Untouchables (band)

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Untouchables
General information
Genre (s) Hardcore
founding 1979
resolution 1981
Founding members
singing
 Alec MacKaye
guitar
 Eddie Janney
bass
 Bert Queiroz
Drums
 Richard Moore
former members
Drums
 Danny Ingram

The Untouchables (Eng .: the untouchables) were an early hardcore band from Washington, DC Although they only existed for a year and only released four tracks, they were one of the style-defining bands of DC hardcore and as such with three titles on the Flex Your Head sampler represented.

history

The band was founded in October 1979. Singer MacKaye was only 13 years old at the time. The members knew each other from Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington and were friends with Teen Idles , MacKaye's older brother Ian 's band . Both bands had their first live performance together in December 1979. In February 1980, the Untouchables, together with the Bad Brains and the Teen Idles, founded an association with the purpose of renting event space for hardcore concerts, as Madam's Organ in the Adams Morgan district, the only location that regularly booked hardcore bands and the scene at the same time as a commune served, had to close due to a rent increase. Together with the Bad Brains, the Untouchables played several benefit concerts for the association. The band also performed, a highly regarded bizarre at the time, as part of a free benefit concert for disadvantaged youth in Washington's predominantly black ghetto Valley Green. In the spring of 1980 the Untouchables and the Teen Idles each recorded a demo cassette in the same studio, which was then distributed in the Washington area. This three-track demo cassette remained the Untouchables' only release during its existence, but gave the band great popularity within the young Washington hardcore scene. The SOA predecessor band The Extorts formed after guitarist Michael Hampton was impressed by a performance by the Untouchables and decided to play similar music. The Government Issue predecessor band The Stab was formed at this very concert. With the breakup of the Teen Idles, the Untouchables became the most experienced band on the Washington scene. Minor Threat , SOA and the Bad Brains supported the band, and they headlined the two-day The Unheard Music Festival in Washington, where Rich Moore also had to fill in for Government Issue's ailing drummer. In the late summer of 1980, Moore left Washington to study at university, and was replaced by Danny Ingram, who at the time was not playing drums and had to learn the game.

The band split in January 1981. MacKaye and Janney then formed The Faith , Janney later played in Rites of Spring . MacKaye is now active as a painter and writer. Queiroz and Ingram moved to Youth Brigade , the former later to Rain .

In 1992 Sonic Youth covered the Untouchables song Nic Fit on their album Dirty . In 2006 the band was featured on the soundtrack of the documentary American Hardcore . In 2013 the photo book Hard Art, DC 1979 by the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lucian Perkins was published, in which the Untouchables are prominently represented. Singer MacKaye wrote the accompanying texts for the book.

Style and reception

US hardcore was developed by young people who couldn't do anything with punk. By 1980 punk had long since arrived in the cultural scene. For some young people the music genre was too established, too intertwined with the art world, too empty of content and, as a result, too old . They developed their own musical forms of expression by increasing the speed of the game and radicalizing the lyrics and, moreover, dispensing with the flashy clothes and accessories that were common in punk. The Untouchables were among the first bands in Washington to feel a part of this emerging genre. Her three published original compositions were one to one and a half minutes in length and were characterized by a comparatively high playing speed. Journalist Mark Jenkins ranked the Untouchables in the Washington Post ranks among other early Dischord bands and defined their music as "raw and intense". The influential Touch - & - Go -Fanzine declared the Untouchables as one of the bands that had been part of the Washington scene "from the very beginning" and with I Hate You "the quintessential DC anthem" ("the perfect DC anthem" ) would have written. Michael Hampton (SOA) described "unrestrainedness and chaotic energy" as the hallmarks of the Untouchables' live performances. The in Ohio -based fanzine Noise called the Untouchables as one of the three bands on the Washington hardcore scene go back. Ian MacKaye as a participant in an interview attributed the emergence of the DC hardcore scene to the influence of only nine people: The Teen Idles, the Untouchables and Henry Rollins .

Discography (compilation contributions)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Band profile on Dischord.com. Retrieved December 20, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Mark Andersen & Mark Jenkins: Punk, DC, p. 74. Ventil Verlag, 2006.
  3. ↑ David A. Ensminger: Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation, p. 264. University Press of Mississippi, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b Mark Andersen & Mark Jenkins: Punk, DC, p. 77.
  5. ^ Contemporary event promotion from the District of Columbia Public Library holdings. Retrieved December 20, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Rankandrevue.com: Interview with John Stabb (Government Issue). Retrieved December 20, 2015 .
  7. ↑ project website. Retrieved December 21, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Steven Blush: American Hardcore. A Tribal History, p. 15. Feral House, 2nd edition 2010.
  9. ↑ Steven Blush: American Hardcore. A Tribal History, p. 150.
  10. ↑ Martin Büsser: If the Kids are United, p. 27. Ventil Verlag, 9th edition 2013.
  11. ↑ Washington Post, October 25, 1995. Retrieved December 21, 2015 .
  12. ^ Touch & Go # 14, August 1981
  13. ↑ Robert Moore: Hardcore DC In: Noise # 4. Retrieved December 22, 2015 .
  14. ^ Mark Andersen & Mark Jenkins: Punk, DC, p. 113.