The Way Out

Minor Threat, Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses, Bad Brains. Those are likely some of the bands you first think of when you consider music from our nation's capitol. Great bands, all. And indeed, Washington, D.C.'s hardcore punk and post-hardcore scene is rich and deep. But as we already play those acts often here on The Way Out - check out our Also On Dischord show from this past April - we thought we'd feature a different area of D.C. underground music this week. We've turned our attention to D.C.'s early/mid-1990s indie-pop scene, in particular acts on three of the city's best record labels: Slumberland, Simple Machines, and TeenBeat. (We took some artistic liberties with the NYC-based Versus, based on their relationship with TeenBeat.) While Slumberland and TeenBeat are no longer run out of D.C. and Simple Machines sadly ceases to exist, we nevertheless thought we'd pay tribute to three of the record labels that helped make D.C. underground rock music so great these past few decades.

Here's the playlist for our Saturday, September 20, 2014, broadcast:

Whorl - "Maybe It's Better"
Unrest - "Can't Sit Still"
Black Tambourine - "Throw Aggi Off the Bridge"
Lilys - "February Fourteenth"
The Ropers - "I Don't Mind"
Teenage Gang Debs - "On Tape"
Tsunami - "Be Like That"
Eggs - "It's Hard to Be an Egg"
Tuscadero - "Nancy Drew"
Blast Off Country Style - "Hey, Hey, I Love You Bitch"
My New Boyfriend - "Thurston Dance"
Versus - "Blade of Grass"
Bastro - "Sketch for Sleepy"
Lorelei - "The Bitter Air"
Velocity Girl - "Tales of Brave Aphrodite"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):

Starting with last week's Drive Like Jehu themed show, we've shifted our focus for the Fall semester to 1990s indie/underground rock. After probing the depths of 1980s post-punk over the summer (with our Unfinished Business series of shows, plus a few spin-offs), we thought we'd change gears a bit. And this week's theme takes quite the shift: 1990s pop-punk. Pop-punk's certainly not a genre that typically receives a lot of play on The Way Out, nor is it a genre that garners a whole lot of respect in the broader music culture these days (hey, where were all the 20th anniversary celebrations of Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy earlier this year?). But if you're going to have a discussion about punk or indie rock in the 1990s, you really need to talk about pop-punk. (Jason Heller's excellent "Fear of a Punk Decade" column at The AV Club recently made this point very clear, if only implicitly.)

Pop-punk may be associated with some of the most formulaic and insipid, not to mention apolitical,  music to carry the "punk" label (and for good reason - see the NOFX song on this playlist for just such a critique). But at least for a brief moment in the late 1980s and early 1990s, pop-punk was the site of some of the most innovative punk music around; it was refreshing a punk/hardcore scene that had begun to grow stale and cynical, or that had completely lost its way (see: much of hardcore punk's crossover into metal). Among other things, some of the era's most strident proponents of the DIY ethic were closely associated with pop-punk (groups like the 924 Gilman Street collective in Berkeley). And many pop-punk artists were among the most outspoken when it came to carrying on punk rock's social critiques (anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, et al). Moreover, pop-punk really wasn't a distinctly separate genre or scene back in the late 1980s and early/mid-1990s, at least not the way it would become in the late 1990s after the big commercial pop-punk boom. Back in the early 1990s, pop-punk, hardcore/post-hardcore, emo, crust, riot grrrl, ska, grindcore, et al, were all relatively entwined. The bands all shared bills together, and even if you were a straight edge kid, you probably had a Green Day or OpIvy record somewhere in your collection.

Whatever the case, take this show as our mini-defense of pop-punk. Of course, we've titled the show Pop-Punk Ain't (All) Junk, so we're hedging our bets a little. We're not going to lie: a lot of the most popular pop-punk out there is total, utter garbage. But if you look past your Blink 182's and Offspring's, there's some really good music to be found.

Here's the playlist for our Saturday, September 13, 2014, broadcast:

Ramones - "Cretin Hop"
Descendents - "I'm Not a Punk"
Bad Religion - "When?"
Screeching Weasel - "Hey Suburbia (Demo Version)"
Operation Ivy - "Junkie's Runnin' Dry"
Pegboy - "Through My Fingers"
Green Day - "2000 Light Years Away"
The Queers - "Granola-Head"
The Mr. T Experience - "Psycho Girl"
Supernova - "Math"
Crimpshrine - "Summertime"
Monsula - "Pre-Past Tense"
Fuel - "Disengaged"
NOFX - "Please Play This Song on the Radio"
J Church - "Fascist Radio"
Jawbreaker - "Indictment"
Samiam - "Bad Day"
Jawbox - "Reel"
Smoking Popes - "Rubella"
Chisel - "Hip Straights"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):

Though certainly not at quite the same level, Drive Like Jehu have grown to possess a Velvet Underground-like legacy in the contemporary underground rock scene. You know, the ol' Brian Eno assertion that they may not have sold many records in their day, but their influence far surpassed their popularity and they inspired legions of musicians who followed in their wake. Indeed, Jehu were only active for 5 years (1990-1995), and even during that tenure the band's members were splitting their time with other bands and projects, most notably guitarist/vocalist John "Speedo" Reis with Rocket From the Crypt. They didn't tour very much. (Andrew was living near Los Angeles for a few of those years, and he honestly can't recall Jehu playing a show there. They certainly must have played a few, but they were hardly playing out often.) They only released two albums and one single. And while we have no idea the sales figures, they were hardly moving mega-units. Nevertheless, their style of propulsive, wiry guitar rock with quiet-loud dynamics, frantic speak-shout vocals, and abstruse lyrics galvanized the prevailing "math rock" sound of the 1990s post-hardcore scene. And it's a style that still gets replicated widely today.

Back in mid-August, Jehu quietly announced that they'd be playing a free reunion show at San Diego's Balboa Park in just a couple week's time, on August 31st. They'd be accompanied by San Diego's civic organist, and play for only about a half-hour. It'd be their first live performance in 19 years, and (at least for now) the band swears it's their only reunion show. (Here's a great HD video of the full set.) To commemorate their reunion, we decided to look back at Drive Like Jehu, some of the members' post-Jehu activities, and the 1990s San Diego indie/punk rock scene from whence they came.

Here's the playlist for our Saturday, September 6, 2014, broadcast:

Drive Like Jehu - "Golden Brown"
Pitchfork - "Thin Ice"
Rocket From the Crypt - "Pigeon Eater"
Hot Snakes - "10th Planet"
Back Off Cupids - "Trivial Pursuit"
Obits - "No Fly List"
No Knife - "Charades"
aMiniature - "Towner On the B-Side"
Chune - "Mel Brown"
Inch - "Chicharrones"
The Peechees - "I Could Have Loved You"
Heroin - "Head Cold"
Antioch Arrow - "Lightning Bolt"
Swing Kids - "El Camino Car Crash"
Trumans Water - "Outpatient Lightspeed"
Drive Like Jehu - "Step On Chameleon"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):

Here's the playlist for the 3-hour long Part 6 of Unfinished Business (1980s Post-Punk), which was broadcast on Thursday, August 14, 2014:

Scritti Politti - "Messthetics"
Essential Logic - "Fanfare in the Garden"
Stockholm Monsters - "Happy Ever After"
The Wake - "Furious Sea"
Colin Newman - "I've Waited Ages"
MASS - "You and I"
In Camera - "Final Achievement"
The Wolfgang Press - "Sweatbox"
Dif Juz - "Hu"
Modern Eon - "Euthenics"
Play Dead - "Shine"
The March Violets - "Crow Baby"
Hula - "Walk on Stalks of Shattered Glass"
Usherhouse - "Permanent Red"
The Swell Maps - "Let's Build a Car"
The Bears - "On Me"
X_X - "No Nonsense"
The Nerves - "TV Adverts"
Art Attacks - "Neutron Bomb"
The Method Actors - "Do the Method"
Tuxedomoon - "No Tears"
Glenn Branca - "Lost Chords"
Pere Ubu - "Heart of Darkness"
Mission of Burma - "Max Ernst"
The Wipers - "Better Off Dead"
Einsturzende Neubauten - "Negativ Nein"
Ausgang - "Weight"
Kas Product - "Never Come Back"
1919 - "Caged"
A.C. Marias - "Drop"
Legendary Pink Dots - "Love Puppets"
Section 25 - "Dirty Disco"
Eric Random - "23 Skidoo"
23 Skidoo - "Porno Base"
A Certain Ratio - "Knife Slits Water"
Sneak Preview - "Desire"
Echo & The Bunnymen - "Do It Clean"
TV21 - "Snakes and Ladders"
U2 - "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"
Indoor Life - "Searching"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):