Dischord Records Sets The Indie Label Standard
Washington, D.C. — The capitol city cannot handle snow. All week, local weathermen have been speaking about the first snow of the year like it's an impending apocalypse. The snow finally comes on Wednesday night, and by Thursday morning, the entire city is shut down. Schools close, stores never open, and people don't leave their homes. The streets are silent and still. But Amy Pickering still shows up for work at a small one-room office just outside D.C.
For the past 20 years, Pickering has worked for Dischord Records, the long-running Washington indie label. According to Pickering, she has been with the label since "release #9; that'd be Scream" (the '80s hardcore/reggae band that gave Dave Grohl his first work as a drummer). Now, 123 releases later, Pickering runs the mail-order division of Dischord and sings backup on many of the records; from 1986 to 1990 she sang for Fire Party, an all-female band that released two records and a retrospective CD on Dischord.
The cluttered, wood-paneled office is oddly still. CDs, tapes, vinyl, posters, papers and boxes occupy just about every surface. For a few hours, Pickering is the only person here. Her computers are down, so she uses her coworkers' idle terminals to sort through the enormous list of CDs she needs to send out. She's wearing a blue sweatshirt and jeans, and she's visibly exhausted. She doesn't especially want to be at work today, but she's still here. She's always here.
Dischord was founded in 1979 by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson. The label has brought the world some of the greatest punk-rock and post-punk bands in history: Fugazi, Minor Threat, the Rites of Spring, Lungfish, the Nation of Ulysses, Jawbox, the Make Up, Shudder to Think, Government Issue, Dag Nasty, Faith, Void, Slant 6, and Q and not U have all released music on Dischord. Perhaps more importantly, the label has basically set the gold standard for indie integrity in America.
Dischord sells its releases for low mail-order prices, splits the proceeds of the records 50-50 with the bands on the label, and only signs bands from Washington, D.C. Discord has remained in business for 23 years without ever compromising its ideals, and, in doing so, it has provided an example to other indies. Simply put, Dischord has proven that it is possible to stay punk and survive. "They had a great reputation for honesty and earnestness, and I emulated that a great deal," said Slim Moon, founder of Olympia, Wash.-based Kill Rock Stars, when asked what about Dischord most inspired him. "At the time they were the only label I knew of with that reputation."
In The Beginning...
Between December 1979 and November 1980, MacKaye and Nelson were in a punk band called the Teen Idles. After the band's breakup, they decided to pool their collective earnings to release the Idles' first and only EP. "We talked about splitting up the money we'd earned, but instead we decided to use the money to document the band," said MacKaye, on the phone one morning from his house, with the Velvet Underground playing quietly in the background. "Since nobody was going to put out the record, we just decided we'd do it ourselves. We got some help from some friends, and we just figured out how to do it."
They followed the Teen Idles EP up with seven-inch vinyl of their friends' bands. The label's second release was the first and only EP from State of Alert, a local hardcore band fronted by MacKaye's friend Henry Garfield, who would later change his name to Henry Rollins. Dischord also released Flex Your Head, an early hardcore compilation that did much to spread the reputation of D.C.'s fiery, thriving punk scene.
Dischord was best known, however, as the home of Minor Threat, the band MacKaye and Nelson formed after the breakup of the Teen Idles. As the national punk underground entered its nascent stages, Minor Threat became known as one of the country's tightest and most furious hardcore bands, while the group's rigorous personal politics provided the impetus for what would later become the straightedge movement. "Dischord #3 was the Minor Threat EP, and at that point people really started to recognize the label," MacKaye said. "Minor Threat was a very popular band, relatively speaking, and it has continued to be popular. We still sell more Minor Threat records than almost anything else."
Minor Threat broke up in 1983, but the label continued to thrive. In the mid-'80s, a new group of Dischord bands emerged, including Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, and MacKaye's own Embrace. These bands moved away from the minimalist fury of hardcore and introduced more complex musical and lyrical ideas. While most of these bands were short-lived, they were enormously influential (many credit the Rites of Spring as being the first "emo" band), especially in Washington.
The sound these bands developed was embraced by later generations of D.C. bands, most notably Fugazi, the band MacKaye formed with former Rites of Spring members Guy Piccioto and Brendan Canty. It continues to develop at the hands of such younger D.C. bands as Q and Not U. "From my point of view, it was always important to stay focused on what was initially coming from a certain crew of friends, but eventually from the community that those people affected," MacKaye said. "So today we're putting out records like this Q and Not U record, and I'm working with a band called the Black Eyes; they grew up listening to Dischord stuff, and they are a result of that community, so they are the community."
Focus On Community
MacKaye and Nelson made the early decision that they would only work with bands from the D.C. area. There have been a few very slight deviations from this rule (Void and Branch Manager are from suburbs outside D.C., while Lungfish are from Baltimore, a city about 25 miles north), but somehow these exceptions make Dischord's strict adherence to this policy even more striking. When Dischord and other regional punk indies were beginning, MacKaye believed that each regional scene should have a label to document it. "We were very scene-oriented, and I always thought of it not as an unhealthy competition, but every scene had its own personality," MacKaye said, referring to early labels like SST and Dangerhouse in Los Angeles and Alternative Tentacles in San Francisco. "It was cool that these labels really reflected that community."
While many of the earlier punk labels have shut down or moved on to expand their focus, Dischord has remained committed to reflecting the D.C. scene, and in the process been able to maintain its sense of being about community rather than money. "It puts a natural governor on the expansion of the label, because we are part of a community, so if the community wanes, then so does the label; if the community waxes, then so does the label," MacKaye said. "But unlike most American businesses, which are completely based on expansionism, we were interested in not pursuing that kind of strategy, because I think that's a disgusting sort of strategy."
Reflecting its community and resisting expansionism, Dischord has, for 23 years, kept a record of the changes and evolution of punk rock in Washington, D.C. "I approach things like a historian or a librarian; I'm very interested in documentation," MacKaye said. "I would like it at some point, if someone in the future ever gives a fuck, if they picked up a Dischord record, it would be a solid test case." Even in casual conversation, MacKaye clamps down on the word "fuck" like it's a chew toy.
Late last year Dischord released Twenty Years of Dischord, a three-CD compilation box set. It includes a CD of unreleased tracks and rarities of Dischord bands as well as a 134-page booklet, but the soul of the set is in the two CDs of previously released tracks. There's a total of 50 tracks, one song from every band to record for Dischord during its first 20 years. The songs are arranged roughly in chronological order, and, when listened to straight through, they provide a musical history of a subculture, better and more complete than any that could be written. Some of the bands have existed for upwards of 15 years, and some were only together for a few months, but all of them add something to the tapestry.
The CDs encompass the slapdash teenage hardcore of the Untouchables and Youth Brigade, the heartfelt, anthemic post-hardcore of the Rites of Spring and Soulside, the righteous fervor of Fugazi, the Nation of Ulysses, and Circus Lupus, and the loose experimentation of Smart Went Crazy and Slant 6. "Each of those bands have entrusted us with their work, so we want to make it clear that we do the work," MacKaye said. "And also, I like all the bands; I'm really happy to have worked with them. I'm interested in the natural progression of the label, and I think if you left out things, then you wouldn't get an accurate picture."
"I Want To Write Notes"
Amy Pickering puts a handwritten note into every single order she sends out. "I used to have a label printer, but that felt like cheating," she said. "I just want to make sure people know it's a human here; it's not all automated." Writing these notes has become a way for her to connect with the people buying the music; she doesn't have to write them, but stopping is not something she considers doing. "My hands get tired," she said. "But I want to write notes."
Little things like these handwritten notes are what set Dischord apart from other labels, and such practices have spread to other parts of the underground rock world. "When I was in high school between 1983 and '87, I would order records, and [Dischord staffer] Cynthia Connelly would write back; we became pen pals," said Tobi Vail, a former member of Bikini Kill and longtime staffer at Kill Rock Stars. "I still think back to those letters Cynthia wrote me, and I am inspired to write young women who write to Kill Rock Stars." (Vail counts Dischord band Nation of Ulysses as "a huge influence on Bikini Kill.")
"For me, it's a relationship," Pickering said. "People have a relationship with Dischord." This relationship matters more to the people who run Dischord than the label's financial stability; it's the reason the label charges much less money for its music than any other indie its size. "We're not here to be part of [the financial end]," Pickering said. "It's not the reason we're here."
"People always measure the value of music and art in terms of sales, and I think that's really discouraging and disgusting," MacKaye said. "It just means that the marketplace controls history."
Keeping It Real
Dischord may not be raking in money, but it has managed to survive for 23 years; all of its employees have health coverage. "There are certain lean times for sure, but generally we build in a reasonable leeway," Pickering said. "Our overhead is not particularly high here." Indeed, Dischord has only a handful of full-time employees. The label's entire operation is based in one large room behind a 7-11 in Clarendon, Va., just across the D.C. border.
Ian MacKaye lives across the street from the offices, and Jeff Nelson lives several blocks away. "It's not like I own a company that cranks away in some corner far away from me," MacKaye said. "It's literally 25 feet from my front door, and I see those people pretty much every day."
Dedicated Dischord employees like Pickering are among the most important reasons the label has endured, showing that music can be done right, with emphasis on love and community rather than on profit margins. In an age of mega-corporate mergers and endless copyright legislation, Dischord may be the most important independent record label in the world. It survives and thrives because of work, perseverance, selflessness and amazing music. The rest of the world should take notes. "We give a shit, and when people don't I take it personally," Pickering said. "It's not just business. It's internal."
KRS's Slim Moon agrees. "They've released great music," he said. "And their example of honesty and earnestness and even-handedness with the bands has been an inspiration to us all, an important thing to exist in the landscape of record labels."
The Dischord crew clearly take great pride in their work. "This label is really important to me; the work is important to me," MacKaye said. "Every day when I wake up, I have something to do, and it's something I want to do. And that's all anyone could really ask for in life." — Tom Breihan [Monday, Jan. 6, 2003]
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