Most of the other musical movements we’ve covered at Let It Roll were all too eager to cut deals with corporate America to reach a mass audience. Today’s topic is the one subgenre that loudly and proudly proclaimed it wanted nothing to do with corporate America or even mainstream American culture.
Between 1980 and 1986, hardcore punk bands built their own labels, their own venues, their own fanzines, and their own touring circuit, entirely outside a music business that wanted nothing to do with it.
Steven Blush - author of “American Hardcore: A Tribal History” and maker of the 2006 documentary of the same name - joins host Nate Wilcox to discuss the scene he grew up inside: Black Flag and the Bad Brains, D.C. and L.A. and Texas, the violence, the straight edge, the fury, and what happens to a subculture that gets absorbed by the mainstream twenty years after it stopped caring.
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This interview originally aired in 2020.
Let It Roll is a podcast about how and why popular music happens. 500+ episodes and 500+ hours in the archive.
Songs played in this episode:
“Out of Vogue” Middle Class
Nate: “considered by many to be one of the two first hardcore punk singles.” Orange County.“Louie Louie” Black Flag.
Nate: “a classic case of taking rock history and throwing it in people’s faces. This really pissed people off at the time.”“Cashing In” Minor Threat
Blush on Ian MacKaye’s “tongue in cheek and ironic references to selling out” - recorded while the rest of the band was learning U2 songs.“Sacred Love” Bad Brains
Ron St. Germain producer: the vocal was recorded down a phone line with H.R. in jail. Blush: “I remember that just blowing a hole through our high school.”
Let It Roll is dedicated to the memory of Ed Ward, Russell Thomas, and Danny Park.
