Why is it irrelevant? Just because of the name?The band I mentioned is pretty damn good imo.

X from Australia are better than X from LA to be honest.
Well maybe not, but I certainly prefer them. Writing them off is just daft.
The Ex > X (Australia) > X (LA)

Also, WhateverDude, you should check out Really Red if you like the Big Boys and the Dicks. Really Red are criminally obscure - they were a real smart and original band, great lyrics, weird melodies and (like Big Boys/Minutemen) some fantastic bass playing. Lots of Texas hardcore bands were among the best in the 80s scene and Really Red are up there - none better than the Big Boys, though. Big Boys were brilliant from start to finish, and it's a shame they're not so well known in comparison to a band like Bad Brains, who were brilliant for one album and half of another, and atrocious thereafter.

Dicks too. What a fantastic band.
We've probably all heard the Mudhoney cover of Hate The Police. Original slays it!

Kudos to the threadstarter. All great ****ing bands. The vast majority of 80s hardcore is average to rubbish, but you've nailed some of the better obscure stuff. X from Aus too, brilliant band.

Some others I think should be more well known:

Die Kreuzen, Saccharine Trust, Void, Negative Approach, The Effigies (their first two EPs - wow!!!), early Naked Raygun before they turned into an American Stiff Little Fingers, Squirrel Bait, Man Sized Action, Rudimentary Peni, Fang, Angry Samoans, Crucifucks, Tar Babies,

Didjits too. What a fun band Didjits were!

Cows too. Cows rule!
No Trend as well.
And Bastro. If you like Big Black, you'll probably like Bastro.

And JFA. I used to love JFA. I think I'd hate them now though, unlike everyone else I've mentioned who I still endorse to varying degrees. Same applies to Reagan Youth.

So much good ****.
Such an incoherent post.
Aw well...

heh, I thought Negative Approach and Angry Samoans were rather well known. Anyways, I'll check some of those bands out soon.

I also noticed there's a lot of **** in 80's hardcore punk. Just..generic, bland, mediocre music that sounds the same. I never knew something so energetic and aggressive could sound so boring. I noticed that all of the good ones have a sound that just, stands out from the norm. That's why the popular ones like Minor Threat, Bad Brains and Black Flag don't sound alike, regardless of Punk's simplicity. So when you first get into the genre, it SEEMS like there's a lot of variety, but there actually isn't.
The ones that do sound the same, the typical hardcore punk bands, are the ones that are uninteresting. There has to be something distinguishable going on. Either that, or it has to be done really well, or improved upon.

But some bands just didn't get the attention they deserve. Big Boys, Dicks, Really red, deserve to be up there with Minor Threat, Bad Brains, The Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Fear, etc,. They deserve to be in those ''best punk'' lists.... but they somehow aren't :c. But bands like them show that under the sea of generic bands, there is some gold in there if you look hard enough. Just gotta keep searching.

Sturgeon's law says 90% of everything is ****. thing is, most people are too lazy to dig through the **** to find that 10% of gold.


edit: Also, speaking of Dicks, I can't find the ''These People'' album anywhere :'(

The problem with 80s hardcore was its insularity. A lot of the bands resisted any temptation to change their approach, instead sticking with the same tired formula - essentially what you said above. Most of the "NY" hardcore bands were bad for this, and a lot of the California bands too. Texas was the most fertile place for interesting variants on the genre - the bands you mention, and of course bigger ones like the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid too. They had DRI too, who I don't like, but they definitely created something pretty different with that blast beat crossover whatever.

Many of the bands who did develop away from their hardcore roots - like Black Flag - were met with a lot of hostility from their fans. It was, for the most part, a pretty myopic and insular scene.

However, when you start with such a stripped down template, like the early Bad Brains and Black Flag records, the potential to do interesting things with it is rife. It allowed for some weird music that would never have caught on before. Early Naked Raygun is a prime example... just totally weird punk songs, short and strangely structured, sloppy, funny and brilliant. A bunch of legit weirdoes making interesting music, in spite of not being particularly talented technically. Then they learned to play and became rubbish, which was a shame!

There's a lot to be said for the bands who used hardcore punk and punk in general as a template for doing strange and unique things. There was SO MUCH of that in the 80s, so many bands synthesizing the same influences into something totally unique, but a lot of these bands languish in obscurity now.

I guess when it comes down to it, there were a handful of really great 80s hardcore bands, a lot of boring, awful ones, and a helluva lot of brilliant bands who operated on the fringes of that scene.

Does anyone know Dr. Know? They're pretty good.
Has a bit of a crossover thrash thing going on.

I don't listen to alot of punk anymore but 2 bands come to mind, Pansy division and Siniestro total.

One of them is a gay punk group and the other one is a spanish punk group..

Dude, Pansy Division are awesome! I got to see um a while ago at a queer collective bookstore. It was pretty punk rock.

Yea they are i remember discovering them by mistake on Napster cause they were labeled incorrectly as Joy division but i liked them anyway..

you mean the fact that not one person replied to it? :(

and yeah....been playing Co-Dependents a lot lately



by the way the album you gave me is called 13 Golden Love Songs and it was sooo fucking hard to track down the song titles :)

Holy shit, you've never typed so many characters!
Mostly agree with you as usual.

From one of my favorite albums ever: