Pure Punk Picks
Minor Threat – Minor Threat
Minor Threat is my favorite hardcore band.
I never heard them until the nineties.
I apologize, but I grew up on late seventies punk, and though I was aware of and appreciated local Boston hardcore and the bands from California, my main focus was then, and still is, on the punk scene.
That being said, I bought a cassette tape of this band at a used tape store in Cambridge with about 47 songs by this band.
And though, I always loved hardcore like The Angry Samoans, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and Frankie Goes To Hollywood- I soon grew to love that tape.
For me- they are The Ramones of hardcore, the Slayer of metal, the John Waters of film, I mean filth.
And they are The Phish of jam bands.
May my head be smashed into the pavement, of a sidewalk street, allowing my brain matter to seep forth, and flow into the dark and dank sewers of Boston, for even mentioning that band in this review.
I most humbly, apologize.
But you get my point.
It was hard to choose which song to write from them, not only because of my limited mental capacities- now floating out with the sewage, out to sea into Boston Harbor. But because all of those 47 songs are pretty grand.
This whole song plays into the bands’ name, “We’re just a minor threat.” Implying, just a small disturbance, as business goes on as usual- no real threat to the status quo.
It’s a modest statement and suggests, “Pay no mind to us, we’re just young folks having a wild time.”
But, in fact, punk and hardcore didn’t just fade away. Didn’t just create the mosh-pit and pogo-ed away.
I suppose that, social activism, first flourished in the hippie movement of the sixties, but for the most part, they just sold out their values for money, status and cocaine.
While straight edge, riot grrl, queercore and just about every punk or hardcore movement seems to have been more “fully invested” in society’s betterment- and that started right off, with the early punk and hardcore scene.
Punk is not merely music. It is about social change, or more so, I believe, personal change.
And I’m glad that society still deems us as inconsequential.
Because we are the virus, the seed, the germ that poisons their systems. We are a huge part of why, the young will soon topple the old hypocrites in office, knock them over like old statues and watch them crumble into their putrid, abyss of shit, much like, a port-o-potty being pushed over.
This band represented a minor, musical threat that actually, signaled an avalanche of sound. And what, I predict, will be- a glacier movement of thinking.
“We’re not the first, but I hope we’re not the last.” Not much worry in that. “We’re just a minor threat.”
Punk was and is, a very immodest movement. Though, I guess, if you read the headlines back in the seventies, you might come to the conclusion that it was anything but that.
But really, if was very young, unsure people in New York and London (and you can add Boston to that, having one of the first punk scenes in America), that we’re just trying to feel their way in life and society and some sense of the world.
In a life that promoted sanctimonious, religious, strict morals and happy, unthinking platitudes- while, simultaneously, treating the poor, the gay, the different- to an unaccepting, hateful acknowledgment.
(Same as it ever was).
We are still a minor threat. The youth are outnumbered by the boomers, by the powers that be. Which entail, a lot of folks who want to stamp out your views on climate change, economic equality, LGBT rights, college debt forgiveness and free healthcare.
But old ideas, do die out and give way to the new. (Coincidently, just like it happens with people). And I take comfort, though I will die, these folks, along with their horrible ideas will die out with me.
“It’s not how old I am, it’s how I feel.”
I am old, but my beliefs are in alliance with the young. Which also, causes my huge belief in them.
And I feel, the young are not a threat, but a promise.
You are not so much a minor threat but, actually, the major component of the future.
And I’ll die smiling- knowing that.
(Slimedog)
