In the summer of 1980, The Teen Idles were about to call it quits as a band. They wanted to press an album as documentation of the 35 gigs they’d played, but no label wanted to put their record out.
So they took the band’s savings, a total of $600 stored in a cigar box and hidden in bass player Ian MacKaye’s bedroom, and started Dischord Records.
The Teen Idles’ Minor Disturbance EP, an eight-song 7-inch record, was released in December with a black-and-white photo of MacKaye’s little brother on the cover, black X’s on his hands and wrists cuffed by leather-studded bracelets.
The record heralded the official establishment of the Washington, D.C., hardcore scene. Ian MacKaye has explained that Dischord was simply a means to document the scene, and his heart seems to be in the right place considering that his current band, Fugazi, has been a staple of independent music for 15 years and garnered endless amounts of exposure while still charging $5 for shows and playing in high school gymnasiums.
Twenty Years of Dischord, a recently released three-CD collection, serves as a sampling of Dischord’s heroic past, giving each band signed (this term is inadequate because the label has never actually used contracts), in chronological order, a track on one of the first two discs. The third and best disc contains rare and unreleased material mainly from the label’s earlier years.
The first disc contains 29 songs, 14 of which clock in at under two minutes. It kicks off with The Teen Idles’ “Get Up And Go,” a 52-second blast of hardcore punk noise. The guitars sound like busted power tools, and the drums are simply a driving force of nature, speeding ahead of everything until almost collapsing upon themselves.
But the bands never fully self-destruct, a fact that attests to their musical talent. They played fast and yelled as loud as possible, but they never let their attitude wash over their skill.
State of Alert (Henry Rollins’ pre-Black Flag band) and Minor Threat (MacKaye’s third band) are both represented with powerful singles about isolation and angst. Minor Threat would later coin the phrase “straight edge” as a label for the no-drugs-or-alcohol lifestyle that these bands were leading.
Another Dischord favorite, Scream’s Clash-like socially poignant “Fight/American Justice” might find new meaning among 2003’s next brood of punk activists. Rites of Spring establishes its lofty position (inspiration for everybody from Thursday and The Used to The Promise Ring and AFI) as the granddaddies of emo with the haunting wavelike crescendo and decrescendo of “Drink Deep.” The song is of epic length, at a sturdy five minutes long.
Tracks like The Snakes’ goofy, funk-punk sing-along “Snake Rap” and Shudder to Think’s thoughtful rocker “Red House,” during which singer Craig Wedren discloses his inability to “stop the rain or the snow,” illustrate Dischord’s outward growth as the label gained mad press in the early ’90s.
The second disc features many of the label’s most successful acts, like Fugazi (with a cut off Repeater, which is widely heralded as a hardcore godsend), Jawbox, The Make-Up and Slant 6. Also, newer bands like Q and Not U and Bluetip serve as proof that Dischord is still a thriving artery of artistic expression and political consciousness.
But the “Rare and Unreleased” disc is where the best spoils are found. Live tracks from Minor Threat and Fugazi showcase the scene’s raw energy. The most interesting tracks definitely occur when bands invoke innovative attitudes. This is most apparent on the thrilling Minor Threat studio experimentation “Asshole Dub,” a cover of a Government Issue song.
The heavy influence of D.C. hardcore pioneers Bad Brains and their reggae-infused later albums is prominent. Dag Nasty gets a glam metal makeover on its song “All Ages Show,” with whittling guitar solos and bass drums that hang heavier than your overweight cousin in line for choice picks from the McDonalds Value Menu.
For those of you who think Good Charlotte represent the only kind of punk to hail from our nation’s capitol, this box will serve as sweaty, mosh-pit-stained reminder of when punk was an attitude and an art and not just whiny kids complaining about not being rich and failing second cut for the basketball team.
Grade: A
