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November 6, 2012

Punk Hits

The Year Punk Broke (Into the Majors)

by Ian Miller

In the 1980s, punk records were artifacts. They could be copied (onto cassette), but not easily: duplication required one to be present, physically and mentally. Copying seven-inch records—the form factor of choice for many punk and hardcore bands, due to their relative cheapness—was a downright PITA. You could fit five to eight minutes of music on a side, which meant lots of needle drops and lifts, tape pausing, and record-flipping. It was labor-intensive, but that’s what it took to pass the data from one person to the next, so we did it willingly. I took great pride in the quality of my dupes, making sure the levels were always right and the J-cards were annotated properly.

But having the actual record was always preferable to even the most lovingly curated cassette copy. Having the hard-copy record meant you could stare at the picture sleeve and learn whatever there was to learn about the band. All the better if the record was pressed on colored vinyl—one more thing to ogle while you listened to the songs.

I can’t recall its provenance, but in 1986 I somehow ended up with a copy of a seven-inch called “Mystic Super Seven Sampler #1.” It featured seven songs by bands on Mystic Records, a label that was already famous in punk rock circles for its shadiness. (All punk labels were shady to one degree or another, so for Mystic to have garnered this reputation was something of an achievement.)

Having the record was exhilarating: the cover art was scary, the record itself was blood-red, and there were SEVEN bands on it. Seven songs on a single seven-inch record; seven new bands to discover. One of the standout tracks was “Another Day” by Scared Straight.

I knew a couple of things about the band from reading Maximum Rock n’ Roll and Flipside: while they weren’t a straight edge band per se, they did have songs about the dangers of over-indulgence, and their singer was a baseball player or something. Both things set them apart from the vast majority of hardcore bands, whose entire existence depended on over-indulgence and who hated jocks more than