Episode 51: James Spooner on Minor Threat’s “Minor Threat” (1983)

Episode notes

The Album: Minor Threat: Minor Threat (1984)

In 2003, James Spooner released Afropunk, a personal love letter/manifesto dedicated to people like him: punk fans of a different shade whose acceptance in the scene was often hard-fought and tenuous. That became a movement, with annual afropunk festivals becoming entities unto themselves, across the world. Spooner is now a tattoo artist and graphic novelist, living in Los Angeles.

For our episode, Spooner joined us to talk about Minor Threat’s self-titled compilation of their early singles, one through which he discovered the ethos of straight-edge (no drugs, drinking, etc.) and a wider world of possibilities within punk rock. Minor Threat, the short-lived but heavily-influential group out of Washington D.C., fronted by Ian MacKaye is legendary and this compilation was one of the first ways in which listeners could discover the group, their sound and their philosophy.  During our episode, we discussed how what about straight-edge appealed to him, the racial politics of punk and how a kid from the high desert of California came across this music and culture to begin with.

More on James Spooner

• “The True Story Of How Afropunk Turned A Message Board Into A Movement” (Vice)

• Interview with James Spooner (Live from Planet Earth)

• Monocle Tattoo Website | Instagram

More on Minor Threat

• Review in Sputnik Music
• 1982 interview

• “Straight Edge Religion: Hardcore Punk and the Sober Revolution” (Marginalia)

Show Tracklisting (all songs from Minor Threat unless indicated otherwise):

• Minor Threat
• Straight Edge
• Screaming at the Wall
• Guilty of Being White
• Black Flag: White Minority
• Patti Smith: Rock N Roll N–
• The Monkees: (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone
• Steppin’ Stone
• Bottled Violence
• I Don’t Wanna Hear It
• The Murder City Devils: Boom Swagger Boom

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find on there.
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