h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As promised here is a summary of the main points of what I discovered about straight edge.
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(Mostly from "Route 666" by Gina Arnold.)
Basically straight edge came out of the skating scene in Washington DC. The scene was largely started by Ian Mckaye with help from some of his friends (Jeff Nelson, Geordie Grindle and Mark sulivan) who formed a band called the Slinkees with Ian on Bass. Mainly playing anti-hippie funny songs (the latter bit=pregnants?) Which Ian describes as "...straight edge protest stuff.". Mark left the band to go to college and the band changed into the Teen Idles ("...We just played really fast.". Playing gigs with the likes of Bad Brains for the princely sum of $2 a time. The teen idles went on tour to California in the Summer of 1980 along with Ian's friend Henry Garfield (later Rollins) as their roadie (along with Mark Sulivan). (loads more California stuff that I'll skip for now) When they returned from California they had renewed their energy and started playing with likeminded DC bands (Youth Brigade, Government Issue etc) They decided to form their own lable and release a seven inch by each local band. They named the label Dischord. The first release was funded by saved up gig money and was a Teen Idles single, however the band had just split up a month or so earlier. The second record was by Henry Rollins band State Of Alert and the third was Minor Threat's In My Eyes. The last record went (relatively) balistic despite negligible radio play (for obvious reasons).
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Thats the first half done. When I get a chance I'll finish it off. Anyway what did you all think of it?

wow, impressive. you've done a lot of research on this, haven't you?

Thank you. Just a bit .
Oh and Part Two
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Dischord now had a problem, did they fill the orders they had for "Out Of Step" or release a record by Ian's brother's band "Faith". In the end they were saved by Southern Studios an English Distro (responsible for Crass among others) who gave them the neccesary credit to put out both records. Unfortunately the scene was dogged by violence of which Ian himself was originally a key perpetrator. He says that it is mainly because he felt persecuted and marginalised due to his straightness "...we were...doing harmless stuff like skateboarding and listening to music...[and] we were chased in the street" so he and the rest of the band would in turn try and intimidate the local jocks and things got out of control. Later on (1983) Ian would stop shows when they got too violent and ask the perpetrator why they were being violent, and they would say "we're just protecting the scene like you did." Ian says that this made him think "Oh god, what have I done".
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Run out of time. More still to come.

Thank you. Just a bit .
Oh and Part Two
===============================================================
Dischord now had a problem, did they fill the orders they had for "Out Of Step" or release a record by Ian's brother's band "Faith". In the end they were saved by Southern Studios an English Distro (responsible for Crass among others) who gave them the neccesary credit to put out both records. Unfortunately the scene was dogged by violence of which Ian himself was originally a key perpetrator. He says that it is mainly because he felt persecuted and marginalised due to his straightness "...we were...doing harmless stuff like skateboarding and listening to music...[and] we were chased in the street" so he and the rest of the band would in turn try and intimidate the local jocks and things got out of control. Later on (1983) Ian would stop shows when they got too violent and ask the perpetrator why they were being violent, and they would say "we're just protecting the scene like you did." Ian says that this made him think "Oh god, what have I done".
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Run out of time. More still to come.

This is great stuff. Keep going...

*joins in shaking of fist at Dubya, winks at Mr T*

don't like 'im either...

Hello,

It's nice to see somebody else has heard about Government Issue. They're not really well known now, but they were a big band on the DC scene in the mid-eighties. More importantly, GI's Tom Lyle had a show on the University of Maryland's station WMUC in the 80s. It was one of the few real places to hear harDCore on the airwaves i those days. My mom used to tape it every week and we'd listen to it in the car. Some local clubs would host shows (9:30, Bayou), but most people had to hear stuff over the radio or at some record stores. For those of us under 16, the free outdoor Fort Reno concerts were also a good opportunity to see many bands perform. Fugazi still does a concert there every year.

Yours,
Jake

Hello Jake,
I take it you were there then? If so can you tell me how valid what I've written is? It is probably to McKaye-centric. As for Government Issue I've only heard a couple of things on sampler but they have always come up as one of the main bands in the DC scene. You don't have any of those tapes still?
Oh well on with the story (hopefully the final part!)
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Minor Threat released one last ep on Dischord before disbanding with Ian going on to a band called Embrace one of the first of the new "emo" bands (so called because of the emotional nature of their songs) a move largely down to being bored with the cliche ridden Hardcore scene. Straight Edge hardcore bands still continued around the country. One notable example of this being Huntingdon Beach's Gorilla Biscuits (incidently Huntingdon Beach was where the Teen Idles played one of their gigs in their 1980 California tour). Ian renounced straight edge due to the rigidity the scene was beginning to take on and also the endemic violence. He still sticks to the principles outlined in the song "Out Of Step" ("...Don't smoke ...Don't drink...don't F**K") and is now in a band called Fugazi formed with former Rites Of Spring frontman Guy Piccioto, Joe Lally and ex-Embrace drummer Brendan Canty.
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After that point we can go into the modern scene but I think my work here is done, until it's time to make revisions to all this . Anyway tell me what you think (does it need more detail? or some other points of view?).

I think it's great so far. I'll put what you've done up - if anyone wants to add anything, they can always say so, right?

Now, GET ON AND RECORD THE SONGS! I will not sleep until I've heard them. I warn you.

Yep,

I grew up in DC during the Eighties, and even went to Ian's own Wilson High School in the latter part of the decade. Of course, when I was coming of age, the scene was going into a bit of decline (from the early Eighties), but I remember some of the other stuff from when I was younger. My mom was more into the scene and knew some of the bands and people involved. I'll also admit that I did listen to some New Wave stuff in the Eighties as well, and got into Industrial music after 1989 (now, it's also experimental techno). So, I'm not the biggest expert (I don't know what the kids are into these days), but I can verify some things about geography, etc. at the time.

You've done a very good job, and I must say I'm somewhat impressed at how you've reconstructed the essence of the scene. It's okay to be Ian-centric I suppose, since it's really related to the Straight Edge philosophy (and not just harDCore). GI was a good group, and great at widening the audience of the scene (mainly through the radio show), but they were never Straight Edge by any means. Similarly, that was true for a lot of the other groups we listened to (Descendents, Scream, Varukers, Stiff Little Fingers, etc.).

One thing that combines all those groups (as well as some of the other stuff I listened to at the time) is a rebellion against the repressive politics of the era (why anybody would look back fondly on the Reagan era is beyond me). What differentiates harDCore from Punk in my mind, is that it's so political and intellectual at the core. DC was an especially depressing place back then, and we needed the music to express our feelings and disillusionment. Straight Edge just directed those feelings in their own way, focusing on caring for yourself and community and not just anger towards the establishment.

Yours,
Jake

I think it's just a shame that it's nearly impossible to have a good music scene and a non-depressing political atmosphere at the same time. I think the modern sXe scene is mostly emo style music. I don't think there are many old-style straight edge bands anymore.

What sort of industrial do you listen to? Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV type stuff or the more commercial NIN end of things?

The major problem I had with the article is differentiating the Hardcore bands from the straight edge hardcore bands and I will try and make the difference more clear at some point. I think mention of GI and similar bands is merited if only as a kind of background information resource.

Hello,

Well, we could say the same thing about art and politics. I knew we were at a nadir of political activism in art, when some local artist decided a radical statement would be to place a giant pink "Y" on a corner with "discriminate" written down the vertical stem. Get it? And he's really gone out on a limb there, making a radical statement. Yep, it's been a mostly bad decade for art. Not that art has to be political, but a bad climate seems to help. See the entry on "Third Man" for Orson Welles' great quote ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A413704 ). Yep, in the Eighties we'd mock Rick the Peoples' Poet, but now we seem to be surrounded by that type.

Not that it really matters, but I've mostly been listening to more obscure and intellectual groups (mostly American and German oddly) such as Assemblage 23, Front 242, Android Lust, VNV Nation, Haujobb, Beefcake, etc. I never really liked the popular stuff. But these days, I'm often listen to weird minimal electronic or other artsy stuff. "Jake Music" as my girlfriend likes to call it, and she teases me that as soon as someone else has heard of my favorite band, I switch it to something more obscure.

It's true that it can be difficult to differentiate straight-edge from hardcore, since one's a philosophy and the others a musical style. You want to talk about hardcore to give some context, but it's not the same as straight edge. In a similar fashion, Depeche Mode might be considered synthpop, but they had a much different political consciousness than Erasure or A-ha (just a different musical genre).

Yours,
Jake

Well at least it gives an upside to GW getting in as president.

I used to listen to some industrial stuff back in the day, but I was too young to really look beneath the surface of the scene, and just haven't gone back to it yet. I do however have some art records and saw two quite interesting bands in concert last year, I think v/vx and protogenesis.

I think sXe is really a faction of hardcore and should be discussed as such but I don't think what I wrote was clear enough as to the distinctions between the two things. Maybe there should be a little note about it. I'll give the entry a look over and see if I can make it much better.

Just to point out an inaccuracy in what I've written here. Brendan Canty drummed for Rites Of Spring not Embrace.

Hello,

For those of you interested, there's a new book that came out about the DC Hardcore. Chock-a-block with photos and stories, it looks relatively good. I think it's called "Dance of Days".

Yours,
Jake

Is it better than Henry Rollins' biography thing that Comrade Rumble has? It's a really quite terrifying piece of literature, and should probably be banned. Oh, sorry, I mean Henry Rollins should probably be banned.

*is against banning books*

did you know that most of the great classics were banned at one point or another? the adventures of tom sawyer being one of them, and many more, i just can't remember them off the top of my head...

Bah! And you call yourself a dictator...