Reviews

Christmas brought me the new Minor Threat DVD, and boy howdy was I stoked. The disc contains three shows from different points in the band’s short life and a question and answer session with Ian Mackaye.  The first show, from DC Space at the Unheard Music Festival in late 1980 features a very young group, including a pre-bald head Mackaye who holds a soda can through the entire show, apparently because he had never just been a singer and didn’t know what to do with his hands. The second show is from the Buff Hall in New Jersey in 1982 at one of the first gathering of the “tribes” of hardcore music. This show features a Minor Threat which had just come off a seven month break up, and moderately better filming (even has color). The third and last show from the 9:30 Club in DC in mid 1983 is a show that was filmed for a documentary on hardcore music which was never completed. This last show is by far the best recorded, and features a set of nearly all the stuff they ever recorded. The last part is a question and answer session with a very young Mackaye, and is by far the coolest thing for fans on this disc. Created for the same documentary as the 9:30 Club show, the interview was done in July of 1983, just two months before the band’s final break-up. The set up is a little weird, with the questions all in one big block and then the answers in another separate heading, and the interviewer was obviously not very informed about hardcore or alternative lifestyles in general. Mackaye comes off emotional and well-spoken despite his obvious frustration with the sophomoric content of the questions. Other cool extras include written remarks about each of the shows, full set lists, and a 15 page booklet of lyrics and early pictures. A definite must have for Minor Threat fans and anyone who wants to figure out just how one band can change the face of music with only their convictions. Pick it up, celebrate, and learn.