DC independent label makes its back catalogue available for streaming
August 4, 2017 2:07 PM   Subscribe

Dischord Records' Bandcamp page has most of their back catalogue available for streaming (via Open Culture which also has a nice introductory article about the label). The DC based independent label is home to such legendary bands as Rites of Spring, Nation of Ulysses, Autoclave, Minor Threat and Fugazi, and also many, many others.
posted by Kattullus (11 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
And now I'm listening to the State of the Union compilation, which I had on pretty much non-stop rotation the summer I was 16, and wondering what 16-year-old me would think of the present moment. 16-year-old me would probably be delighted that you can now deliver zines electronically through the airwaves to people's phones, but she would think that we needed to make some "Sessions is a Pig" signs and put them up all around D.C. Actually, that's not a terrible idea.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:32 PM on August 4, 2017 [7 favorites]




Oh man this is great! The State of the Union comp was like my lifeblood when it first came out. We had one halfway decent record store at the Panama City Mall that sold Dischord imprints and there was a small crowd of us that would go there every week to rifle through the cassette stacks looking for new exciting music. Anytime a new Dischord title would hit the shelves, one of us would snatch it up and make cassette dupes for all our friends in the local music/punk scene. I still have such fond memories of seeing the first Fugazi record, realizing what it was, and just getting this amazing thrill of discovery. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. I always found it so inspiring what the D.C. crowd managed to accomplish, getting their music and vision out to so many others when they were all still either in high school or barely out of it. And to me, the idea that independent music has ever not been fundamentally political and engaged in leftist politics at its core is a complete nonsequiter. Independent music early on couldn't have been more about politics and challenging orthodoxy and convention. For years, to me, that seemed like the defining quality of punk and indie music, though I'm not so sure that original spirit of music making as activism survived the late 90s intact.
posted by saulgoodman at 3:00 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


Memories of Soulside crashing in our living room while on tour... Thanks for posting all of this!
posted by gingerbeer at 3:22 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Dischord is responsible for so many of my favorite records ever. It's almost impossible to remember a time when I didn't spend a huge amount of my music listening time with parts of their catalog. Just a small sampling of my favorites: Lungfish - The Unanimous Hour, Faith/Void split, Slant 6 - Soda Pop*Rip Off, Q And Not U - Power, Dag Nasty - Can I Say and so many more.
posted by ndfine at 3:44 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Recipe for a good punk night:
  1. Go to the Government Issue page
  2. Listen first to "Happy People"
  3. Go back to 1 and listen to the entire album
Rinse, repeat and fuck Reagan.
posted by jeremias at 3:50 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Lungfish! Lung. Fish.

we will crawl over the walls
we will become manifest
any time and every time we so choose
and we will persevere
it won't be like money anymore

posted by Frowner at 4:52 PM on August 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Fun fact: I am on that Nation of Ulysses album cover!
posted by eulily at 7:32 PM on August 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well, I guess being a patient boy does eventually pay off.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:13 PM on August 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was head over heels for the "Four Old 7" on a 12"" compilation, one of my first introductions to hardcore.

Here's the Dag Nasty show I saw, one of the best shows ever, even though is was post-Smalley.

That's really all I can say about Dischord without going on for a few thousand words of teen and twenties journaling, but I gotta say this is perfectly in line with their history. The internet just helps them self-actualize all that much more.
posted by rhizome at 8:30 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


What a classy move. These bring back memories.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:49 AM on August 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


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