from the Presbyterian church to install as a symbol. The rainbow/painted light metaphor never missed me.

There’s a selfless act in the church’s marriage. There was a lot of compromise and cooperation, from two communities who didn’t have to do it, except for that they chose to do it despite their traditions and in favor of their futures.

The elders who made those decisions passed some values forward. Not church values. Community values. There was something in the air. Or, maybe there was something in the water, or - after the experience the whole valley worked a little different.

Flash forward to somewhere in the early 2000s, and across Kingston you could find the Russin brothers and their friends, a short bike ride from that church, not to mention a bit closer to the river, and working on songs like “Flood of ‘72” for their new band in a remodeled basement. As 2000s teens, the 1970s were as foreign and far away as the stories about what had happened in the before times, but they couldn’t escape them either. They’re just part of the culture here.

When Title Fight sings, “So far removed from the life you’re used to” or about how “our town that’s underwater” - they’re speaking literal histories and metaphorical truths. This is the story of our flood, amended for sharing beyond the valley, as a signal to everyone else who might feel displaced. Other people would come in and show us what could exist, Title Fight were taking our story outside of the valley to tell them what could exist too.

I came across an article the other day, in the wake of the anniversary of the flood from June 14 - June 25, 1972, and how people started to come back to their homes in the middle of July. There’s not anything in the history books about a fourth of July celebration that year, or at least not that I’ve seen. There’s just some stark descriptions of the slow move back, and the slow starting plans to rebuild.

Disaster is now and always will be part of my community’s DNA. We can’t escape the stories, at least not yet. Because even in the places where we grew up - the Café Metropolis, the Church of Christ United, and all the people and places surrounding them - we all emerged from the same cultural necessity.

The disaster didn’t just happen to Wilkes-Barre, it defined what Wilkes-Barre is, or at least what it would become. One of the things about a diverse local music scene, especially one with so much punk, hardcore, and, let’s be honest, simple boundary-pushing music, is that it breeds on individuals processing hardship. Their grandparents did it, their parents continued it, and it's all been passed down in various ways.

What’s better for processing hardship than feelings of boredom and insignificance, begging you to make something interesting that matters?

Title Fight’s song ends with the word, “Resurface.” I don’t know what they were aiming for, but I know what it means for some memories to surface, others to remain buried, and communities to do that strange dance between holding on to the past and letting go to move forward.

Metro, CoCU, and this whole valley is proof that trauma can be generative - not just destructive. The legacy here probably has more to do with Noah than not. Because yes, the world collapsed on and around us once before and it may do it again, but - look at the communities it helped create.

If you’re not from the area, we have something to tell you. You can hear it in Ned’s voice and how Keith responds in our conversation. The generational experiences carry a weight. We didn’t earn those truths through direct hardship, but we learned them in the shadow. It made our community better for it, and that message, it’s important to share.

Every place that's been broken has its own version of this story - how communities rebuild not just buildings but culture itself. But I can only tell you about ours. In 2025 there’s still a lot of mud, mold, and mess left over from 1972. But there’s also a track record of people from this area who are better storytellers because of it. Celebrate the stories.

Ps. this is a Sunday Music post, after all, so here’s Title Fight doing “Flood of ‘72” on their album, Shed, and then live at The Gallery of Sound - our local indie music store - during an acoustic set from a few years back: