DC’s Legendary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Catalog Free to Stream Online

Image of Fugazi by Brad Sigal, via Flickr Com­mons

Apart from what­ev­er polit­i­cal night­mare du jour we’re liv­ing in, it can be easy to dis­like Wash­ing­ton, DC. I say this as some­one who grew up out­side the city, called it home for many years, and gen­er­al­ly found its pub­lic face of mon­u­ments, tourists, politi­cos, and waves of lob­by­ists and bureau­crats pret­ty alien­at­ing. The “real” DC was else­where, in the city’s his­toric Black neigh­bor­hoods, many now heav­i­ly gen­tri­fied, which host­ed leg­endary jazz clubs and gave birth to the genius of go-go. And even in the priv­i­leged, mid­dle class neigh­bor­hoods and DMV sub­urbs. Among the skate punks and dis­af­fect­ed mil­i­tary brats who cre­at­ed the DC punk scene, a seething, furi­ous­ly pro­duc­tive punk econ­o­my cen­tered around Dischord Records. The small label has been as huge­ly influ­en­tial in the past few decades as Seat­tle’s Sub Pop or Long Beach’s SST.

Formed in 1980 by Minor Threat’s Ian MacK­aye and his band­mate Jeff Nel­son, Dischord is 6 years old­er than Sub Pop and in sev­er­al ways it inspired a tem­plate for the West Coast. Dave Grohl came from the DC Punk scene, as did Black Flag’s Hen­ry Rollins. Rollins and MacK­aye were child­hood friends and DC natives, and MacK­aye went on to form Fugazi, vir­tu­al­ly a DC insti­tu­tion for well over a decade.

MacKaye’s broth­er Alec was a mem­ber of Dischord band Faith—one of Kurt Cobain’s admit­ted influences—and of Igni­tion with Gray Matter’s Dante Fer­ran­do, who went on, with invest­ments from Dave Grohl, to found the club Black Cat, a cen­tral hub of punk and indie rock in DC for 27 years. The more you dig into the musi­cal fam­i­lies of Dischord, the more you see how embed­ded they are not only in their home city, but in the weft of mod­ern Amer­i­can rock.

Dischord has been cel­e­brat­ed in gallery exhi­bi­tions, the hip doc­u­men­tary Sal­ad Days, and the short An Impres­sion: Dischord Records (watch here). Now they’ve released their cat­a­log to stream for free at Band­camp. The slew of bands fea­tured offers a gallery of nos­tal­gia for a cer­tain brand and vin­tage of DC native. And it offers a pris­tine oppor­tu­ni­ty to get caught up if you don’t know Dischord bands.

Image of Hoover by Dischord Records, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The com­mon fea­tures of its lineup—political urgency, earnest­ness, melod­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion, unpretentiousness—stand out. Dischord bands could be math‑y and tech­ni­cal, straight edge, veg­an, Bud­dhist, Hare Krish­na, fierce­ly fem­i­nist, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, and anti-war.… These may not sound like the mak­ings of a great par­ty scene, but they made for a com­mit­ted cadre of hard work­ing musi­cians and a wide cir­cle of ded­i­cat­ed fans around the coun­try who have kept the label thriv­ing in its way.

What dis­tin­guish­es Dischord from its more famous peers is the fact that it only releas­es bands from the DC area. Why? “Because this is the city where we live, work, and have the most under­stand­ing,” they write on their site. Still, giv­en the label’s height­ened pro­file in recent years, it’s sur­pris­ing that so much of its music remains unknown out­side of a spe­cif­ic audi­ence. Fugazi is the best-known band on the ros­ter, and for all their major crit­i­cal impor­tance, they have kept a fair­ly low pro­file. But this is the spir­it of the label, whose founders want­ed to make music, not make stars. Bands like Shud­der to Think and Jaw­box may have even­tu­al­ly moved to big­ger labels, but they did their best work with Dischord.

Dag Nasty, Embrace, Gov­ern­ment Issue, Make-Up, Q and Not U, Rites of Spring, Soul­side, Void, Untouch­ables, Slant 6, the Nation of Ulysses.… these are bands, if you don’t know them, you should hear, and already have, in some way, through their enor­mous influ­ence on so many oth­ers: not only Nir­vana, but also a con­tin­gent of deriv­a­tive emo bands some of us might pre­fer to for­get. Still the label’s his­to­ry should not be tak­en as the gospel canon of DC punk. One of the most influ­en­tial of DC punk bands, Bad Brains, came out of the jazz scene, invent­ed a blis­ter­ing mashup of punk and reg­gae, and get cred­it for cre­at­ing hard­core and inspir­ing Rollins, MacK­aye, and their friends. But Bad Brains was “Banned in DC” in 1979, shut out of the clubs. They moved to New York and even­tu­al­ly signed with SST.

Oth­er parts of the scene scorned the clean-liv­ing moral­ism of Dischord, and the label’s sober founders lat­er found them­selves “alien­at­ed by the vio­lent, sub­ur­ban, teenage machis­mo they now saw at their shows,” writes Jil­lian Mapes at Fla­vor­wire. Dischord became known for cham­pi­oning caus­es on the left, a lega­cy that is insep­a­ra­ble from its leg­end. Not every­one loved their pol­i­tics, as you might imag­ine in a city with as many con­ser­v­a­tive activists and polit­i­cal aspi­rants as DC. “Great polit­i­cal punk bands—like Priests—still exist in DC,” writes Mapes—and Dischord con­tin­ues to release great records—“but the ‘80s scene retains its place in his­to­ry as the pin­na­cle of polit­i­cal Amer­i­can hard­core music.” And Dischord remains a some­times unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tor of Amer­i­can punk rock in the ‘80s and ’90s. Stream their whole cat­a­log at Band­camp. You can also down­load tracks for a fee.

via @wfmu

Relat­ed Con­tent:

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness