Hard Art, DC 1979 by Perkins Lucian

Author:Perkins, Lucian [Perkins, Lucian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2013-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

The Teen Idles

Essay by Henry Rollins

The Teen Idles were the right age at the right time in a great city. The local scene was small but growing quickly and The Teen Idles were a big part of all that. As their friend and quasi-roadie, I was there to see a lot of it go down. Their eight-song 7” Minor Disturbance EP was Dischord #001, the first release by the soon-to-be-cornerstone independent label Dischord Records.

I grew up with the band’s bass player, Ian. When he started playing music, I was there to watch. The other members of the band were Ian’s friends from Wilson High School. Practice was usually at Nathan’s mother’s house, in the basement. I went to every practice I could. I went to almost every show the band ever played, always up at the front.

The band practiced with more intensity and discipline than you would have thought their age and attention span would allow. They were quite committed and played with precision. I sat at the bottom of the basement stairs and watched them rip through their set. It never got boring for me. The songs were simple, the lyrics ironic and sometimes very funny. The members were too smart to fall into sloganeering. I always found their choice of covers interesting: “At the Hop,” “Do You Love Me?” “Stepping Stone,” all played very fast. I knew every word, kept every flyer. I still have them all. They were more than just a band. It was our one time, one-time-only youth. We didn’t go to college. We didn’t join the military. We went for something different.

If you want to get a feeling of all that youth and potential, all that road ahead, check out Lucian’s portrait of the band. The way Nathan is staring off into the distance and Ian is looking right into the lens. There’s so much in that shot. The youth, the beginning of adulthood. I was standing next to Lucian when he took that shot and it’s one of my favorite photographs. The Teen Idles played all the time in the DC area, and were one of the bands that really gave that scene much-needed momentum to battle the apathy of the local club owners and small-press music critics, who often thought all these teen bands were just so much youthful howling about nothing.

That’s just it though. It wasn’t nothing. It was our youth. It was our sweat and raised voices. It was hundreds of amplified hours. The band didn’t drink or get high. They did, however, blow the doors off other bands they were on the bill with. All that practice paid off. The Teen Idles showed so many other local bands what was possible. You can make a record and put it out. You can start a label. In those days, this was very new information. They were the first band I ever saw record in a studio. I saw them do their first demo. I was amazed that they were recording.

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