Various Artists - 4 old 7" on a 12"

The hardcore compilation album is some sort of relic from the 80's that doesn't really fit into this modern world of digital music, which is too bad really. Every city had at least one of these that defined it's hardcore sound. My second-hand, battered, copied from vinyl cassette of "This is Boston, Not L.A." got played to death.

This is Dischord's first 7" all compiled on one album. It's 34 songs in 35 minutes. It was a bitch to cut all the tracks up, but it was worth it.

So what's on this thing? Early DC hardcore, and lots of it. Teen Idles was Ian MacKaye's first band (He played bass), which lasted for a few months before he went on to form Minor Threat. He saved up the money to get that single made, and that started the Dischord label, which is a pretty cool thing in my book. The guy with the microphone for S.O.A (State of Alert) is Henry Garfield. He'd quit his job scooping ice cream (which funded his single), move to L.A., lift a lot of weights, get a lot of ink, and change his name to Henry Rollins. G.I. is a pretty legendary band, and the only one who lasted for more than a few months on this album. They had a 10 year run, and changed their sound over time as most of the hardcore band that lasted did. Youth Brigade remained fairly obscure.

Some highlights:

• Teen Idles taking shots at the Grateful Dead on "Deadhead"
• Rollins', er, Garfield's unmistakable bark carries S.O.A. Any punk era song with "Riot" in the title has to kick ass. It's some sort of rule.
• G.I.'s 18 seconds of "I'm James Dean! I'm James Dean!". G.I. comes across as the band with the best sense of humor here. "Rock n' Roll Bullshit" and "Asshole" are hilarious.
• Youth Brigade sounds the most like English punks, kind of a Sham 69 thing going on. "Barbed Wire" is sufficiently menacing.

I got this mail order from Dischord, probably in 1989. This version is out of print, but Dischord has put out a few different versions of this, usually adding some early Minor Threat.

I'm not going to list 34 songs. Just download it already.
Enjoy!