Dischord 5 - Minor Threat - 'In My Eyes' & a 3-week break from the blog

Recorded - Aug. 1981
Released - Dec. 1981

Ian MacKaye - vocals
Lyle Preslar - guitar
Brian Baker - bass
Jeff Nelson - drums

SIDE A

In My Eyes
Out Of Step

SIDE B

Guilty Of Being White
Steppin' Stone


I really want to take a moment, before the blog goes on hiatus for a few weeks, to thank anyone who has been reading this, following it, commenting on it, etc. It takes a little while for these types of projects to gain some steam, but the response so far has been really great. I've enjoyed doing this, I've gotten one out per week, which has been my goal, and I have every intention to keep going.

However, I am off to pursue my own musical endeavors. I will be hitting the road and going cross-country for the next few weeks, which will make doing this blog totally impossible. I will use the last part of this entry to do some self-promotion and list tour dates. If you live anywhere near where I'll be playing, it would be great to meet you, talk Dischord and whatever else, have a few drinks, etc. After the main post, I'll post all those details. For anyone else, I plan on being back in action over here sometime during the week of June 10th.

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I think for any of us who discovered Minor Threat a bit after the fact, our experience with the first two Minor Threat EPs, the 'Filler' 7" which we covered back a couple of posts ago (Dischord 3) and the record we're discussing now, were as a collection, either on the self-titled compilation (Dischord 12) or the complete discography (Dischord 40). For me, it was the cassette version of Dischord 12 which came out in 1987 (or, as I call it, "Punk rock year 2"), that first introduced me to the early Minor Threat EPs.

It's not that I didn't know that 'Filler' and 'In My Eyes' were two separate releases, I just never experienced them as separate entities. So talking about these releases as the separate records that they actually are is almost like separating Siamese twins.

'In My Eyes' was recorded two months after the release of 'Filler' and released in December of that year (1981). The record was also a split release with Limp Records, a label from Rockville, Maryland, who apparently ceased to exist shortly after this release. While Dischord did most of the legwork and production, Limp helped with some of the financials. Unlike other split releases, Dischord did not use the usual fractions in the catalog number.

Like all the records we've covered so far, the record is over in mere minutes, in this case four songs in under 8 minutes. While this is still very much the same band that released the 'Filler' 7" a few months earlier, it's hard not to compare this to the Teen Idles 7", recorded only 11 months earlier, and not be completely blown away by the progress that MacKaye and Nelson had made musically.

The three original songs on this record are all hardcore classics, which have been played millions of times over P.A. systems in between bands at shows and have been covered endlessly.

There was a straight-edge band from Boston who took the name "In My Eyes", who were active in the late '90s and released a couple of records on Revelation. The song itself was covered by Rage Against the Machine.

"Guilty of Being White", a song that was already controversial to begin with, was covered notoriously by Slayer for their 'Undisputed Attitude' covers/punk LP, where they altered a key lyric from "Guilty of Being White" to "Guilty of Being RIGHT". Slayer thought it was funny. Ian MacKaye was mortified.

The relatively epic "In My Eyes" launches the record, and begins with a 30-second intro started by a descending Brian Baker bass line. Rather than just start the song immediately, a tension is built, there is a brief calm (and if you listen closely, you can hear some direction going on in the background), before the verse kicks into full gear, musically punctuated by Jeff Nelson's tom rolls. There is clearly an advancement of songwriting skills compared to earlier works.

There is also more creativity in the lyrics. While the general theme of advising against abusive substances remains in place (the target seems to be cigarettes, at least in the first verse), rather than a sermon, the lyrics almost act as a conversation. The type of conversation a friend might have when trying to sell a hard truth to another: "You tell me you like the taste / You just need an excuse / You tell me it calms your nerves / You just think it looks cool".

The second verse goes deeper, and gets into the psychology of people who use their self-loathing in an attempt to bring their world, even their own friends, down with them: "You tell me that nothing matters / You're just fucking scared / You tell me that I'm better / You just hate yourself / You tell me that you like her / You just wish you did / You tell me that I make no difference / At least I'm fuckin' trying / What the fuck have you done?"

It's a powerful lyric, punctuated by a question that has become iconic and has felt like it has rippled through the ages. More than a question - it's a challenge.

The lyrics overall expose the hypocrisy of what people will say or do to justify behavior that they must know is self-defeating. MacKaye wastes no words in calling it out.

"Out of Step" is a return to more primitive roots. No fancy songwriting, no lyrical innovations. Just a straight-forward, ready to chant anthem: "Don't smoke / don't drink / don't fuck / At least I can fucking think." This is not the last time we'll hear Minor Threat record this song.

"Guilty of Being White" is the Minor Threat song that has been met with the most controversy. The surface level perception not helped by the Slayer cover. Fundamentally, the song is about not being judged, or perhaps more concretely, not being convicted, for crimes and atrocities that may have been committed by one's ancestors. Where I think the controversy lies is that MacKaye, who is only singing from his own experiences, happens to be as a 19-year-old white male, a demographic that probably won't garnish too much sympathy from anyone who is complaining about being persecuted because of that. But the point is valid, and can certainly be generalized beyond white youth. Had MacKaye widened his scope, the song probably wouldn't have generated that controversy, and the song probably wouldn't have been half as famous. "Oh, I'm sorry / For something that I didn't do / Lynched somebody / But I don't know who / You blame me for slavery / A hundred years before I was born / Guilty of Being White".

The record ends with a cover of the Monkees' "Steppin' Stone". Minor Threat wouldn't be the only punk band to think to cover the song. The Sex Pistols did it a few years earlier. The song sounds like it was recorded off a transistor radio, and the song, already pretty punk rock for its age, gets a hardcore treatment come chorus time. It's a cool cover, not essential.

After the release of 'In Your Eyes', Minor Threat would take a hiatus for a few months. Lyle Preslar went off to college, and during his absence, some music was made by the others.

In February 1982, Brian Baker would record with Government Issue, playing guitar on the 'Make An Effort' EP. It would be (I think) the only G.I. record Baker played on during his brief tenure.

MacKaye and Nelson would continue their musical journey with a one-off band and record recorded in November 1981, but not actually released for another 10 years. We'll hit that at Dischord 50.

Minor Threat would reconvene, with a bit of a line-up change, and would go on to release, in my opinion, one of the high watermarks in all of hardcore. But we'll get to that shortly.

BANDCAMP - MINOR THREAT - 'IN MY EYES' (Tracks 11-14)

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HITTING THE ROAD:

As I mentioned in the preamble, this is the last post for a few weeks. I will be hitting the road starting this coming Monday.

My band, Two Man Advantage, will be playing at Punk Rock Bowling this year. Specifically, the club show on Saturday, May 26th at Fremont Country Club with Subhumans, The Unseen and Bishop's Green.

After PBR is over, we'll be doing a 5-date west coast swing:

Tuesday, May 29th - Time Out Lounge, Tempe, AZ
Wednesday, May 30th - Navajo Live, San Diego, CA
Thursday, May 31st - Characters, Pomona, CA
Friday, June 1st - The Union, Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, June 2nd - Bender's Bar, San Francisco, CA

On the way out west, and on the way back home, a spinoff of Two Man Advantage, Robbieitis, which I'm doing with two of my Two Man Advantage bandmates (playing stuff that is entirely different than what we normally do - which has been fun and refreshing) will also be playing some gigs:

Tuesday, May 22nd - The Fremont, Des Moines, IA
Sunday, June 3rd - Silver Dollar Club, Elko, NV
Monday, June 4th - Back Alley Pub, Great Falls, MT
Tuesday, June 5th - food truck festival at the Gateway Mall Parking Lot, Bismarck, ND
Wednesday, June 6th - Palmer's Bar, Minneapolis, MN
Thursday, June 7th - Moe's Tavern, Chicago, IL


Maybe I'll see some of you on the road.

If not - I'll be back with the next post the week after I get back.

Dischord 4 1/2 - Necros - 'I.Q. 32'

Recorded & released - 1981

Barry Henssler - vocals
Brian Pollack - guitar
Corey Rusk - bass
Todd Swalla - drums

SIDE A

I.Q. 32
Youth Camp
Peer Pressure
Race Riot
Wargame

SIDE B

I Hate My School
Past Comes Back To Haunt Me
Reject
Public High School


This answers a question I was posed when I first started doing this blog: "Will you be handling the Dischord split releases?" Yes...yes I will.

The Dischord catalog is peppered with releases that were shared with other record labels. As catalog numbers for these records, Dischord uses fractions or decimals, which makes it nice and easy to trace these records chronologically with the rest of the Dischord catalog.

Release "4 1/2" pairs Dischord with Touch & Go Records - the first of two split releases with that label (can you think of the other one?...no cheating).

Touch & Go Records, based out of Chicago, evolved out of a fanzine done by Tesco Vee (The Meatmen) and Dave Stimson. Like Dischord with Washington, D.C., the early years of Touch & Go Records were spent documenting the emerging Midwestern hardcore scene.

Like biological evolution, where species that look vastly different from each other can be traced back to a common ancestor, Dischord and Touch & Go trace different roads that hardcore took. The early hardcore of the late-'70s and early-'80s wasn't drastically different from region to region, but it's evolution into more complex styles took different paths. Whereas a label like Dischord can take you step-by-step from bands like Teen Idles, S.O.A. and Minor Threat to Fugazi, Touch & Go could take you from The Fix, Necros and Negative Approach to The Jesus Lizard.

Necros, a band I've always affiliated with Detroit, were actually from Maumee, Ohio, a suburb of Ohio in the northwestern corner of the state. A 75-minute drive north up I-75 would, however, get you to the Motor City.

Necros would have the distinction of being Touch & Go's first release - the hopelessly rare 'Sex Drive' 7", released in 1981, with a pressing of a mere 100 copies. Of all the records I've covered in this blog so far, each one of which is rare and valuable, 'Sex Drive' is the rarest of them all. Using Discogs as a guide, it's been sold only once, and went for $2875 (and didn't even have the insert).

However, thanks to the internet, you can hear high quality versions of all these records, and a record that would have been impossible to have even heard a decade or so ago, is now available within a few clicks.

'Sex Drive' sounds like Detroit. Unlike the early Dischord releases, which blatantly held a middle finger up to traditional old rock 'n' roll, the Necros embraced it. I'll admit I don't know much about the Necros, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that these guys grew up on a healthy dose of garage rock. 'Sex Drive' sounds like something Iggy Pop would have been a part of had he been born 15-20 years later. On the title track, Barry Henssler channels Iggy with a subtle twang when he sings, "All I want is more, more more..."

But whereas 'Sex Drive' is primitive and raw in every way, the record at hand, 'I.Q. 32', is more developed. Ian MacKaye's production won't be mistaken for Bob Ezrin, but at least it doesn't sound like it was recorded on a boombox in the back corner of the practice space.

There is a development of the garage punk style started on 'Sex Drive'. Songs like "Peer Pressure", "Race Riot", "I Hate My School", "Reject" and "Public High School" still sound like the same band that recorded 'Sex Drive', but have learned how to write better songs. While these raw, mid-tempo songs are pretty well played and well written, they're not half as exciting as the other songs on this record, perhaps played less competently, but at a more furious speed. "I.Q. 32", "Wargame", and "Past Comes Back To Haunt Me" are striking in contrast to the slower songs. Barry Henssler can barely keep up, which only adds to the chaotic, train-off-the-rails feel of these songs, none of which stretch past the 50 second mark.

My favorite song is the one that combines the two elements, and that would be Track 2, "Youth Camp", whose verses are hooky and confident, but come chorus time, and don't blink because you'll miss it, the band goes into hyperspeed and you're not quite sure if they're going to land on two feet. I also dig the overdubbed "guitar solo", which is more like a couple of random notes - it feels like the start of something that never really gets going.

Lyrics are always the most genuine when you write about what you know and what you live. There is a running theme throughout the record of feeling like an outcast by all that surrounds you, in your society, in your school. That feeling of being different and unrelatable.

"Midwest, Midwest, time to go. / I'd stay, but it's so fucking slow. / Stupid people's all I know." - "I.Q. 32"

"My every move is judged by the court of my peers. / When the sentence comes, it confirms the worst of my fears. / They know I'm different, that I'm not like them. / They won't accept me for the way I am." - "Peer Pressure"

"I hate my school / My teachers are insane / The kids are all fools / All my work's down the drain / Why don't you all leave me alone / All I wanna do is go home." - "I Hate My School"

"I would rather stay at home / In my room & all alone / It's times like this I feel so bad / Why am I always sad?" - "Reject"

Taking redneck racism head-on also must have come from some first-hand experiences:

"Youth camp for the KKK, It's the American way. / Youth camp for the National Front, When white rule is what I want." - "Youth Camp"

"They'll never sit down & talk about their problems / Just wanna fight & create more of them / Whites call 'em names directly to their faces / They say 'Hey nigger go back to your own places'" - "Race Riot"

Since the Necros will not be a part of the Dischord story going forward, just a brief sum up of what happened from here.

The Necros would go on to release the 'Conquest for Death' (1983 / Touch & Go) and 'Tangled Up' (1987 / Restless) LPs, along with a few 7"'s and live albums, and the one release I do actually own, the split 12" EP with White Flag, 'Jail Jello' (1986 / Gasatanka), which I bought for a $1 and have maybe listened to once.

Bassist Corey Rusk would leave the band after 'Conquest for Death' and would go on to run Touch & Go Records. I can only guess that there may have been some sort of falling out between Rusk and his old band. I can't think of too many explanations why the Necros releases that came out on Touch & Go would be allowed to go out of print.

Drummer Todd Swalla would go on to play in a few bands, most notably, the Laughing Hyenas, with a post-Negative Approach John Brannon.

Vocalist Barry Henssler would go on to dig even deeper into those heavy rock roots, fronting Big Chief, who released a few records on Sub Pop in the early '90s.

A big reason for doing this blog has been to discover records and bands which I've never explored too much before. The Necros have been in my consciousness for decades, but I never really took the time to listen too much.

I'm not looking to be the historian or the music critic. Just somebody who wants to dig into these records and find an emotional connection. If I had first listened to this 7" when I was 13 years old, I'd probably feel much more connected to it than I do listening for the first time in my early 40s.

But, one of my closest friends, Aaron (who has been commenting regularly on these posts), does have that connection, and, at its best, those stories are the essence of what I hope this blog to be about.

Aaron & I met in 1991 as freshmen at Hofstra University. We were roommates through school and have been playing in bands together for over 25 years (Humstinger, Quarters, The Judas Iscariot, Kether, Hudson Falcons, Two Man Advantage...did I miss any?). I've probably logged more hours talking and playing music with Aaron than anyone else. So I hand over the mic to him to take us the rest of the way:

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AARON:

My buddy Derek had a 78 Nova that smelled like shit and the driver's side seat belt, which was broken, had several feet of loose slack that would never retract. The car didn't smell like shit because Derek was a chain smoker who was addicted to fast food. It reeked because the ribbons of useless seat belt fell out of the car once and landed in a pile of steaming dog offal. The stench was permanent, even after years had elapsed.

We used to love to cruise in that car because it had a solid tape deck, despite the car's other obvious limitations.

I had a mix tape with the Necros 'I.Q. 32' EP (Dischord #4 1/2, Touch and Go #3) on it, and we used to listen to it while racing around the housing tracts in our dead-end rural and suburban trailer parks and neighborhoods in Western PA while bashing mailboxes with baseball bats, stealing mail, and engaging in all manner of mayhem that attempted to assuage the bored teenage angst that was part of life growing up in a hick town.

The Necros were the perfect soundtrack for this...we all related hard and fast to these kids, because they were just like us. I knew firsthand their misery of growing up in Maumee, Ohio, because, hell, we were only 3 hours further east, but the social terrain was the same. The Necros hated growing up where they did, and it was obvious. Often their lyrics were like a mirror of my own experience dealing with asshole jocks, backwoods racist cops straight off the farm or the high school football team. While The Necros were never much to speak of in terms of technical playing wizardry, (though they would become considerably better at their instrumentation for later offerings like 'Conquest For Death', eventually metalling out for 'Tangled Up'), their lyrics were the quintessential archetype that represented hardcore as a suburban phenomenon, and a logical extension of the urban punk that came before that.

It is no surprise that Dischord was quick to partner with Midwestern kin of similar mindset (radically progressive lyrics against provincial, red-necked racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. at the height of the conservative revolution birthed by the Reagan Era).

Corey Rusk of The Necros had a big hand in running Touch and Go Records, the Midwest equivalent of Dischord, and a collaboration was logical, after Touch And Go Fanzine (predating the label of the same name) did early interviews with Minor Threat. Ian Mackaye would produce 'I.Q. 32' and see to its joint release.

The record is over before it starts, (9 songs clocking in at under 10 minutes) but the overall sound is a dramatic improvement over the extraordinarily rare 'Sex Drive' EP released very early in the band's history. While not as furiously fast and overtly violent and pissed off as Negative Approach or The Fix, Barry Henssler's vocals are snarky, snotty, and fierce in a pubescent way. Like Minor Threat, the band lacked all guile...it was pure, simple, and direct. You don't need much more when you are 15 and just aching to pour your aggression into something.

I loved my Necros mix tape, which contained everything they had put out up to that point, including the split with White Flag, but not 'Tangled Up' because it hadn't come out quite then.

Eventually the vinyl came my way in the summer of 1989, through a record trade with Chip from the late 80s Minneapolis hardcore band, Blind Approach. Our little straight edge band Upper Hand had opened up for them in Pittsburgh one night. He and I struck up a conversation about records. He had brought a bunch of records on tour with him to trade and sell. I had just returned from Some Records in New York and came back with two copies of the lamentable Project X record. He was willing to take his somewhat annoyed bandmates an hour out of their way into the sticks east of Pittsburgh in order to carry out a late night trade on their way to their next show.

"What do you got?", I asked.

When he offered 'I.Q. 32' in exchange for one of my newly acquired Project X records, I almost choked on my Pepsi. (No booze for my straight edge teenage self!)

The deal went down in their van outside my house...I believe I also gave up Blitz's 'Never Surrender' in the deal, but it's a deal I would still do today.

But nobody trades records anymore, do they?

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BANDCAMP - NECROS - 'I.Q. 32'

Dischord 4 - Government Issue - 'Legless Bull'

Recorded July 1981 - Inner Ear Studios
Released Sept. 1981

John Stabb - vocals
John Barry - guitar
Brian Gay - bass
Marc Alberstadt - drums

SIDE ONE

Religious Ripoff
Fashionite
Rock & Roll Bullshit
Anarchy Is Dead
Sheer Terror

SIDE TWO

Asshole
Bored To Death
No Rights
I'm James Dean
Cowboy Fashion

As I was discovering this new world of underground music in the mid-80s, I came across bands by chance more than anything else. There was no YouTube or iTunes or Spotify to go give a band a quick listen. MTV, as much as it was an avenue for discovery for so much music I love, didn't touch too much punk beyond the Ramones or The Clash.

I had my local record store, Island Sound, with it's Punk/Hardcore section, so I'd buy records pretty much randomly out of that or at the suggestion of the cute girl with the green hair (an early crush - and she rarely steered me wrong).

I also bought a lot of records by mail order, flipping through the pages of Maximum Rock n Roll, Flipside or Forced Exposure. That was the most exciting because there was the anticipation of that package arriving in the mail.

There was an ad in one of those zines for the new release by a band called Government Issue. The album was 'You'. The cover art was interesting, and so I mailed out a few bucks for the cassette. A few weeks later it arrived, with a promo poster, which hung on my wall for years.



The 'You' album is one of my favorite albums of all time. It was a lucky find, but that album made me a fan for life. Each song was incredible and fairly complex. Peter Moffett's drumming on that album is about as good as it gets. I no longer have the cassette (why I'm not really sure) - but I do have a test pressing, which is pretty neat.

As I dove into the G.I. catalog, I was quick to learn that not all their records were as musically developed as 'You' or its follow-up 'Crash'. 'Boycott Stabb' was the second G.I. album I owned (which I do still have on cassette), which is an entirely different animal. An earlier more primal punk rock record, but still filled with great songs.

The only time I ever got to see G.I. was December 11, 2010, at The Black Cat in Washington, D.C. with Set To Explode and my old friends The Goons opening up.

It was a one-off reunion show of the 'You' line-up (the best one in my opinion) of core member/vocalist John Stabb and long-standing guitarist Tom Lyle, along with the monster rhythm section of J. Robbins and Peter Moffett. It's one of the best shows I've ever been to and well worth every hour of the drive down I-95.

G.I. did get together to play a few more shows, none of which I was able to go to, with original guitarist John Barry, before, sadly John Stabb, the only member who was in the band from beginning to end, passed away on May 7, 2016, at the age of 54 after a battle with stomach cancer. Stabb was a member of the Daghouse message board and always brought interesting posts and thoughts to that community. I always enjoyed interacting with him on the few occasions I was able to.

Government Issue was one of the longest running D.C. hardcore bands, their decade-long lifespan spanning, and existing, entirely in the 1980s (not including the occasional reunion shows years later when nothing new was actually written or recorded).

I wanted to write a little bit about G.I. if only because for such a long running and popular D.C. band, very few of their records actually came out on Dischord.

Where Government Issue and Dischord intersect is at the beginning for both band and label. The fourth release for Dischord was Government Issue's first (not including an earlier demo), the incredibly rare 'Legless Bull' 7", for which you will need to shell out several hundred dollars, if not more, to own.

Along with Stabb were original guitarist and bassist, John Barry and Brian Gay, who would not continue on with the band past this first 7", and drummer Marc Alberstadt who would be with the band for the better part of its existence, up until 1986's self-titled record.

The evolution of G.I. through the 1980s really parallels hardcore's own evolution during that decade. From hardcore's primitive, primal, raw roots, to the addition of melody and some complexity, to being accessible enough to be heard on at least college radio or MTV's 120 Minutes. While hardcore itself went through that evolution (although hardcore in its original form has always existed simultaneously, to the present day), few bands stuck around long enough to make that transition themselves. The Replacements and Husker Du are pretty good examples of bands who started raw and raging and ended up somewhere completely different. I would argue that G.I. is also an excellent example of such a band, although unlike either of those two bands, much of that musical evolution could also be attributed to the evolution of the line-ups involved. Unlike those two bands as well, G.I. never achieved any real commercial success.

Listening to 'Legless Bull' and the final LP, 1988's 'Crash', back-to-back, you would never think these two records were made by the same band. But listening to the G.I. catalog from start to finish, the transition makes total sense. Each record seemed to add an element to it that eventually led to the final two records, which are anything but the raw and simple hardcore found on the earliest releases.

'Legless Bull' is a pretty cool slice of early D.C. hardcore. It is not the monument that the first Minor Threat 7" is, but I'd say an improvement over the Teen Idles & S.O.A. records. 'Legless Bull' mostly stays safely within the confines of early hardcore without a whole lot of rule bending, but the performances are pretty solid, especially from drummer Alberstadt.

Some songs go by in a bit of a flash, but there are songs that definitely stand out on this one.

"Rock & Roll Bullshit" starts out with Stabb doing a mocking imitation of drunk rock 'n' roll dudes...."Kickass rock & roll man....". While taking the piss out of Van Halen and Supertramp seems obvious for its time, similar to what Teen Idles did to the Grateful Dead on "Deadhead", G.I. goes a step further and rips on two of punk rock's own icons - the Ramones & The Clash ("I used to listen to the Clash / Now they suck like all the trash / The Ramones used to be a hit / Now they're just a pile of shit"). I can't help but wonder what they would have thought about their own musical journey as a band if they could have peered into the future.

Similarly, in the very next song, "Anarchy Is Dead", an attack is made upon Crass ("Groups like Crass still believe in it / That's why their music's fulla shit / It's music, it's just sermon / Groups like Crass are all just vermin").

Musically, "Bored to Death" might be the best song on the record and, in fact, was re-recorded several years later in 1985 for the "The Fun Just Never Ends" LP. A straight-forward mid tempo song, but hooky all the way through.

"Sheer Terror", closing out side one, is where G.I. does venture outside of the obvious. A slowed down, repetitive dirge of a song which speeds up, briefly, come chorus time. "Sheer Terror" would get several makeovers over the course of the band's career, showing up in new versions on the 'Make an Effort' EP ('83), 'Boycott Stabb' ('83), and I think at least one later appearance as well.

Overall, a pretty strong, if not ground-breaking, start from a band that would just keep getting better and better.

Spotify has a tremendous amount of G.I. "Live Bootleg"'s and the earlier shows from 1981 and 1982 feature quite a bit of live material from the first 7", but even later shows still featured "Bored to Death" and "Sheer Terror" in the sets. Even the official live album, 'Strange Wine' from 1987 airs out "I'm James Dean".

In the band's final years, several shows scattered between 2012 and 2015, original guitarist John Barry was back in the fold, so audiences got treated to a whole bunch of 'Legless Bull' era songs. The final show I'm aware of, 7/18/15 at the Acheron in Brooklyn, featured seven songs from this 7".

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From time to time, I will be soliciting some commentary from close friends who I know may have a real emotional attachment to some of these records that I might not.

I've known Vinny Segarra since 1992. We played in Humstinger together for a year or so but have remained close friends ever since. Vinny ran a label that released about a dozen or so records over the first half of the 1990s, which included some real gems.

Vinny is also the biggest G.I. fan I know and I asked him to do a a quick write-up for this one:



Let's face it, the D.C. scene was, is, and always will be an Ian/Minor T/Fugazi town. The three shadows have loomed large over the city for almost 40 years. Think about that. Back in the mid 80's when I was getting into hardcore, Minor Threat were one of the "big three" in the country, let alone D.C. (along w/the DK's and Black Flag), and they were already gone for a couple years.

Personally, I always put Minor Threat to the side because the one band for me were the GI's. By the time I got around to finally buying 'Make An Effort' off Bleeker Bob's wall, they were already a "post hardcore band". BUT, they still had the power, and the riffs.

I'm not a musician so I don't give a shit how well you play the drums, rattle the bass, and bang out the guitar shit. If you can't write a riff, you're dead to me. The GI's were the Sabbath of early 80's hardcore. The crew i started going to shows with liked the GI's, but they weren't anyone's favorite. They were my favorite.

Always pushed to the margins in '81 (pick your band), '86 (Dino Jr, Sonic Youth, Husker Du) but John Stabb and Tom Lyle kept putting out great release after great release. Let's not forget. And the reason Jeff asked me to write this is because it all started with the 'Legless Bull' ep. Jeff is going to write something stellar about it, he'll dissect the production, the writing what have you. and no one can write like him. He should be doing it more often. Fuck Jeff, what took you so long to do something like this?

I'm just going to say that from 1980 - 1989 (when I saw them @ the Pyramid w/20 people, it was one of their last shows) there isn't one band in "the scene, any fucking scene" that held the underground flag higher than them. Some bands have put out debut EPs as good as 'Legless Bull', not too many have put out better ones. But Jesus Fucking Christ what a record to kick out the jams for the first time.

Kids, put it this way, every time I hear 'Legless Bull', I wish i had an older sibling or kid down the block that was into this stuff 38 years ago to show me the light.

BANDCAMP - GOVERNMENT ISSUE - 'LEGLESS BULL'