SOUNDTRACK: THE TEEN IDLES-Minor Disturbance (1981).
The Teen Idles were the first band released on Ian MacKaye’s Dischord Records. And this EP was record 001 (MacKaye was in the band and he made his own label to release the record).
There are eight songs, done in a total of 9 minutes and 20 seconds. The final song is a live track and it reaches 2 minutes mostly because of the introduction and crowd noise. Three songs almost reach 90 seconds long. The rest are under 1 minute.
Interestingly, there are earlier demos of these songs that are a little slower and a little less fastinyourfacescreamedlyricswhat??? Perhaps because I’m old I like the slower ones a little better, but I know that this represents the core of DC Hardcore and I respect that. And you can actually make out the lyrics if you try.
Some themes include being too young to go to shows, people trying to grow old too fast, punk music (“you say we need practice, maybe in a couple of years”), and apparently dissing British punk for selling out. (“There goes your fury out the door, don’t expect our respect anymore”).
The acerbic “Deadhead” even has a slow section (but is still overall less than 90 seconds) in which they parody the Grateful Dead—the song is anti-Dead primarily because of the drugs they espoused (The Teen Idles, like Minor Threat were straight edge). I had to look up Fiorucci to see what “Fiorucci Nightmare” was about (it’s a fashion house).
For an early taste of the DC Hardcore scene, it pretty much starts here.
[READ: August 22, 2013] Hard Art DC 1979
Do you like punk rock? Punk rock from the late 70s? Specifically bands from Washington DC? In particular bands that played at three venues? On four specific dates? That’s the focus of this book.
This is a collection of photographs by Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Lucien Perkins. Perkins has been taking pictures for decades, primarily for The Washington Post—covering major events in Russia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and, in the late 70s, a few DC punk shows.
The book doesn’t say anything about his motive for doing these shows—other than that he was new to the scene and thought it looked interesting. And since Bad Brains are the focus of most of the pictures, I’m certain that race and racism had something to do with his showing up at these events. Especially because the first event was called Rock Against Racism and was held in a public housing area of Washington D.C. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: see below.
I Just Read About That... 