For all the critical raves bestowed upon
Fugazi, it’s easy to forget Ian MacKaye
founded another D.C. band: Minor Threat.
Minor Threat’s self-titled album was ferocious, politically
charged and serious as a spinal epidural. While most punk bands
indulged in the traditional rock excesses of substances, MacKaye
was steadfast anti-drug and anti-drinking.
If you’re going to pick any Minor Threat album, it may as well
be
Complete Discography, which is virtually everything the band
recorded fit onto one CD. The album contains their eponymous
release and their
Out of Step EP. Like any good punk album, it’s hard to
criticize any song because most of the songs barely hit two
minutes.
Even with MacKaye’s seriousness, Minor Threat tore through their
songs with a drunken playfulness, which came from bassist Steve
Hansgen and Brian Baker (Baker also played guitar), guitarist Lyle
Preslar and drummer Jeff Nelson. Their sloppy, kinetic chops
probably caused many-a-concertgoers to mistake “Bottled Violence”
as an endorsement for kicking the shit out of someone in the mosh
pit.
You’ll need a lyric sheet to decipher most of the songs in
Complete Discography. You’ll most likely want a lyric sheet
to make sure you don’t mistake a song like “Guilty Of Being White”
for being a racist song. Yes, the band’s image included shaved
heads and leather boots and the song begins with something straight
out of a Michael Savage rant (“I’m sorry / For something I didn’t
do / Lynched somebody / But I don’t know who / You blame for
slavery / A hundred years before I was born”), but the song ends
with the narrator serving time of a racist crime. With music like
this, it’s hard to gauge for subtleties and double-meanings when
the music is intense enough to piss off most any neighbor.
Fugazi gave MacKaye a more diverse easel to work with, but Minor
Threat helped lay the foundation for the influential D.C. punk
music scene in the ’80s.
Complete Discography is not an album most listeners are
going to put on ‘repeat,’ but any self-respecting punk purist
should have this in their collection.
