Punk Spreads

Washington D.C.

Ian MacKaye remains one of the most important figures in U.S. Punk history. The co-founder of Washington D.C.’s Dischord Records, MacKaye’s band Minor Threat learned from the light speed performances of D.C. friends Bad Brains, and helped define the sound of hardcore across the country in the early 1980s. After coining the term “straight edge”— and thus accidentally writing the guidelines for an anti-drug subculture — and writing the requiem for the early D.C. scene in “Salad Days,” MacKaye disbanded Minor Threat. By 1985, his short-lived band Embrace joined D.C.-area bands like Beefeater and Rites of Spring in a newly emotional form of Punk associated with what was later dubbed Revolution Summer. A few years later, MacKaye united with Guy Picciotto and Brendan Canty of Rites of Spring, as well as bassist Joe Lally, to form the post-hardcore band Fugazi. Borrowing from reggae, Jimi Hendrix, and D.C.’s funk influenced Go-go music, combined with Punk and hardcore, Fugazi transformed the possibilities of Punk’s sound, while retaining its agitated politics in the form of anti-corporate anthems (“Merchandise”), declarations of women’s rights (“Suggestion”), and anti-colonial critiques (“Smallpox Champion”).

Glen E. Friedman defined and documented the early look of Los Angeles skate culture, hardcore Punk, and New York Hip Hop. His photographs of Run-DMC, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Tony Alva, Jay Adams and others have become iconic images of the ’80s subcultures that became some of the most important cultural movements in the United States.

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