Minor Threat

First Demo Tape
Unreleased, 1981 (later released on Dischord)

It's strange that US music critics so often consider the catchy and inoffensive pop hits of The Clash to be the defining moment of 1970s English punk – instead of, say, The Sex Pistols or Buzzcocks – when their local brand was so much nastier than anything the UK produced. The brash, North American style of punk crystallised a few years later, circa 1980, with bands like The Dead Kennedys and The Minutemen in California on the west coast and Black Flag and Minor Threat in Washington, DC on the east. It was the east coast groups who took themselves the most seriously and who laid the foundations for genres still alive, in name at least, today: DC hardcore, straight-edge and emo.

Minor Threat recorded their first demo in Virginia (the state below DC, where the most recent college shooting took place) in the children's playroom of a friend's house. Most of the songs don't even last a minute and the longest is just one and a half. It's pretty much impossible to figure out what vocalist Ian MacKaye is screaming, but you can tell he's pissed off about whatever it is. Compared to the melody of the Pistols' 'Anarchy In The UK', it has all the composure of a kitchen collapsing in a bedlam of pots and pans. It was recorded on a 4-track placed in the room next door to the one the band played in.

Whereas punk in the UK had been a corporate affair as much as a street-level trend – both The Clash and Pistols were on majors – the US version remained tied to its DIY roots. MacKaye founded the Dischord record label with drummer Jeff Nelson in the early 80s (which is still operating today) and refused to charge more than $10 whenever his bands played. He went on to found Fugazi and become one of the most outspoken advocates of the DIY ethic in the US. In an interview with Downhill Battle a few years ago, he said his passion didn't come from an anti-establishment ideology but rather from growing up in the power capital of the country. "You never ask permission because you know the answer's always going to be no, so you just end up doing things on your own."