Minor Threat
Salad Days

September 23, 1983 "Last Song" puts an end to the greatest hardcore experience that ever existed.

The blind fury of the beginnings had waned with the growing technical skills and experience of the 4 boys from Washington D.C., leading them more and more frequently to internal clashes about the musical direction that the Minor Threat project should take.

Two incredible years and a handful of songs, for which the word epochal is appropriate here, had brought them to the center of the attention of the extreme music culture. An initial break, due to the university commitments of the guitarist Lyle Preslar, had strengthened the band, enough to make them even produce an LP ("Out Of Step", Dischord Records 1982). But unfortunately, this was no longer enough, especially for the then twenty-one-year-old Ian Thomas Garner MacKaye, who after more or less unconsciously starting the Straight Edge movement and having to fight against accusations of racism for being guilty of being white, had now reached the artistic end of that experience and the future directions that hardcore would take were already very clear in his mind.

Embrace, Egg Hunt, and Pailhead were just stepping stones to the pure genius of Fugazi. None of them remained idle, Preslar founded Samhain together with Glenn Danzig (freshly exiled from the Misfits), only to leave and eventually found Caroline Records and graduate in law. Jeff Nelson (co-founder of Dischord Records) gave life to the post-hardcore band Three and the music label Adult Swim Records (distributed by the parent company Dischord) and currently lives in Toledo (Ohio) as a graphic designer and political activist. Brian Baker leaves the bass for the six strings which over the years he will put at the service of Junkyard, Meatmen, Dag Nasty, Government Issue and Bad Religion. In short, a true hotbed of talents.

But we are back to that September 23, 1983.

The last live performance of Minor Threat ends with the unreleased "Last Song", which as mentioned, puts a period on their story. A couple of years later, with the 4 protagonists already immersed in their new projects, Nelson and MacKaye decide to give a new meaning to the word end and release the EP "Salad Days" for Dischord, with the three tracks recorded in the last recording sessions and left asleep in the drawers. "Last Song" renamed "Salad Days" (where by "Salad Days" is meant the youthful years, somewhat carefree and somewhat reckless, just as Shakespeare defined them in his "Antonio and Cleopatra" of 1606) for this eponymous and posthumous record is the pure sensation of deep and melancholic anger, a sensation of inevitable awareness of the passing of time "Look at us today, We've gotten soft and fat, Waiting for the moment, It's just no coming back" built on the "old" and fast anthemic hardcore canons but played on brand new solutions that were profoundly forerunners of what the post-hardcore scene would be a few years younger.

Complex structures and sound research make "Salad Days" and "Stumped" the school on which MacKaye himself would find himself studying a few years later. "Good Guys Don't Wear White" is pure amusement, where the original track of the garage-beat group the Standells probably serves Ian to defuse the furious controversies following the release of "Guilty, Of Being White".

Of course, this could have been the new umpteenth restart of the Minor Threat or perhaps it's better that it was the true final stop (born "dead"), for sure these four young men from Washington D.C. will forever remain together, splendidly unfinished.

"Wishing for the days

When I first wore this suit

Baby has grown older,

It's no longer cute

Too many voices

They've made me mute

Baby has grown ugly,

It's no longer cute

But I stay on, I stay on

Where do I get off?"