The Watch - Ep. 53: D.C. Punk Scene With Joe House

Episode Date: July 4, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Joe House discuss the origins and impact of the D.C. punk scene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, and I am an editor at the ringer.com. Today is a very special episode. I am joined by the Babe Ruth of Podcasts. The greatest podcast guest in the Ringer universe, Joe House. That is way overstating it, but I do have more than one interest.

Food isn't a big interest. The hoops is an interest. I'm doing some golf, apparently. You got the Shackhouse co-host here, so golf's there. But I'm happy to have this occasion to talk a little bit of music because one of the things that was of great joy to me, very early in our relationship when you were a Grantland dude, Chris Ryan, was finding out about all your old school punk rocks because that's how I came up. Yeah, man. So Joe and I want to talk a little bit today about D.C. punk rock. Yeah.

Because we found out that we have this mutual love for it. Joe lived it. I just kind of was a huge fan of it. But Joe, that's what I wanted to kind of start out with, is that I wanted to hear a little bit about how you got into DC punk rock in the first place because you're from there.

I'm from D.C. Right. So I didn't, I missed the sort of early days. Like, my entry point into the DC scene was honestly post-hardcore because I missed minor threat.

I missed void. I missed teen idols. I missed like the early iteration. Those dudes are all. like five or six years older than me. Okay. Ian Mackay and Henry Rollins, who grew up in D.C., I wasn't around for that era. I came in at the onset of Dagnasty.

Okay. It was just post-Rights of spring. So post-revolution summer. Post-revolution summer. So for the listeners who maybe don't know, what was Revolution Summer? That was like a summer of real activism in D.C. Right. And in a way, that became a prevailing theme.

Certainly for all of the time that I consumed the DC music scene and then sort of onward. And that activism coalesced in the Positive Force group. Mark Anderson still heads that up. They still do benefits. And there was a documentary, I think, last year about Positive Force DC. Yeah, and there was a bunch of that stuff in Sonic Highways when Grohl, the Food Fighter's documentary when it did the DC episode, Positive Forces in there. For sure. And Salad Day is also another documentary that came out.

out recently about the DC music scene also covered some of this. I joined Positive Force DC in my late high school, early college years and participated in some of that activism. But you asked about Revolution Summer. Yeah. That was kind of just a moment in the air when a group of kids, and that's the... This 84, right? Right. Yeah, 84, 85 was the time frame. And a group of kids who were doing bands, getting in and out of bands, creating bands, disassembling bands, who recognized the opportunity living in the nation's capital to go express a political point of view. And when there was a lot of noise protests at various embassies, South African embassy. Yeah, right, anti-apartheid stuff. Yeah, it was definitely a target. And, you know, they just took a political point of view,

a political stance and took the opportunity of that summer to go, you know, express their views not only through the music, but also through public activism. Yeah. Point, like, where were you in, and you're in high school, right? Yes. You're in sports. Right. You're just like a kid. Now, what, like, this is pre-internet. And this is the thing that was sort of, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was like the way we found out about this stuff, the way we got kind of pulled into punk rock at young ages. How did you start hearing? about these bands? Was it friends who were in bands telling you about it? Did you see flyers? Like, what was going on? So the point of entry probably was skateboarding. Okay. I had a buddy that was

very good at skateboarding. I was terrible at skateboarding. I tried. I had barely passable skateboarding skills. But in fact, you went on to some acclaim. There was a magazine called Slap magazine that he ended up being an editor for and taking pictures for for a lot of years. Oh, who was this? My buddy, Lance Dawes was his name. Yep. Grew up across the street from me. I was in San Francisco for a while.

I was here in L.A. for a while. I think he's back in D.C. now. We kind of haven't been in touch for a couple years. But he was like the gateway. And part of that skateboarding ethos includes, you know, wanting to do music is a big part of it because, you know, you're in a single place. skating, you want something on in the background. We had, you know, boom boxes with cassette tapes in them playing music.

And so he was really the one who introduced me in the first place to, like, I guess, you know, whatever you would call it, hardcore back then, right? Yeah. And it was really California hardcore that was the entry point. Like Black Flag and Adolescence, descendants, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And we came to, like, mutually recognize there's a, you know, minor threat was on the mixtape, of course.

Yeah. So, we were like instant fans of minor threat. And that was really the entry point in like, say, 85 to the scene. And there were shows going on in D.C. There was like three or four or five venues where you could go see shows as a kid. So this is where the whole black X's on hands things appeared. Because it was an all-age of show. It was an all-age of show.

It was like 930 Club. 930 Club was a venue. D.C. Space was a venue. There was a big hall called the W-U-S-T Radio Music Hall that is now houses the current 930 Club. The old 930 Club was further downtown in what was a red light. Light District, which is a really funny thing to say in 2016. Well, I imagine like any city. What city has a Red Light District anymore?

Yeah, even London, like, when you, it's like kind of touristy over there. Yeah, right. So that, you know, friend across the street, skateboarding, we're in, we're liking the music. And then I found kids at my high school that were also into the music and kids at my high school that were forming bands and playing. Did you respond to it politically? Did you respond to it because it was fast and loud?

Did you respond to it because you were just like looking for like maybe a subculture to attach to? I think that last point was definitely an element of it. I was I was running cross country and track in high school. And so there's a lot of opportunity as a runner to, you know, put on headphones. I had a walkman. I had to carry it. It was a physically heavy thing. You couldn't really wear it around a belt or anything like that.

But that, a lot of a lot. loan time was something that that certainly was an element of it. Working class family in a time when there was a significant middle class in D.C., a working class in D.C., made up of folks whose parents like work for the government largely. You know, it's not a manufacturing town. The government is the industry in Washington, D.C. And so there was a lot of kids like me whose parents were not white collar. There were, you know, professionals working for the government. And so that kind of commonality informed a lot of the kids that I got to be friends with. And then, were you guys straight edge? I had early in my high school career, you know, experimented with

substances. Yeah. I'm not trying to make this sound like a Mark Merrim, but I was just wondering. The running kind of X'd that out for me. Like once I started running year round, I couldn't, that became the drug of choice. Yeah, you were already, so you already were straight-ed. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, at that point in time, straight-edge wasn't really a thing. We understood and recognized those, so the guys, you know, Mackay and his brother and the other sort of big figures in the D.C. music scene at that time. are all one generation ahead or, you know, six years, seven years, eight years older.

So we did look up to them in a way. And so they're aesthetic in terms of the way they conducted themselves, you know, not dudes who wore crazy clothes. It was T-shirts and shorts or T-shirts and jeans, not guys who wore crazy shoes. And I mean, creepers were around back then. Yeah. That wasn't the ethic that these guys pursued or dress code, you know, not ethic. but the overwhelming motivating kind of animus was doing things yourself and that's what was really compelling.

It was like these are guys that are sort of contemporaries of ours. They're our peers and they're playing his shows and putting out the records themselves. And we knew about Discord. And we knew where Discord records existed. It's on a street, you know, in downtown D.C. And then the Discord House where the guys lived over in Arlington, that was enormously interesting and compelling. And like the thing that made it feel like a community was these dudes just doing it themselves.

Like no barriers to entry, just doing it because they wanted to do it. And they didn't feel hamstrung by, you know, needing to go out and find a record label or we need to go get radio player any. of that shit. It was just we're going to make the music because we like making the music and we'll record it and it'll be on tapes and we can share the tapes and you know it's a group

of friends that was started it and then the group of friends grew larger and it was interesting and all kinds of like offshoots within the DC community bands like unrest bands like those other labels sort of popping up. Teen beat pops up simple machines comes up yeah precisely yeah exactly

it's crazy you know like so my story is very know, it came a little bit later out of high school. So, like, I moved to Boston and I had already started to kind of, so my entry to point to a lot of this stuff was actually thinking about it in terms of rock criticism. So I was always just like this huge fan of music journalism and writing about records. And I became very, like, you know, curious about the canon. And if you read like the spin alternative guide, some of those records, like the first minor threat record or bad brains obviously and writes a spring and embrace or talked about in these halid terms. So I had like a

concept of that being in a museum, kind of like these things that were important. But I don't think I truly understood like the power of being part of one of those communities until I got to Boston for college. And, you know, I was into indie rock. I was into alternative rock, but I wasn't really ever part of something like that. And then I met some guys at Emerson and I went to, they had a house up a mission hill, which is like, you know, a little bit past Symphony Hall in Boston. And it's like, I was up in a hill like really far up. And I went to their house one day and they were having a a show is during the day. And it was like, as soon as you get up there, it's like the classic story.

Like you start approaching, you hear the bass drum from down the street. Like you can hear it, but like, and you're just like, this is weird. There's no bars here. These are just houses. These guys are having a show. And then you start to see the people, you know, kids sitting on curbs. Yeah. And like some weird guy who got too drunk at three o'clock in the afternoon who's

like passed out on a skateboard. And, you know, you get up and closer and closer and I got, I went into the show and I saw the guys from my class. It was like a creative running class. And you were like, hey, man, like, what's going on? and it was a couple of Boston bands it was like six going on seven and there was this band playing

and they were good and they were like they were kind of like emoy punk rock bands playing and immediately I was just like I can't believe that this is happening because these people all look like me like they look at college kids but they're putting out records like they had seven inches for sale and they have t-shirts for sale

and they are doing this thing and then this band the vehicle birth played and vehicle birth were this kind of almost mythological band in Boston I think every city had one of these bands at that time where it was like yeah like and I grew to found out they were totally normal guys but when you see them you're just like

oh yeah those guys like they don't ever go to sleep right guys that you just like are really like really almost scared of and so they played and I think that they were playing like some seven minute song they put out one album back in the 90s and they played like some seven minute song and like at the breakdown of it like the singer tore his pants off

and just did the rest of the song like in his boxers with sunglasses on. I'm not doing a great job describing it. But I was like, where the fuck are these guys from? And somebody was like, oh man, those guys are from D.C. Huh. And they were from D.C. But they were living there. And I wound up like getting to know those guys a little bit.

But I was like just blown away by it. Because I was like, these guys are just so authentically on their own wavelength. And that was the thing that was so strange back. It's so hard sometimes to reconcile this now because all we do so much just, naturally because of what we have, like self-promotion. You're always trying to like make sure that the most people possible are like hearing your podcast or reading your article or doing this. And the idea that basically like there was part of that.

Like you didn't, you weren't ever saying like I don't want somebody to hear it. I don't think that anybody had a choice. Like I think if you had asked a lot of like of my friends back in Boston like, oh, do you want your song to be using a movie or a car commercial? Like they would actually be like, I don't know. Right. Sure. That's not really why I'd do it.

Right. And I'm not, they weren't like. monks, but that was just like, it was crazy to put your song. So the idea that you would just do anything it took to get your music to as many people is not what it was about. And it was such a, it's such a different thing now to think about like how music must get put out there. I mean, I know that there are scenes out there, but it's, I guess I get nostalgic and everybody always thinks that their way was the best way. Oh, and look, you know, there's the sociological study that that is residing there. It's like why, how and why did that work?

Yeah. How and why was it that a group of kids, you know, kind of just said, fuck it, we're going to do this. And it became, you know, a thing all across the country. SST out here in California was, you know, Greg Ginn and the black flag dudes wanting to do their own thing. And it was happening like roughly coincident with Discord in D.C., getting up off the ground in doing each thing. And it would be like four or five guys who put their money together and bought a $2,000 van that was guaranteed to die once it got west of the Mississippi River.

Right. But they would still be like, okay, we're going to go on a summer tour for like five weeks and just play people's houses. And put out records. We're just going to put it out. We're going to find, you know, kind folks who will give us some time in a studio. We're going to, you know, at a reasonable price. We're going to find a press, a record press that will let us do this, you know, nearly at

cost because we don't you know they didn't have any money yeah then and they didn't let that stop them and they'd sell their records for two or three bucks at their shows or the record stores that were allowing put out you know demo tapes one of the the great joys of preparing for this today with you um was going on and and re listening to the first fugazi demo tape yeah and remembering how i had how i got that which was just somebody passed me a tape at a show like here's the Fugazi demo tape. Did you know who Fugazi was when you got it? Because Ian was in, Embrace and Ghee was in.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was like hot for Fugazi. That was like the 2012 heat of D.C. It was for me. It was at the height of my interest in the D.C. music scene. And it was as I was going from high school into college. So I also had kind of that political activism moment as well. and when I spent some time with the positive force dudes.

But the, so we'd heard about Fugazi, like roughly coincident with the very first show that she did. There's another great music venue in D.C. that no longer exists called the Wilson Center, which was the, in the bottom of a church, but a great big hall, like perfectly suited. And they did a show, somebody recorded the show, obviously. because that's what you did. You had your recorders. And we heard a little bit of that. And then me and this buddy mine, Lance, like, really immediately took the logo that was on the flyer that they put out for that show and screen pressed it.

No way. He made a couple T-shirts, and I made this red sweatshirt. I'd love to go back to my parents' house and go up in the attic and see if there is a place. Like, you should give that to the Smithsonian. I mean, it is from 1987. And I wore that. I was lucky to find off in college a friend who also, you know, like-minded. He's from Palo Alto.

But he, my very first spring break of college, I came out to California and stayed with his family. And we went to, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm blanking on it right now. Outside of Berkeley, the famous. Oh, the Gilman. Yeah, Gilman Street. Exactly. And I had that. We went to a show at Gilman Street.

So when is this? 87. Spring of 88. And I had a Fugazi thing on a sweatshirt. And I had like a half dozen dudes come up to me like, holy shit. That's so funny in retrospect of this is not a Fugazi T-shirt stuff that came out. You actually had the Fugazi T-shirt. We just did it because we were fans.

We were fans of, you know, the music. And, you know, we were going to the show. very early on. It was like a cool, we didn't know at the time, you know, he had no idea. We're just kids

who like the music scene in our, in our hometown and got to see a band that ended up being a pretty important, you know, band for a full decade

in their first handful of shows. It was excellent. So I want to ask about, I want to get to our favorite records, our favorite DC records, but this does bring up a good point. Like, you know,

when I would read about punk rock or just listen to it, It had like a certain level of impact. But I think the when to truly understand this stuff, you have to go see it live. Oh, it's the only way. And it changes. I mean, it changes the way you look at the world if you go to one of these shows and everything clicks.

And like you just feel like you lose yourself completely in like a moment with any, you can feel yourself basically get swallowed up by a group of people and be part of like a community literally in the moment. It's one of the most life-changing things you can be a part of. So it's so funny you that observation. I'm on the airplane listening to Fugazi flying out here because I knew we were going to be talking about this stuff in the podcast. And what I wrote down that jumped out at me is

where the fuck is Fugazi when we need them? Right. We're at like a political moment where a band like them who creates that communal feeling you're talking about but also with like a basic human decency to them that's authentic and earnest and sincere. Like, that's what we need right now. Yeah.

As a means of arming ourselves, of putting on armor to gird ourselves against the constant barrage, the relentless barrage of bullshit. Absolutely. God damn it. Where's Spugazi when you need them? Well, where's something with the ethos of Discord? You know what I mean? And Discord still obviously, like, you know, they put out, like, I'm pretty. pretty sure they've been putting out records like all the way up now for sure but you know it's

funny you should mention their humanism and stuff like that with fugazi because the other thing that really happens I think when a lot of people get into punk rock and sometimes for better and for words for me I suppose it was a push but punk rock can really articulate like a rage that you don't really understand inside of you like sometimes towards political cases like that but like I was talking with greenwald the other day on the watch and he was talking about how much he likes chance the rapper and this is like because it's so effusive and positive and has like the gospel elements. And I was like, yeah, I like it too.

But like sometimes I do like really dark music. Sometimes I look at music as the place to go to to like articulate darker parts of my person. Like my son. And that's when like when I met. So I was working at Newberry Comics pretty quickly into working at living in Boston. I started working at this record store, Newberry Comics show, I think a lot of our listeners have probably heard of. And there was a guy there and he was like, oh, do you like this?

Do you like Fugazi? And I was like, I love Fugazi. I started to get really into this. this stuff. And he's like, do you ever heard void? And void is one of like the first discord bands. They put out a split with this band Faith. And Void I, I had never heard of before. And they are, I don't even know, like, could those kids even like get like driver's licenses back then? Like, I don't even know how old they were. Right. There was fifth, they were 15, 16 year olds. You want to talk about mythological bands. Like, they just seemed like skate punks from hell.

Like, I don't even know what happened with Void. And they had a song called Time to Die. Uh-huh. And they, like, the first line was, I'm so fucking full. of hate, I just want to decapitate. Yeah. And I had never really heard music like that before. I was never that dark of a person and I'm still not now. But I think part of the reason why I am not is because music was always an outlet for stuff like that.

Like you could feel your misanthropy through punk rock. That's right. You could feel your anger against the system through punk rock. And it was great to listen to Bad Brains and have PMA and like that's right. You know, but sometimes I really want to. like that and I think Ian Mackay felt that way too or he wouldn't have put that stuff out. Well that's the thing to me what's missing is is a real galvanizing protest music moment. Like I don't know who I would say from any genre does protest music the best.

But that's what I think I'm searching for when I say where the fuck is Fugazi, you know. Can you or do you have like off the top of your head like a top of your head like a top of pop like a like this is I'm in heaven right now show or memory like a show that was like I'll never forget this yeah I do I do um have that and uh I I I almost feel embarrassed to confess it it was up at the rocket in Rhode Island in Providence Rhode Island um Operation Ivy was touring this is not embarrassing yeah so Operation Ivy and Fugazi played together at the rocket um my uh either my sophomore year or junior year of college on a Sunday afternoon and so you're at holy cross you guys drive down to Rhode Island yep exactly and this is also funny because this was like the time in our

lives when like routinely driving four hours to go see a show oh I those those stories are legendary I drove from Holy Cross to the anthrax in Norwalk Connecticut in the middle of a snowstorm to see Fugazi and Solside and literally on the drive back it took us four and a half hours to get back because we're driving in four inches of snow. It's like, you know, what are we doing? And it was in one of those pre-beedal Volkswagen. I mean, the thing had no business being on the road when there was nothing on the road, without any precipitation.

But there were six of us crammed in that thing. We had to go see Fugazi. It was a Saturday night. It was just down in Connecticut. We can get there. But the show, that Operation Ivy Fugazi show was remarkable. and what I remember more than anything else was Ian coming out and saying

because Fugazi ended up headline and he's like, we have no business coming on this stage after what that band just did. After what Salset did. No, I'm sorry, Operation Ivy. Oh, but Ivy did, okay. That Operation Ivy Fugazi show at the Rocket in Providence,

he came on and said, he was like, wow. Yeah. That was incredible. And then Fugazi did what they always do, which is, you know, own the joint. Right, exactly. But Operation Ivy was up to it.

They were effing incredible. And I was so happy to see them live. Although they only did one record before it spun off and those guys became, two of them went off. Rancid, yeah, right, exactly. That was, that's a definitely up there show. There was also the 1A. If that's one, 1A is this show at a Johns Hopkins think tank place in the city right on Mass Ave. And that was

one of these protest moment protest music kinds of shows. It was a fundraiser for God, I can't remember. It was in response to the persecution of some folks in Central America. And it was with

Scream when Dave Grohl was playing drums for Scream. And Scream was incredible. And Fugazi came on after Scream. And people left there like ready to go you know to the white house to to advance a protest i mean it was a really galvanizing um emotional show because that's you know i think that's part of what you're describing it's like you leave a show so like charged up and ready to go do big things it's unlike a

feeling it's hard to describe that feeling when you leave a show and a band is just like burn the place down and it's like you can't hear anything right because real gs don't put into your place and your chest almost feels sore because like it's been so loud. Yeah. Has been assaulting you. And then you walk out in that first hit of like night air when you walk out of a club or out of a house or a bar. My favorite, it's like pretty, it's not like a legendary show by any means. But when I went to Ireland to go to school for like six months.

So I took like seven CDs, you know, like one of those old CDs. Yeah, right. This is like 98 or 99. I can't remember. I think it's 99. Beginning of 99, I think. No, it was beginning of 98. And I went to Ireland and I brought, like one of the only CDs I brought was End Hits by Fugazi. Oh, wow.

And it was like one of those things where now, you know, I listen to so much music and I breeze through it because of it's so easy and it's so like at my fingertips. But I went to Ireland and I was just like, I'm bringing these seven albums. And if I don't like them, I'm really out of luck. And, end hits, you know, like I was a kid. So it was like a lot of what they were doing on N. I was new to me, but I still think that's one of my five favorite records ever made. And when I got back, Fugazi was touring with the X. And I saw them in Providence together.

And that was one of those like incredible collaborative shows that I just didn't think I would ever. Like just to see the X play and then to see Fugazi play so much stuff from end hits and do break into place position. Sure. And just like I just thought that that was the best rock and roll band I ever seen. seen that night. Of course. Still is, still is one of the best. All right, we don't want to stay too long. So let's talk about some of our favorite records. So I'm going to let you go first. We'll go back and forth. We'll just talk about some of our favorite DC. We're using it loosely.

It doesn't have to be discord. Right. Yeah, sure. Go go. So it's unfair of you to let me go first. Because I'm going to put that the rights of spring record up. Do it. That's my number one. I have first position in the draft. That's my number one. Mainly because of, this is going to be a silly thing to say, but this is what happens when you're middle age. It's emotional intelligence. It was so visceral and palpable and I don't know. It made it okay to love, to cry, you know. That was a thing. Yeah. I mean, like, that was the thing where it was like that was not the number one use of that music back then. It was not. It was proto-emo. Yeah. Exactly. And I, you know that lots and lots of folks in DC have never liked that emo label, but it was, you know, like heavy music and fast-paced music,

but nothing about it was hardcore or punk. You know what I mean? I don't know what words you use to describe it, but that's my number one. I put that in position A. I'm going to put down this is, so these are like these are by no means, like we can fight. First of all, I think we should both say, even though it was recorded in New York. self-titled bad brains album

is the Jordan of this draft it's the seminal yeah you take that and you put it over in Valhalla it gets to eat at the big table it always nobody will ever touch it did you receive Bad Brains live? The big chair I saw them live a couple times like you know post yeah so like never the

like they're wearing like paint splattered hospital scrubs it was the I saw them when they were touring on Igan's eye okay which it has not that's not exactly like 2009 that's so pretty great And that's not a chump change record either. It's not, it's got like four great songs or five great songs, but it's also not. If you haven't heard that record, if you've gotten to a minute 38 of a DC punk rock record, punk rock podcast and are just like, I haven't heard the self-titled bad brains with the capital building with the lightning bolt hitting it.

It just got to change that right now. Yeah, that's right. Do whatever it takes. It's what I mean, you can get it anywhere. The first record I'm going to say, you know, we've talked about end hits, we talked about Void, Joe's pick is amazing. I'm going to go with, this is not my, this is not the only record, I would say, but 13 point plan to destroy America by Nation of Ulysses.

Yes. Which was one of those things where you hear a record and see, like they had the whole package. That's the thing with Nation of Ulysses. And they went on to have bands like the makeup. But when I've seen videos of them, I never got a chance to see them. them live, but the art, the lyrics, and the music were so out there and such of a piece. And that was one of the coolest things about, like, post-punk bands especially, was the way

that they would combine all these different elements of being a band, like their persona and their album art and just little, like, interstitial things between songs to create this world where you were like, man, like, these are like these situationist, vegan, radical Marxist. I don't even know what like... And how much of that is a put on and how much of that is... And he's like reading these spoken word things before he plays. So I was always really in a nation of Ulysses. What's another one you liked?

With good reason. I mean, I swear. I love the very first faith record. The one, the split EP, Faith Void, has like a, you know, an iconic, like, legacy kind of feel to me. But faith, the standalone faith record, was a huge one for me because that, I also never got to see the faith

but that thing fits that same canon. I love that word that the rights of spring record emanates from. Yeah, absolutely. Let's take a quick break to shout out our sponsors the Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Discover Weekly allows you to lose yourself every week in the thrill of new music discovery.

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tracks on Sundays before your playlist refreshes. You don't want to lose that music. So make sure you save them. Go to Spotify.com slash Discover Weekly now to get your playlist. We should do this one now where let's let's do like I mean I was going to say like you know there's tons of other bands especially late period bands that I was really into. Anything from like Hoover

Sure. I saw Hoover play an amazing show in Boston. They were like a really, out there. They incorporated stuff, like some dub stuff, which was always one of the coolest things about the DC scene is that you would be watching a punk rock band and then all of a sudden they would have a dub part or a go-go part or a like a weird country part that you didn't, you know, they were, it was a very open church. And that was one of the things, a defining characteristic of the DC music scene. There is no defining characteristic of the DC music scene. It's Nation of Ulysses. It's unrest. It's unrest, exactly.

And Nami. It's like all that, all kinds of different directions, a different kind of experiments off of a whole variety of platforms, a hardcore platform, a dub platform, you know, a noise platform, all of the above. So we've talked about like all these other, so I think Fugazi stands as the sort of Beatles of this whole thing. Yeah. And kind of everything flows to and from them. What on any given day, I know this probably changes. So what's your top Fugazi album? I um it really does uh change it changes probably like every six months right now i'm in a

a strong 13 songs frame of mine early yeah early and all of it is is really resonating with me probably because i just had a birthday okay you know i'm officially like thinking about it yeah so middle age right now um that that you know now i'm going back you know 30 years and um the the combination of the novelty of it, but the capacity for that music to still strike that emotional chord that was the thing that sucked me in right away, it's transportive. I'm right back there.

I'm right back there at 30. That's it, man. Even to this day, still kind of a chills moment. I want to shout out in on The Kill Taker, because that's the record where I feel like they, really start to become modern Fugazi. They really are starting to use the studio

as an instrument in that record. And it's also the one where I feel like they really get their rhythm of Ian's song, then Gee song. This is something that I kind of like really miss about bands is when they have two songwriters and an album has four or five songs by each guy.

And you can kind of be like, I'm really feeling Ian today. And you can listen to one, three, five, seven, and nine. Or you're like, I'm really feeling ghee today. so I'm going to go 24, 6, and 8. And Killtaker has absolute jams by both of those guys. Yeah, and you know, it's funny. I've found as I've gotten older than I'm more, I'm a Guy Groover.

Are you? I like Geese Groovers and I like them across a lot of different records. He has that MC5 like real rocker undertone. Like do you like me, Casavetes, you know, walking syndrome. There's a full disclosure from, from. The argument. Oh, yeah. These are like whatever read, I don't know how to say it.

I just call them Gee's Groovers. Yeah. And then it's crazy too because you think about Ian and Ian is the front man for one of the most seminal punk rock bands of all time. And then it's great if you watch instrument, which I can't recommend highly enough. It's the film that Fugazi kind of made about their own band with, with, obviously, it's just sort of the official movie about them. And you just, it really hits home when you watch. It's like, Guy wasn't even really playing guitar that much in early Fugazi. Right.

And just to watch them evolve as a band. And then to just see, like, he's such a badass. And then see Ian just, like, playing rhythm guitar for Fugazi. Even though Ian is, like, Iggy pop to a lot of people. Like, you know what I mean? He is, like, the seminal front. He physically looks like it, you know? It looks like Iggy a little bit.

And he has that same physicality. Yeah, he's so pugnacious. Right. And Guy is so, like, slithery and, like, rock god. It's just such a great thunder and lightning combination. You know, it's another thing that's like a testament to those two strong personalities. We talk about this in the sports context all the time. How the hell do you have two alpha dogs? Right? You have Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. They can't figure it out. But

Guy and Ian figured it out. I mean, I love a thunder and lightning back court. Man, I love C.J. and Damien. I love, I mean, it's strange. It's, it's interesting that we've kind of gotten to a place. I think for a long time in sports, we were like, we got to get all the best guys on the same team. That's the only way you're going to win. And the heat were like that. And now I feel like we're kind of going to a more flat. Like, no, you can't rock the boat to you. much spurs, hawks, system-based stuff. Sure. And in music, it's interesting, too, because it's like, I haven't seen a band in a long

time that has, like, the two-songwriter, but it's like the two-headed Hydra hit. I know. I can't even come up with a good example of it. Yeah. So, okay, so the last one I want to ask is, what's the obscure Joe House recommends, like, a personal favorite that maybe is not that big that you think people. should check out if they have marginal man. Okay. Marginal man is that that that has uh from the beginning of the record to the end and

it's eponymous. I don't think it um you know this is a when did it come out. 86 85 86 um they were incredible live in fact it's the band with um senator inouye's son Kenny inouye played guitar for marginal man. No, I don't think I ever actually listen to marginal man. Holy F you know they they show up in weird places. They were in some jackass, some of the early jackass production stuff. You see, you hear their music sometimes in old skateboarding stuff. There's like old Tony Hawk videos that have some, they'll slide it when they're just running through, you know, four or five minutes of straight shots of various skate stuff and they're just running a background, you know,

30 second music clips on top of it. You'll hear some marginal man in there. But that's a Joe House recommend. That's a deep dive Joe House recommend. I think I'll probably throw on a late period one which is Black Eyes it came out in like 0203 And they were like They brought it and they had a They have a song called a pack of wolves I love

And they were just like one of those like That was that was also like a really cool like E. Mackay still puts out dope records Yeah right you know he's like he's in Fugazi He's in the Hall of Fame He doesn't have to do anything anymore And he's still out there Seeing young bands and putting out their records

You know we just did 35 40 minutes we didn't even talk about Q and not you, which ended up being, you know, a spectacular. They were great. We didn't even mention Jawbox and DeSoto Records. Like, there's so much stuff to discover. We'll put together a Spotify playlist for people to check out based on this. Thanks so much for doing this house. It was a long time coming.

My dude. We've been talking about it for a couple years. I love it. Thank you. All right. I want to say thanks to Spotify, Discover Weekly for sponsoring us today. I love my weekly Spotify, Discover Weekly playlist. Every week, I just go to that tab in Spotify.

It's right there. I'm like, oh, these are bands I like, but songs I didn't know I love. These are new bands of songs I've never heard before. It's all tailored to your taste. It just pulls from what you're listening to on Spotify. It allows you to lose yourself every week in the thrill of new music discovery. Your Discover Weekly playlist is 30 songs you didn't know you loved yet, and you get a brand new, unique playlist every Monday personalized to your taste.

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