“Help wanted. Help me find my mother’s band’s demo.”
Charlotte Astor, 16, put the call out on social media last spring, after years of living with stories that had begun to feel unfinished.
Charlotte Astor, Photo: Beverly Nguyen
Her mother, Shannon, had been part of a South Jersey Straight-Edge music scene in the early 1990s – a tight, youth-built world of weekend shows in VFWs, record stores and house parties. Bands playing hard, fast music moved through the region between Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., a culture shaped by sobriety and self-discipline.
The Cherry Hill resident loved hearing those stories that made her mother seem untouchably cool.
Shannon wasn’t just around the scene – she was in it. At 14, she was the singer in a South Jersey band called Seed, writing lyrics and fronting a hardcore group at a time when girls her age were rarely onstage. Seed recorded a single cassette of original music at Wildfire Records, a now-shuttered Pine Barrens studio. A few dozen tapes were made and sold at shows, then disappeared. Seed broke up before anyone thought to hold onto keepsakes.
“She never really talked about the demo,” says Charlotte. “It was about going to shows every weekend, how important Straight Edge was, these house parties where there were just kegs of Snapple. There was always something happening.”
For years, that sufficed, until it didn’t. Charlotte wanted to hear what Seed actually sounded like.
“I always knew she was amazing,” she says. “That’s what bothered me, that I couldn’t hear it.”
When Charlotte pushed for more, she hit a wall. Her mother reminded her it was 30 years ago – a brief span before everything else took over.
Shannon left the scene behind to study and work as an EMT and firefighter-paramedic, eventually becoming the first female trauma technician hired at Cooper University Hospital, Charlotte says.
“She was just busy,” Charlotte says. “She moved on. She had a whole life.”
By middle school, Charlotte stopped asking and started looking on her own – searching online for traces that Seed had existed. She came up empty.
With no way back, she moved forward – into the scene as it exists now, shaped by new faces but carrying the same core values her mother had described.
“I knew what Straight Edge was as a word,” Charlotte says. “I didn’t really understand what it meant until I got into it myself.”
Her entry point came in the summer of 2024, when she went to her first hardcore show at Tunes, an independent record store in Voorhees.
Not long after, Charlotte came across a memoir by Nancy Barile in the library. Barile, a Philadelphia writer, had been part of the Straight Edge movement during the same era as Charlotte’s mother.
“Without her, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened,” Charlotte says. “It totally changed my life.”
The next day, Charlotte went to Philadelphia and photographed a hardcore show at Creep Records, bringing a camera for the first time.
From there, she kept showing up – across South Jersey, into Philadelphia and up to Boston – positioning herself in the pit to capture the scene from the inside. Charlotte says everything just clicked.
“Straight Edge isn’t about just not doing drugs. It’s about using radical sobriety as a tool – not just for yourself, but to use in your life and your community,” she says.
Staying present mattered for another reason. Charlotte has narcolepsy, a neurological condition that affects sleep, focus and muscle control – something that has made school especially difficult, she says.
“When I’m not engaged, my brain feels like it’s full of cotton,” says Charlotte, who is president of Cherry Hill East’s photography club and has won awards for her art.
Photographing live shows keeps her locked into the moment, capturing the energy of the room from up close – even when it means getting pushed around or dealing with people who bristle at a young female photographer asserting her space.
“I don’t have time to think about being exhausted,” she says. “You have to be fully there.”
By the time Charlotte put the “Help Wanted” post out last year, she already had a footing in the scene.
She wrote quickly and says she didn’t overthink it before posting on Reddit, then sharing it on Instagram.
The response came fast, furious and from far beyond what Charlotte expected. The Reddit post alone was viewed more than 100,000 times.
Some people misunderstood what she was looking for – or where to look.
“I got emails telling me to check eBay,” Charlotte says. “Like, over and over again.”
Others assumed the band must have been bigger than it was, or misunderstood the scene entirely, urging her to contact famous New Jersey musicians.
“People were tagging Bruce Springsteen,” she said. “And I was like – you guys, no.”
But amid the noise, messages told her she was on track.
One came from a former punk vocalist who had played the New York–New Jersey circuit in the early 1990s.
“This hits home,” the message read. “I was the front person of a punk band in the early ’90s playing NY/NJ, and we only recorded one demo before we split. Those tapes are priceless. Wishing you luck finding your mom’s!”
She also heard from someone she never imagined would see the post.
Tim McMahon, the former vocalist of Mouthpiece – a Jersey-based foundational band – reached out. Mouthpiece’s drummer, he told her, had played shows with Seed.
“That part blew my mind,” Charlotte says. “Someone who was actually there.”
As more people engaged, Charlotte found herself talking with the scene’s older members.
“It connected me to people who were there,” she says. “People who remembered what it was actually like.”
At the same time, she was building something of her own.
A few months ago, Charlotte started publishing “Through Our Eyes,” a handmade Playbill-sized booklet created the old school way – writing, designing and assembling it herself. The zine includes musician interviews, scene news and showcases her photography. She sells copies for $4 at shows.
“I don’t want it online,” she adds. “That ruins it. This is supposed to be something you hold.”
Earlier this year, she painted a large straight-edge mural at Cherry Hill High School East – a rare, visible showing of a culture that usually stays underground.
“I wanted people to see it for what it actually is,” she says. “Not what people think it is.”
The Seed demo is still missing, but Charlotte believes it exists somewhere, probably boxed up, long forgotten.
Even if it’s never found, she says, the search has done its work.
“The whole finding-the-demo thing was more about finding a piece of my mom in that scene than it ever was about a demo,” she says.
Still, she hasn’t stopped believing it will turn up.
“I’m certain someone in New Jersey has that tape.”
