Salad Days: 1980-1990, A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC

Salad Days is a documentary about the punk music scene in DC during the 80's. It was produced by Scott Crawford, who was very much a part of this scene as a young boy publishing the fanzine, Metrozine. I had eagerly awaited the opportunity to view this, and was surprised to find it available on Hulu.

This documentary does a very good job of detailing most of the bands from this scene. The majority of the bands highlighted were signed to Dischord Records, which was the preeminent record label for this scene at the time. However, I felt that it did not dive far enough into the impact of certain bands, mainly Bad Brains and Scream. Very little time was given to these bands. I partially understand this though, because there were so many bands starting and splitting up during this time. I found it humorous when someone would be interviewed, and under their name it listed 3-5 different bands that they had played in.

It was great to see the archival and vintage performance footage of some of these bands, namely Minor Threat, Government Issue, Bad Brains, and The Teen Idles. It was also interesting to hear directly from the people that created the scene and kept it alive. People like Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, and so on. The only person I did not enjoy listening to was Mark Anderson, the founder of Positive Force. Positive Force is an activist organization that was centered around the punk community. Mr. Anderson tends to get a little overzealous in his recollections of the impact of his organization and what it did during that time. He always seems to be yelling at me. I don't like it.

Recently, the documentary series "Sonic Highways" produced by Dave Grohl (a product of the DC punk scene) featured the city of DC and the many musical influences from it, predominantly the 80's punk scene. Sonic Highways was much shorter and focused on multiple musical scenes, yet I feel that it did a better job of conveying the passion and excitement (and great music) from the punk scene than Salad Days which clocks in at an hour and a half and focuses solely on the punk scene. After viewing the Sonic Highways episode, I wanted to run right out and grab albums by these bands and I wanted to know more about the whole scene. After viewing Salad Days, I was just exhausted. Maybe it suffers from trying to say too much?

Where this documentary started to lose me towards the end, was when it became very evident that the artists from this scene still apparently carried a big chip on their shoulder regarding the rise of Grunge, specifically Nirvana. Some of them even stating that Nirvana and that whole scene would not have existed if it weren't for them. I don't know about that. True, the DC scene was influential, but not on a Beatles level of musical influence. All in all it was an enjoyable documentary if you are a music history nerd like me. Otherwise, just grab a copy of the Sonic Highways series and love your life.