the Dischord Records thread
 

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As everybody had better already know, Dischord Records is an independent record label based in Washington DC founded and owned by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson. The label began in 1980 and for years only released music by underground punk bands in the DC area. They have remained viable and independent for almost 30 years by expanding their catalog of bands without sacrificing their standard of quality and general ethics.

There is a lot that I know about this label and its music but there is also a lot that I don't know. In fact, I don't know a hell of a lot about the label beyond what happened there up through the mid-1990s.

So this thread is for all things Dischord: reviews/opinions/whatever.
Be as scholarly or anecdotal as you like. Tell me what you know and what you think.

Here, I'll start us off with a review of a recording that doesn't seem to be talked about much but deserves to be...

Egg Hunt
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LzMK69XlZ2...hunt_cover.jpg

This was a self-titled 7" featuring the only two songs ever made by Egg Hunt. Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson play all the instruments.

"Me and You" is a foray into what would now be called post-rock. It's got a slow, steady beat and sparse melodic guitar verses are stretched all over the whole song. The mellow vibe gets small intrusions like a catchy bass-riff chorus and a couple of mini-breakdowns are thrown in. The vocals are mostly spoken and almost ambient. It picks up and crescendos towards the end. I'll bet that future members of Slint were into this.

The other side is "We All Fall Down" and this is more of what you would expect from Ian MacKaye during the Embrace period. Emo kids will definitely get a kick.

To top it off, these two songs were produced by John Loder who engineered a lot of other good music.

I love these two songs and I wish there were more Egg Hunt recordings. This gets an A- and the minus is only there because I feel cheated.

Ian MacKaye is watching you snort heroin.


ok, so seriously?


I bought Fugazi 13 songs when I was 12 and I really couldn't get into it. I liked Waiting Room and Confessions but I couldn't get into the rest. A few years later I saw them name dropped all over the place and I gave it another chance and it stuck.

I consider myself a Fugazi fan but honestly I was lukewarm at first too. I only liked the really catchy stuff and skipped through the rest. Also, I have never really liked Guy's vocals.

Fugazi is one of my favorite bands, and I enjoy many others on the label. Post-hardcore (and what was orginally emo) is basically my favorite genre.

:band:

Cool, let's hear it, then. I'm actually pretty unfamiliar with the Dischord connection to emo. I know that Rites Of Spring is considered original emo but what's the deal with Embrace? Most harDCore fans hate Embrace passionately even though they are usually fine with Fugazi. Which other early Dischord bands are considered emo?
One of my favorites is the band, 3. Also emo?

dude, I agree. They're kind of growing on me but at the same time i just say, really?

Fugazi is ok.

My two favorite dischord bands are the most recent ones.

Q And Not U and Black Eyes.

I ****ING LOVE BLACK EYES!

They're probably my top 10 favorite bands. Of course like any other awesome band they broke up right before their last album Cough came out.

that would be dag nasty and the nation of ulysses, oh and how could I forget Gray Matter

Embrace is aight I guess.

Well I wasn't actually trying to single out the "original emo" bands, I was merely implying that much post-hardcore (Dischord or other labels) stems from original emo.

Some of the Dischord bands I like other than Fugazi are: Faraquet, Jawbox, Channels, Medications, Smart Went Crazy, The Evens and Q and Not U (only really like Different Damage though). Looking at the list, I'm actually embarassed at how many of the bands I've never heard. I've heard others not mentioned, I'm just not that into them...Minor Threat, Embrace, Rites of Spring, Lungfish, The Warmers, Shudder to Think, Hoover. I will check out 3 since you mentioned them.

I remember ordering Fugazi's Margin Walker E.P from Dischord in those crazy days before the net and I was so stoked when I finally got it through the post. The Whole Idea of ordering through the post in those days was midly exotic! I must admit to not knowing a huge amount about the label, only knowing that is was an outlet for Fugazi and that they had some part in the label.


Maybe a Dischord comp could be in order?

Hoover is really awesome and had a split with lincoln. Probably the most intense band Dischord released.

Faraquet was my re-introduction to the label after I had been away from it for a while. I first heard their split w/ Akarso and fell in love. Then their "The View From This Tower" came out on Dischord. Great stuff and actually they are a big reason why I posted this thread in the Rock & Metal forum and not Punk. Granted, I don't know of any metal bands on Dischord (please fill me in if anybody knows of any) but I thought Punk was too limiting.

I hope you enjoy 3. They are essentially the same band as Gray Matter but with Jeff Nelson, himself. They were my favorite 'back in the day'. I intend to put a review of their LP here sometime.

Thanks, this is the stuff that I need to learn about. I have only listened to a couple Q and Not U songs and I was under-impressed. But it's been a while and I don't even remember what they sound like. I read a bit about Black Eyes and it seems like something I should check out. Same with Hoover.

Yeah, despite the luxuries that the www provides, there is definitely something beautiful about the days when you could only get music from people you knew (in real life), from hip record stores in cities, or by mail order. Hey, lookit that - it's a generational reference point!
RE the comp: I say Yes, let's do it.

3 - Dark Days Coming (1989)
 

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1. Empathy
2. Swann Street
3. Buy Me a River
4. Domino Days
5. Dodger
6. International
7. Pious & Blind
8. Rejection
9. Dark Days Coming
10. Don't Walk Away
11. Shitberries Demo
12. Cheatin' Heart
13. Love Is Like a Rose
14. Food For Thog
15. Pretty / Heavy
16. Back & Forth
17. Hundred Aker Wood
18. Midnight Meat Train
19. Western Thrashy One
20. Long Marching Song
21. Sweaking Boot Noise

*tracks 12-21 released 1997

In the late-80s Dischord was an appropriate name for the label. The incestuous family of musicians all seemed to be scrambling to find the perfect band that would allow them to explore and propel their music in the post-hardcore era. Initially, Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson had planned to make Egg Hunt a fully functional band complete with members. Toward this end, they had been jamming with Geoff Turner and Steve Niles from Gray Matter. MacKaye wasn’t satisfied and went off to form Fugazi but Nelson stayed with the other two, reconnected with Mark Haggerty (also ex-Gray Matter) and formed the most underrated 80s band in Dischord’s history: 3.

The band was together for about two years and released only one album. Dark Days Coming was released in 1989 after they had already disbanded. My impression is that this band achieved not only making the best post-harDCore sound but also a sound that was sorely lacking in music everywhere in late-80s. This was truly the sound of pop and punk merged and if Pop Punk had gone in this direction rather than the sunny, bouncy way that it did, we would have all been better off.

There were two big reasons that the Dischord bands stopped playing DC-style hardcore punk (harDCore) by 1983. First, their shows had become overrun by violent idiots. Second and more importantly, the musicians were skilled and dedicated, and frankly hardcore was too simple and limiting to satisfy them any longer. They had been playing that stuff since they were in high school; who can blame them for getting bored?

Dark Days Coming is the result of true musicians setting their own standards, playing what they felt like playing, and seeing to it that the end result is worthwhile. In this case, unless you were going to punk shows in DC in ’87 and ’88, Dark Days Coming is all there is so enjoy it. The first eleven tracks are the original album and they are the only fully realized songs released by the band. The first song, “Empathy”, has a classical intro reminiscent of Megadeth or something, but instead of fading into a blistering thrash riff, “Empathy” bursts forth with Turner’s shouted/sung/spoken vocals and the band’s typically tight rhythm. Next up is the band’s masterpiece, “Swann Street”, featuring the best of the band: Nelson’s clean, precise drums, Niles’s dark, funky bass and Turner’s surprisingly evocative lyrics and pleasant vocal delivery. It’s a song about his street in DC but it feels like it’s about much more than that. Throughout the album all kinds of moods are explored. “Buy Me a River” has an element of sad desperation; “Dodger” is simply fast, beautiful, poppy punk. “Pious and Blind” has a Ramones-like energy with all instruments front-and-center at every moment. The title track has a bluesy, metallic guitar riff that gives a slight nod to Black Sabbath. “Shitberries Demo” is an acoustic version of “Swann Street” further showcasing the beauty of that song. On one hand, 3 was just one of many one-shot bands in Dischord’s catalog who possibly never reached their peak. But that doesn’t matter when the band’s single document is so damn special.

In 1997 a new version of the album was released on CD with a bunch of extra tracks which are, presumably, everything the band ever recorded and felt comfortable sharing. Along with a cover of Hank William Jr’s “Cheatin’ Heart” there are a bunch of instrumental tracks. These tracks are certainly less essential than the original album tracks, but they are pretty diverse and interesting in a different way. They might even appeal to fans of doomy instrumental stoner metal. Indeed, a lot of the Dischord guys were metal fans and it shows on these extra tracks. Some of them are apparently named for their sound such as “Pretty/Heavy” which is literally that – it has a pretty part followed by a heavy part. I’ll leave “Western Thrashy One” up to your imagination.

I am not usually one who complains about which music is over- or underrated. But in the case of Dark Days Coming, I have always wondered why it did not make 3 more of a household name like other bands such as Gray Matter, Rites of Spring, and, of course, Fugazi. In any case, Dark Days Coming is an overlooked gem of music that should not be missed by fans of Dischord’s output.

My rating of both the band and this album is A+

I must admit to have not heard of the band but definitely sounds like my sort of thing.

a post dedicated to..
 

As far as Dischord goes - all there is to talk about is Nation Of Ulysses and The Make Up. So if anyone wants to talk about those bands then go for it. I don't know a hell of a lot about NoU but I know the Plays Pretty For Baby album pretty well and I like it - if anybody wants to convince me to listen to their other albums I'm definitely up for it. I think I like The Make Up even more but I also haven't paid much attention to them. Same goes for his later band, Weird War. From what I've heard I think I like that band most of all 3 but, again, it's a band I haven't spent much (enough) time listening to.

So why bring up Ian S? First of all it's because he is an interesting person who is an avowed communist and has written a book about it:

But as music goes - one huge contribution that he has made is his online TV show, Soft Focus, in which he interviews musicians such as Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Will Oldham, Cat Power and many other favorites. He also goes to the UK to interview Kevin Shields, Shaun Ryder, and Graham Coxon among others. O yeah, and he plays the role of a supremely pretentious intellectual as he interviews his guests. Good stuff.

aaaaaaaaaaahhh his interview with kevin shields was a cringer. Used to listen to the first weird war album on cd all the time. and somebody tried to lend me the psychic soviet a few months ago. small f*cking world

Yea - his interview style takes some time to get used to. At first it seems like such a joke that it's distracting, but after a while I realized that he was getting much better interviews out of his subjects than we usually see.
RE Weird War - I think its time for me to give it a proper listen..