Sleeve notes
Minor Threat
Complete Discography · 1989
Minor Threat formed in Washington, DC in 1980 around Ian MacKaye and drummer Jeff Nelson, with Lyle Preslar and Brian Baker rounding out one of American hardcore's founding lineups. The band lasted barely three years and released a small handful of records — the Minor Threat and In My Eyes EPs, the Out of Step LP — but their effect on the DC scene and on hardcore nationally was immediate and total, built on unusually direct, moralistic lyrics delivered at maximum speed.
"Straight Edge," a forty-six-second song from the band's first single, gave an entire drug-free, alcohol-free subculture its name almost by accident — MacKaye has said repeatedly that he never intended to start a movement, only to describe his own choices. Complete Discography (1989) collects every recording the band ever made into a single, still-definitive document. After the breakup in 1983, MacKaye went on to co-found Dischord Records and later Fugazi, while Baker played in Dag Nasty before eventually joining Bad Religion — but it's this short, furious catalog that set the terms for nearly every hardcore band that followed.
