Minor Threat-Minor Threat (1984)

 

Artist: Minor Threat

Title: Minor Threat

Label: DisChord

Format: LP

Cat #: DISCHORD 12

Year of Release: 1984

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1987 repress, light blue cover, $4.00 price on back

Sold Price: $39.99

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 10/13/20

Discogs Last Sold: 4/12/20 $29.99  VG/VG

Low: $29.99

Median: $29.99

High: $29.99

Current low price: NA

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 0

Have/Want: 0/0

Where Sold: Medford, NJ

Time it took to sell: 3 years

Where and When Bought: Al Bums Worcester new 1987 more than $4, more like $6 or $7

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A+

Sad To See It Go?: No

My 1987 blue cover reissue copy of the 1984 red cover Minor Threat comp of the first two 1981 singles went for $39.99.  Ten times the pay no more than price. Adjusting for inflation, $4.00 in 1987 dollars is worth $9.16 today, so I still got triple value on my investment.  Sadly, with storage rent and back taxes I owe, there is no time to celebrate my $30.80 or less real profit for The Reverse Collector (TM).  The DisChord moralist police would be better suited to finger point elsewhere.

At the time American Hardcore was considered to be the next generation after the British wave of punk, and bands from '80 to '83 carried a certain weight that the later part of the 80's didn't, even as the music became more popular and recompiled in the CD era.  I was a bit out of time with this era not discovering it til early 1985 when I was still 14.  The timelines of interest, as with educational and presidential cycles, were about 4 years.   My radio partner John had the "red" 1984 version of this, and since WICN only had Out Of Step when we did our show, this made a frequent voyage in John's record crate.  I got around to buying this I guess in 1987, and because John's copy was always at the station, I played it once and filed it away.  

Despite Minor Threat being some of the greatest recordings in the genre,  I never bought the all-in-one cd reissue.  I had all the contents on vinyl and was happy that way.  I never was a "vinyl" fetishist.  I bought records because they sounded better than cassettes.  I bought CD's because they had no surface noise and cued more easily, and would still buy records on 7" or used if the price was right.  I always bristle when someone drones on about the sanctity of vinyl, yet I can dig through filth to get used records with the best of 'em if the opportunity strikes.

Someone wanted further details on my listing a few months ago, so this album was already pulled from storage, sitting in my bedroom in the small unpaid orders collection accumulating to the right of my small leather couch and the wall. I decided to give it a spin in headphones before it finally went out.  Maybe I wanted to poke a hole in my memory of the great Minor Threat recording.  In my mind, it was uniformly excellent,  a cut above Out Of Step and superior to Fugazi and all the one-off bands in between.  That I've carried this opinion for decades to the age of 50 without pondering reexamination is no fault of anyone but my own timeline.  Some things I noted upon listening the other day with "fresh" ears: the drumming is excellent, every song is a standard, the guitar is not as good as deemed by "the scene," yet "perfect," and young MacKaye gives a debut vocal performance bettered only by Inflammable Material and Damaged in the post-Ramones/Sex Pistols era of "alternative rock."  Pretty damn good, and it holds up.  I slightly prefer the A side (Filler 7") to the B (In My Eyes 7") as raw angry expletive filled rants give way to chummy hyper moralism.

The hyper moralism was original in it's time.  This carried through to MacKaye's later bands.  Some found it insufferable, and much of what it spawned certainly was.  But, like anything with a hint of originality, it's moral code was not just rejection of the times, but reasoned evolution.   The burnt out 70's mainstream culture was a target,  but so was conservative religious zealotry.  The track one side one is "Filler" and it sets a tone.  The feral righteousness was new.  Not borne of the church or the counterculture, and trying to formulate it's own ideological stance.   The "straight-edge" ideology "don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck" deal wasn't so much imposed on others, these people had friends that broke those rules.  Maybe, like evangelical preachers before them, they couldn't abide by their own rules in private.   These song were short burst missives presented as a sermon of personal ethics.  It evolved in time for militants later on when the kids as a whole evolve to their great new way of thinking, but still wanted to impose their worldview on others.  And rebel.   As it stands Minor Threat, as late teens, produced something that was a reaction of what was before.  This produced reactions from that, without using the traditional means of corporate guidance imposed by an established superstructure, although that constricted over time.  Self released and evolved to compete with the corporate music world on it's own terms.

Plus, it rocked.