20 Years of Dischord

Overview

20 Years of Dischord is a concise but representative musical chronicle of the first two decades of the label originally created by teenagers Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson in 1980 just to release the only output of their former short-lived hardcore punk band, the Teen Idles, but that, over time, it went on to document the most part of the music coming out of the U.S. capital city's underground community, becoming highly influential.

The core of the collection are the first two discs, packaged together into a single CD case under the title Fifty Bands, which contains 50 songs, one track from each band that appeared on the label from 1980 to 2000, all of them previously released, featured in roughly chronological order showing the musical evolution of the scene.

"...the fascinating part [of 20 Years of Dischord ] is hearing the progression ... from a high-octane hardcore hotbed to a more arty, experimental, and wide-ranging purely musical scene..."

The third disc, an enhanced CD titled Unreleased and Rare, consists of a variety of outtakes, demos and live recordings from the Dischord vaults, also includes an early interview with MacKaye, as well as some video files of archival footage featuring performances by the Teen Idles, Untouchables, State of Alert, the Faith, Void, and Deadline. The songs that make up the disc were also released separately, as a collection, and individually, as downloadables digital audio files.

As a perfect end, the box set includes a profusely illustrated 134-page book titled Putting DC on the Map. Introduced by MacKaye, Nelson and Henry Rollins, the booklet contains a brief historic review of the label, a profile of each of the bands featured on the compilation, and a pictorial discography.

Production and release

Conceived by Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson, the 20 Years of Dischord box set was edited by Don Zientara at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia. Chad Clark was in charge of the audio mastering at Silver Sonya Recording and Mastering, also located in Arlington. The video files on the enhanced CD were edited by Chris Mills and Guillaume Bernardeau at the studio of RHED Pixel, located outside of Washington, D.C.

Dischord Records released the collection on October 1, 2002.

14 Bonus Tracks 2000-2008

In November 2008, 20 Years of Dischord was updated with an additional compilation titled 14 Bonus Tracks 2000-2008, featuring songs, all of them previously released, from 14 bands who have had releases on the label since 2000. Available only in MP3 format through digital download, this bonus collection has been sold separately or offered for free with the purchase of the original box set.

Unreleased and Rare

Enhanced CD containing additional video files.

14 Bonus Tracks 2000-2008

Digital collection released in 2008 as an update of the original compilation.

Personnel

These were the lineups for each of the fifty songs featured on discs 1 and 2.