Wilson Center, DC, 1980 (Malcolm RIVIERA)
LLOYD STUART CASSON: The first show I saw the Bad Brains at was the Hard Art. It was unbelievable—I can’t put it into words. It was inspiring to see right in front of me.
Ian Mackaye, Nathan STREJCEK, Jeff Nelson, Geordie Grindle,
rooftop of punk clothing store Blitz, Georgetown, DC, 1980 (Athena Angelos)
“The Teen Idles essentially opened the musical door for me and other kids at the time” —DANNY INGRAM
Wowed by seeing an explosive Cramps gig, DC high schoolers Jeff Nelson and Ian MacKaye decided to form their own punk band in 1979. The duo (plus Geordie Grindle and Mark Sullivan) became a short-lived punk band called The Slinkees that broke up when singer Sullivan left for college. In late summer 1979, with Nathan Strejcek now on vocals, the group reorganized as The Teen Idles. Enthusiastic and determined, but not as musically skilled as their local faves Bad Brains, the group began getting opening slots for both punk and nonpunk shows, while saving their gig earnings in a box. Derisively labeled teeny-punks and Georgetown punks by some slightly older punk enthusiasts, the band took pride in their ability to irritate, with both their appearance and their shouted nonmelodic lyrics that included digs at Deadheads, the Georgetown club the Bayou, and drug culture. Fascinated with the growing California hardcore punk scene, the group took a Greyhound bus out west in 1980 and did gigs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Later, back in DC, they recorded eight speedy songs with engineer Don Zientara and producer Skip Groff that, after the band broke up, would become the 1980 Minor Disturbance 7", the first release on the band’s own Dischord label. The sleeve cover featured the soon-to-be-iconic image of an underage punk’s hands with black X’s marked on them, showing that the kid could be admitted to a club, but was proudly too young to drink. —Steve Kiviat
Ian Mackaye: We decided to do a band, and since Mark and Geordie had already been in a band together, they would take over the vocals and guitars respectively. Jeff played drums in the school band, so he became the drummer, and because I could play “Smoke on the Water” on one string, I became the bass player. We called ourselves The Slinkees, partially because we loved to eat Twinkies, but also because we found the verb slink—which meant “to creep, crawl, or lurk”—in the dictionary and thought it was funny. Then Mark went to college and we needed a new singer, and I’m pretty sure the night I went to see The B-52’s at the Bayou in 1979, Nathan was there and I ended up hanging out with him after the show. We ended up listening to records and talking all night, which ultimately led to our decision to ask him if he wanted to sing in a band. We played our first show in December of 1979.
Nathan Strejcek: We were doing in the basement what people were doing on records that I was buying, and to be able to play live and share it with people was exciting.
CHRIS STOVER: I discovered the DC scene through a Bullocks show in Towson, Maryland. When Teen Idles hit the stage, it was like a tornado going through the place. The music was loud and fast. They had brought a bunch of people with them, so they literally took over the place. All of this was escalated by the fact that Teen Idles had just returned from their West Coast tour. I saw this and wanted in.
DANNY INGRAM: The Teen Idles essentially opened the musical door for me and other kids at the time by saying: You too can do this. You don’t have to be a virtuoso—you just have to have a passion about it.
GeorDie Grindle, Nathan Strejcek, 9:30 club, DC, 1980 (Simon JacobseN)
Henry Rollins: One night the Bad Brains called up Ian and said they’d lost their gear, and asked if they could practice at The Teen Idles’ rehearsal space, which was Nathan’s mom’s basement. Within a few minutes, Earl had broken Jeff’s snare. They just came in and manhandled the gear. They weren’t trying to break things on purpose or anything, but they were coming at the music so furiously it just happened—whereas The Teen Idles were like, Hey, guys, listen to this cool riff, man!
Ian MAckaye: In the summer of 1980, The Teen Idles took a Greyhound bus across the country to play Los Angeles and San Francisco—those were the American punk rock meccas that made sense to us. We played a club called Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco and they let [underage] kids in but they put a big black X on the back of your hand so you couldn’t drink. That was the first time we’d seen that.
Nathan Strejcek: For me, starting The Teen Idles meant that I could contribute to the scene in a real way. Being a fan and setting up shows was great, but being in a band meant that I could try to make the scene even better.
Ian MAckaye: The idea that The Teen Idles couldn’t play shows where teens could get in was insane. So we said our shows have to be open to all of our friends, everyone has to be allowed in. We got banned from so many clubs for that.
Henry Rollins: We’d go see Skip Groff at his record store, Yesterday and Today, almost every weekend. Skip had a record label called Limp Records and he knew his way around the studio. He said, “I can get you in the studio, I can help you get a record pressed.” So at some point, Ian and his bandmates came up with the idea that they should make a record, which was a very daunting idea.
Ian MAckaye: So then Skip said, “I can take you to the studio called Inner Ear down in Arlington, with this guy Don Zientara.”
across THE street from madam’s organ, dc, 1980 (LUCIAN PERKINS)
SKIP GROFF: When it came time to take The Teen Idles into the studio, Ian asked me if I would help out, because he knew I had produced The Slickee Boys and in the early seventies I had produced Pentagram. We’d done some of The Slickee Boys records and some of the earlier Limp Records things with Don Zientara at Inner Ear.
DON ZIENTARA: Skip said, “I’ll bring this band called The Teen Idles over.” They were these young guys, they didn’t know what to expect, and I certainly didn’t know what to expect at all, because when they started playing, it was almost like, Oh my gosh, what is this?! But they knew what kind of sound they wanted. They weren’t sure how to achieve it, but they knew what they wanted. They knew the only way to make this music affect the outside world was to do it full-on.
Ian MAckaye: At that time, you can imagine the amount of interest there was in the world for an obscure teenage punk band that had broken up. So, people weren’t clamoring to get the record, but having said that, Jeff’s design on the cover was pretty bold and I think in terms of the punk world, it caught a few eyes, people were curious about it.
tommy carr, keith campbell, boyd farrell, mike dolfi, Backstage at the childe harold, dc, 1980 (PETER MUISE)
“Every Black Market Baby story starts off with, We was all drunk one night . . .” —BOYD FARRELL
Black Market Baby WERE the most gloriously odd men out in the DC scene. They were never a “hardcore” band for one, remaining a true punk rock band in the most 1977 sense of the term. They were also older than their peers, and proudly “bent edge,” as brash/loud/snotty vocalist Boyd Farrell once explained to a fanzine editor, saying they were never going to draw X’s on their hands. The band drew heavily on the stomping, anthemic songwriting of UK bands like The Clash and Sham