( tap water running )
Dave Grohl: So, Scream is from Bailey's Crossroads,
which is right down the street.
"Put together with a troubled groove," is Trouble Funk.
This is all about the Revolution Summer that happened here.
That's the reference to the Chocolate City riots,
which started on 14th and U.
This is taken from a quote from the Bad Brains.
They said their school they went to was like a prison,
there were no fuckin' windows in it.
It was one door in and one door out.
And then "check yourself and wreck your brains
like the Bad Brains. Where's your 'P.M.A.'"?
- They're great. - Grohl: Pat?
Yeah, really good.
- Grohl: Check that out. - Pat: Wow.
That's a lot of fuckin' words.
( laughs ) Let's play.
What the fuck are we doing?
Everyone's just sitting around, talking.
That's some bullshit.
( theme music playing )
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com
( door opens, closes )
( voices talking, chuckling )
Hey, how you doin', man? How you doin'?
- Grohl: Oh, yeah? - Yeah, yeah...
Oh, really?
All right, come on in. Come on in.
We're one big happy family here. You guys good?
- Man: Yeah, yeah. - All right.
( door closes ) Grohl: Where to, sir?
Man: Club LeBaron.
Grohl: Every city has its past.
Good gracious, this place bring back memories.
Grohl: But you have to know your past
in order to know your future.
TV announcer: Direct from our newsroom in Washington.
In color, this is the CBS Evening News
with Walter Cronkite.
Good evening. Dr. Martin Luther King,
the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement,
has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King, 20 minutes ago, died.
( gasping, murmuring )
Man: It was insane.
I mean, I can remember hearing about it in school.
My friends said, "Oh," you know,
"there's gonna be a race war,
and we're gonna get killed."
I just remember everything going crazy.
Frustration just reached a boiling point.
Vincent Gray: I knew when it happened,
I said, "Folks gonna burn this town down."
( police sirens wailing )
How I happened to be with my dad,
and we were going down U Street
and there were just people fighting
in the middle of the street,
you know, people being pulled from their cars.
You know, my dad was, "Don't even worry." But I'm like, "Whoa."
They shut the whole shit down. National Guard was in.
Tanks going up and down the damn street.
Boys like that.
Dr. Know: Their M-16s and helmets and shit.
We couldn't quite understand why we couldn't go out.
Ian MacKaye: So I have this memory of smoldering buildings
and broken windows smashed out,
and police and firemen, and I started to wonder
if maybe I had... This was something
I had created in my mind to tell a story.
Pharrell Williams: When you're a kid,
your environment is your main influence.
But you don't know that until you grow up
and start finding out about yourself.
( birds chirping )
Grohl: Whenever I felt lost,
I would go back to Virginia.
To my mother's house.
To the room where I grew up in.
And it just pulled everything back into perspective.
I remember that watch, it was a Mr. Peanut watch.
- Mother: Oh. - I liked that watch.
God, I couldn't just take a nice picture, you know?
I always had to be the jackass.
( chuckles )
- Pre-punk. - Grohl: And then, I lost all of my...
( Grohl narrating ) I never thought that I would move away from Virginia.
I thought I would spend the rest of my life there.
Like all of my friends that I grew up with.
( music playing )
♪ Ain't that the way it always starts... ♪
Mark Andersen: Charles Dickens, I think, called Washington, DC
"the city of magnificent intentions."
But the gap between the dream and the reality
is excruciatingly wide.
( music continues )
♪ Chase all of those memories away... ♪
DC is naturally a transient town.
There's not that many people who were born and raised here.
♪ Don't you remember? It was rain ♪
♪ that drowned you. Wait! ♪
Even today, I was like, "There's people from DC,
then there's a 'Washingtonian.'"
♪ I wanna keep all I can take... ♪
People come and go. And a lot of the money
and a lot of the change is from the people that come and go.
I think so much of what happened in DC makes more sense
when you look at the way an often ugly reality
is juxtaposed so close to this dream.
♪ Oh, can you try to make it stop? ♪
Growing up as a white kid in Washington, DC,
I felt really marginalized.
Because... Can you name a '70s...
Like, a popular '70s rock band from Washington, DC?
Name one.
You grew up here. Name one.
It's, like, very hard... Like "Average White Band"?
No, they're not from here.
What's the one who did "Afternoon Delight"?
Starland Vocal Band?
♪ Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight. ♪
♪ Gonna grab some afternoon delight. ♪
♪ Skyrockets in flight. ♪
♪ Afternoon delight... ♪
They're from here. That's about it, right?
( music playing )
♪ I've been really tryin', baby... ♪
( "Take The 'A' Train" playing )
♪ 'Cause I'm a liar ♪
♪ And I'll rip your mind out. ♪
♪ I'll burn your soul... ♪
♪ I need devotion to back it up. ♪
♪ I found out that love just ain't enough... ♪
♪ Just let the drummer kick on that funky beat. ♪
♪ He's gonna make you wanna stay up on your feet... ♪
♪ Everybody's moving, everybody's moving. ♪
♪ Everybody's moving, moving, moving, moving. ♪
♪ Please don't leave me to remain... ♪
♪ Go-go, go-go... ♪
♪ You say... ♪
♪ Now don't touch that stereo, don't touch that stereo. ♪
- ♪ Don't touch that stereo... ♪ - ♪ Hey, Mr. DJ! ♪
( man laughs )
Gonna drop the bomb on 'em, baby!
♪ Hey! ♪
- ( music ends ) - ( chuckles )
DC really didn't have a sound
until the go-go thing broke out.
( radio announcer speaking )
This is go-go, the sound of Chocolate City.
Grohl: If you had to describe go-go
for someone that has never heard it before,
- how would you describe it? - Exotic drum patterns.
( music playing )
Raw and tribal, that's all I can say,
just 'cause that's how I felt when I first heard it.
It was just like the rawest thing ever.
( music playing )
Bap!
♪ One more time! Unh! ♪
The art form that should have been popular instead of rap.
( laughs )
♪ Gimme the bridge now! ♪
♪ I feel like bustin' loose ♪
- ♪ Bustin' loose! ♪ - ♪ Let me hear y'all say! ♪
♪ I feel like bustin' loose... ♪
"Big Tony" Fisher: A lot of it is credited to Chuck Brown.
In the early '70s, he was playing Top 40s.
All Top 40 tunes, you know, you had to sound just like the radio.
People didn't like bands doing their own original tunes
if they hadn't been played on the radio.
Fisher: He would play something by LTD
or O'Jays,
and in between those songs, he wouldn't stop.
When you stop playing, you lose the crowd.
He had a beat
that he played in between those Top 40s.
It's like this. ( thumps desk )
That's the bottom...
( continues thumping )
of the go-go beat.
Everything else is taken from that.
Grohl: It's called a pocket beat, right?
A lot of drummers still play it.
But mainly, like myself and other drummers
of, I guess, the new era, we kind of mix it up.
Instead of playing the basic...
( plays four-beat rhythm )
we'll switch it up.
( playing varied rhythm )
One of the things that people don't understand
or recognize about this go-go movement,
is that before it became a music, it was just that.
It was a atmosphere. You know what I'm sayin'?
The club was actually what they called a "go-go."
I didn't fall in love with the music
till I went to a go-go when I was like 15, 16
and then like, saw it. And I'm like,
"Now, like, I completely understand everything."
( music playing )
Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers come on,
all these kids start comin' from out of nowhere.
Before they can hit one note, they goin',
"Wind me up, Chuck!"
- Crowd: Wind me up, Chuck! - "Wind me up, Chuck!"
And the drummer just...
"Mm-pow!" ( mimics drumbeat )
Boom! Right in the pocket!
Yeah!
That's what I'm talking about.
I was like, "Man, you know, we need to try to open up for Chuck."
Brown: Sounds so good, you gotta do it again for me now!
And... we did! ( laughs )
( music playing )
Come on, now!
My earliest memories of DC
and their sound and go-go was Trouble Funk.
When a multitude of drums are played at the same time in unison,
it becomes... hypnotic.
Mesmerizing.
And then you got the call-and-response thing.
"Are y'all tired yet?" They go, "Hell, no!"
"You tired yet?" "Hell, no!"
"Do you want some mo'?" "Hell, yeah!"
"You ain't ready to go?" "Hell, no!"
It kind of made everybody
that came to see a go-go act
feel like they were a part of what was goin' on.
( music continues )
Chuck Brown went to the owner and said,
"I don't want them boys playing with me no mo'.
They stealin' my music."
( laughs ) We didn't steal his music.
We stole the idea. You know what I'm sayin'?
Man: It just kind of grew just from the street.
You go to see a Chuck show or a Rare Essence show or one of these shows,
these kids take their tape decks in and they tape the show.
And all over the city, during the day,
they're listening to these local bands.
( music playing )
Mayor Gray: You can't stand there and not pat your foot.
It had a certain repetitiveness to it...
( music continues )
that just got you movin'.
Grohl: Even the mayor of Washington, DC
had Chuck Brown play at his inauguration ceremony.
That says a lot.
The go-go sound, which Chuck created
has helped to define
what Washington, DC... What the District of Columbia is today.
The greatest city in the world!
Know what I mean? DC is go-go.
Go-go is DC. You know what I'm saying?
I mean, I would assure you that even Obama
probably got a go-go tape somewhere up in there.
You know what I'm saying?
( laughing )
( drumbeat playing )
Grohl: Downtown Washington, DC was alive with its own music.
( drumming continues )
But something else was happening in the suburbs of Virginia.
( whirring )
- Man: Should we go through here? - Grohl: Yeah!
Grohl: One local Virginia studio
produced the entire soundtrack of my youth.
- Grohl: Was that in your back yard? - Man: That's the back yard.
That's Rites of Spring's sessions.
Oh, wow!
Man: There's Ian in dress-ups.
Grohl: There's a good picture of Henry with a dress.
- Look at that. - Man: Before tats.
These are all the heroes of like, the Washington, DC punk rock scene.
This is sort of like a Hall of Fame, this whole thing.
Inner Ear is the right person
in the right place at the right time.
Andersen: Don Zientara is that guy.
Don himself is an artist, a musician, an activist.
He was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.
Don Zientara: I was drafted, went through basic,
and they had a program
where you can get an education through the army,
so I got an electronics training. I was always involved in that.
I had a phonograph and I had an amplifier,
and I needed a phono preamp,
which nobody needs anymore. ( laughs )
So I told my friend Bob, and Bob said, "No problem."
He comes over with a paper bag, just full of parts.
He says, "Here's the drawings, make it."
And so that's how I learn.
Grohl: When you see Don Zientara's name
on the back of every punk rock record
coming out of Washington, DC,
you just imagine him to be this gnarly punk rock guy
with a mohawk and a leather jacket and tattoos.
So when I first met him,
I was totally surprised
that he is a 6'6" surfer with a nerdy voice, like,
( nasally ) "Hi, how you doing, I'm Don Zientara."
( laughs ) I took one look at him and thought,
"Wait, you're the guy that recorded
the fuckin' Bad Brains?"
( screams )
( music playing )
♪ Don't care what they may say, we got that attitude. ♪
♪ Don't care what you may do, we got that attitude... ♪
♪ Yeah, get the P.M.A.! ♪
A lot of bands, they had their songs and all,
but they're rocking and rolling, having a good time.
To me, it was competitive. Like, I literally said,
"If they think they playing fast, watch this."
( rapid drumbeat rumbling )
♪ Yeah! ♪
( H.R. singing rapidly )
The Bad Brains were really
one of the first hardcore punk bands.
They were the first band
influenced by punk rock,
taking it much further musically.
Much faster. Much more aggressive.
Skip Groff: They brought me in a homemade demo tape on a reel-to-reel
and they were accomplished musicians, but they had
their own idea of what they wanted their sound to be.
So did you grow up in the city?
Yeah, I grew up Southeast Hartford Street. Projects.
What was DC like back then?
Separate.
Man: DC's a weird town, like this beltway that's around DC
is almost like a wall here. DC is a very segregated city.
Dr. Know: They built the school that we went to.
- It was a brand-new school. - Like a prison.
Well, that was our frickin' school.
With the slotted windows and stuff?
It was crazy. They locked the back door.
Only way in and out was... If a fire broke out,
everybody's dead.
You know, we lived in the suburbs.
So downtown was a place
where you went on field trips to the Smithsonian
and if you went with your parents,
you know, you had the windows rolled up,
and that was not a place you got out of the car.
Only white people we saw was teachers
or people who owned stores.
Here's all the governmental white buildings,
and everything was black all around it.
And I remember being in Hartford Street as a kid in the '60s.
My mom had a Polaroid picture of a house with a yard.
I saw this picture, and I'm like, "Wow.
That's like The Brady Bunch and shit," you know?
I think sometimes The Brady Bunch
had a lot to do with what I thought of...
What the world... You know, how it's supposed to be.
( silent )
Zientara: I mean, everybody was in bands at the time.
When people wanted to make a demo tape,
they saw, "Hey, you've got a tape recorder."
So, I recorded my friend's band.
The man who was
sort of the executive producer for them,
he said, "Well, I've... You know, I've got
a few other people bring over."
I said, "Well, you know, I'm open."
You know, "We'll give it a shot."
I was impressed enough with the Bad Brains
to pay for a recording session over at Don's studio.
The night before, where I'm working at the store by myself,
H.R. comes in...
Nobody else from the band...
and he sits there, across the counter from me
with his hands crossed like this,
staring at me...
menacingly.
And I freaked out.
I got this session tomorrow with them.
I can't do it. This guy's scaring the hell out of me.
Grohl: What were your first impressions of the Bad Brains?
I had to become acclimated to their style of music,
which is... was quite a... quite a shock to the system.
( music playing, singing rapidly )
Man: I remember when I was 14 or 15,
seeing a piece on the Bad Brains
on the local, like, news magazine show.
And they showed H.R. doing backflips on the stage.
And I was like, "Wow. Who the fuck are these guys?"
( music continues )
( singing rapidly )
( song ends )
MacKaye: They started playing in Madam's Organ,
which was this hippie commune on 18th Street.
It was pretty much like a flophouse, really.
Man: You walked in, there was people everywhere.
There'd be a couple mattresses there, whatever.
Always beer, always pot.
People were throwing up.
MacKaye: That was sort of their home base.
We saw these guys walk in...
The coolest-looking punk people we'd ever seen in our lives.
Jennifer: These guys used to wear suits all the time in high school.
Some "Cooley High"-type shit? My man took the suit,
threw that shit... Paint on that shit, glue.
Put glass... All kind of shit.
Tear up everything.
Now we Bad Brains.
They'd walk around Georgetown, to hand out these flyers.
"Are you ready? We are! Bad Brains."
"The punk rock explosion
with the roughest punk band in the world.
Bad Brains." ( laughs )
Peter Stahl: I remember the day I saw them.
I mean, we were all waiting
for them to start playing, and then H.R.
just kind of busted through the audience from behind us
and came right up on that stage.
And then they just kind of exploded.
So you had H.R. moving like, you know,
Cab Calloway or whatever, but on steroids.
H.R., like, you know, one of the greatest things about watching him
was when he would turn around to you guys
and do his little conducting thing.
You know, there was part of me watching that,
thinking like, "Wow, is he... Like,
is he conducting the band right now?"
- Yeah, it was that. - Backflip.
But not even in a contrived way.
( music playing )
Frenetic. It was insane.
( music continues )
( singing rapidly )
( rapid snapping )
When he start doing that shit...
( music continues )
...then we really poppin'.
( music continues )
( music playing )
♪ Well, just plug me in just like I was Eddie Harris... ♪
It's like a weeknight, I've snuck out
to go see the Bad Brains, right?
We go and we're probably two of...
Let's say, 10 people there.
( music playing )
It was the most amazing show I had ever seen.
MacKaye: That was the greatest band that ever existed
as far as I was concerned.
It's just like I realized
you know, I'd found my home with the Bad Brains.
There was very little crossover I think, between communities then.
They had no hang-up about being black.
We're not on no black shit.
We're not on no "black punk" shit. We're not no Afro shit,
we're just youth. The shit turned into a youth movement.
It's this whole, like, confusion about being "punk"
that they take it into this "black" shit.
When I was a punk, I was a punk.
I think they gave me a set list of what they wanted to do.
It was 14 songs or 10 songs... It was an enormous amount.
This is one afternoon.
They said, "Well, we'll probably not get a chance to mix them today."
I said, "Still, come on."
We were recording in his house,
so that's why you hear on that recording...
I was in the basement doing my tracks.
Original Inner Ear was on Ivy Street.
I don't know what the address was.
Don started his own studio in his house.
You know, just a regular suburban house.
I had the control room on the side porch.
But then we ran a snake down to the basement.
He was in the friggin' bathroom.
Earl was in the living room.
H was...
Dr. Know, Jennifer: Outside.
Jennifer: They had crickets and shit,
kids watchin' and talkin'.
MacKaye: He's in the back yard, like...
( singing gibberish )
And he's jumping around and dancing around.
I mean, you just have to wonder
what the neighbors made of this.
You can't hear it on the "Black Dots" record,
but I have this other version where you can actually
hear the kids going like, "What's going on here?"
Like, then they'd cheer and stuff.
( recorded applause )
Youth: That is okay.
This is all happening over 30 years ago now
that that stuff was recorded.
Skip Groff: At that point in time, people needed something new.
That is as fresh and dynamic
as the day that they recorded it.
When I was a kid, I thought,
"I'm not gonna be a musician."
( guitar solo playing )
You look at people like Peter Frampton
or Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix,
like, they're just at a level...
there's just no way.
( music continues )
So I became a skateboarder.
We just started skating.
Me and Rollins and all of the neighborhood kids,
and we listened to a lot of rock.
I loved rock. And then Ted Nugent.
( music playing )
Have you ever seen footage of him in the '70s?
He's got a beard and long hair
and he's wearing a loincloth and a tail,
and moccasins.
And he is going crazy! Screaming.
( Nugent screams )
We would argue and argue like, whether the Ramones or Ted Nugent...
Who was better? And I said, "Ted Nugent!"
And I'd just argue and they told me,
"What about The Clash?" "Fuck The Clash. Ted Nugent."
( guitar chords buzzing )
Punk just seemed kind of a joke to me.
If punks have a home territory,
it is here on the same street that launched the miniskirt
and the look and mood of the Swinging '60s.
Because the media treated it like a joke.
Having seen the Bad Brains,
we decided like, "We're gonna do this.
We're gonna fuckin' be in a band for real."
That's George.
Jeff.
Ian.
And Nathan, this guy. You have to introduce yourself.
♪ Call you a speed racer when you have a Trans Am. ♪
Grohl: What was the first record that you made?
"Teen Idles." I was in high school.
The reason we recorded
was to make a yearbook. 'Cause we were breaking up.
We knew we were gonna break up.
So we just wanted to document the stuff
'cause it was important to us.
And the first recording experience
was pretty terrifying for us.
And we were not good, I can acknowledge that.
But, fuck, man. We were trying.
So we were tracking and another band
had come to see the studio.
And there was a small window into the control room.
And the other band would stand there with him
sitting at the control desk.
And we're playing, and he's pointing
and they're all laughing at us.
And I remember thinkin' like, "This is fucked up!"
There's so many people saying, you know,
"Why don't you stop this noise and play some real music?"
The punk music intensity,
or... Call it what you want...
You had to break through so many barriers
to get shows, to play,
to get people to listen to your music.
So much of my work, I think, really came
out of feeling we were being dismissed.
So much of the energy, I think, I was like, "Okay."
Like, "Fine, I'm a piece of shit.
Watch what this piece of shit's gonna do."
I was gonna keep on going.
In '79, I had started going over
on buying trips to England
because we weren't getting the fill
from our distributors of the kind of records
that I knew were coming out in England.
Henry and Ian would always be among the first
to come out and help me unpack the bags
so that they could get the next copy
of the Satan Rats' "You Make Me Sick" .45.
Or the next UK Subs .45.
Grohl: I don't think these punk rock music scenes
began as music scenes.
I think these scenes started
as a group of misfits...
People that didn't feel accepted in society.
I was told if I wanted to be a punk,
I should move to New York.
'Cause you can't really be a punk in Washington.
Which I was like, "Well...
fuck that, I'm not moving to New York."
Zientara: Here's Ian.
Hey, Ian. What's up, buddy?
We got in last night.
We got drums up and we got sounds
and so we're just gonna start tracking today.
Come by!
Okay, bye.
( strumming melody line )
( full band playing )
Butch Vig: It's a challenge to go into a different studio
every week and bang out a song.
- ( music stops ) - Chris Shiflett: Hey!
Guitars are too fuckin' loud!
Say what, Shifty?
- Grohl: My guitar keeps getting really loud. - The guitars are way too loud!
- Dave's guitar? - Yeah.
Vig: Especially when you haven't been in there before.
Hey, is there any way that, uh,
we could record?
James is gonna check one thing,
and then we're gonna go again right away.
Vig: Everybody kind of has to rise to the occasion,
adapt to the sound of the room.
( music playing )
What they're hearing coming back from the speakers.
( music continues )
Nate Mendel: I've never met Don, I've never been in to Inner Ear.
But I've been looking at the name "Inner Ear"
on album sleeves since probably 1983.
This is the studio
that I was most looking forward to visiting.
It's like my bedroom from when I was a teenager.
( music recording playing )
Chris Shiflett: I knew about this place
and all the bands that had made records here.
( music continues )
( music ends )
Mendel: And then just being here today, and Ian MacKaye comes
and hangs out all day, man.
Vig: All right. Excellent, you guys.
God, dude. Queen and Thin Lizzy, in one fuckin' night, dude?
My sister took me and we went down, and I was 14 or 15...
My sister took me to my first Queen concert.
so I sat down, and then I looked behind me
and there was these kids from my neighborhood.
Turn around and there's this one girl, who's a little older than me.
And she said, "Hey!" And she just has the word "fuck"
written across her forehead in Sharpie. And I was like...
( gasps ) "Okay."
Taylor Hawkins: When that guy's around, you just want to sit down
and listen to him talk, man.
MacKaye: When I was in 11th grade,
I went to the prom, with a... A senior invited me to prom.
And the band that played
was a band called "The Mighty Peacemakers."
And they were a go-go band.
Then I realized, "Wow, this is happening here!"
And someone said, "Yeah, Friday night go-gos."
Every night, like 4,000 or 5,000 kids
come out to the go-go there.
Trouble Funk and other go-go bands...
Experience Unlimited, Rare Essence,
Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers...
They're playing these giant shows.
( music playing )
The whites don't really know what's happening, most of them.
But these bands had been doing this thing for 10, 12 years.
No one even knew it was happening.
( vocals chanting )
It was really inspiring for us.
We thought, "Fuck, man,
like, nobody knows about it, and yet they got it going on?
We can get it going on, too."
( music playing )
No one would put out Teen Idles.
No one would put out Bad Brains at the time.
Some groups just were simply unknown.
And a lot of people wanted to keep them unknown
or considered their music not music.
MacKaye: We just thought,
how many labels are lining up to put out, like,
a pretty okay teenage punk band from Washington, DC
that's already broken up? And then someone said,
"Fuck it, let's start our own record label."
I was like, "What?"
Because I didn't know anything about
a fucking record label, honestly.
The record business stinks.
But we're like, "Our necessity. We gotta do this."
Grohl: How many 18-year-olds are like,
"Let's start a fucking label"?
The ones who had no choice.
That's how many are fucking doing it.
( music playing )
♪ Red, I'm seeing red! ♪
♪ I'm seeing red, I'm seeing red! ♪
I can't even think of another community
that preceded us with that attitude
of, like, "Well, we can put out our own single.
And we're gonna make our own covers
and we'll press 100 or whatever."
MacKaye: We took an English single. We pulled it apart.
Unfolded it to see how the flaps looked.
Took it to a print shop.
And just said, "Can you print a thousand of these?"
And then, we got them back, and I'm using scissors and glue.
We fucking hand-cut and folded
the first like, 10,000 to 12,000 records by hand.
Dante Ferrando: I remember hanging out at Dischord
and putting together those Minor Threat records
'cause they'd have the folding parties.
They were homemade. I mean, they were like...
Not even totally shaped like singles
and the guys in the band would write shit on them.
And you know, it was just 100% homemade venture.
It's an approach to life.
Do it yourself.
"P.M.A.," to quote the Bad Brains.
"Positive mental attitude. You can do it."
Our first poster said, "The Bad Brains,
the greatest punk rock band in the world."
( laughs ) I don't think we ever even had a song.
If you see something you think needs to be done, go do it.
Don't wait for anybody else. Do it yourself.
Dischord gave to Washington
what it would not otherwise see
musically or philosophy-wise.
I didn't have a problem thinking that
you know, we could do it in Iron Cross,
because I had just seen the Teen Idles do it.
I'd just seen the Bad Brains do it.
And so you get this sort of snowball of creative energy
'cause people realize, "He did that? I can do that."
We made records. That's what we did.
Grohl: These bands might not be
the most famous bands in the world,
but these bands influenced
some of the most famous bands in the world.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Beastie Boys,
Jane's Addiction, Green Day.
We were all brought up and influenced
by these bands from Washington, DC
and Dischord Records.
Grohl: How many records, in total
do you think Dischord's has sold?
I dunno. Four million, maybe?
- Fucking A, man. - Yeah.
- I had no idea. - A lot.
I just wanted to document music that I thought was important.
And then to try to show some responsibility about it.
I still feel that way.
Hey, Ian, when everything was, like, you know,
"alternative rock" got popular and all that stuff,
how many big labels came to you and said, "Can I buy you?"
I mean, in theory, all of them.
- But we never had lunch with anybody. - Right, you didn't...
They asked for lunch. We got a lot of lunch requests.
- Yeah. - But it just was nothing to talk about.
Right, right.
It's such a different world than I'm from.
When I was a kid, I didn't know
that you could put a band together, print your own records, you know,
I didn't really know that that existed.
The only thing I thought you could do
was, you know, play, like, maybe in a wedding band
or go to Hollywood and get the big record deal.
This is fucking rad.
Rad.
Hawkins: So there's a certain angst I feel
when I'm here in DC.
We lived here for a while
to record "Nothing Left to Lose"
and "One by One."
I struggled learning how to record drums
on a record.
Everybody ready?
- Hawkins: Yes. - Grohl: Yeah, yeah!
Hawkins: I don't know if I've learned yet.
Vig: Here we go!
( playing guitar intro )
( drumbeat playing )
Hawkins: Everybody thinks we're from Seattle.
We're not. We're from everywhere.
California, and Washington state and Washington, DC
and Los Angeles.
But if there's anywhere where you could say we're from,
to a certain degree, would be here, possibly.
'Cause most of our germs of our ideas
come from Dave and he's from here.
( music continues )
I like it, but I can't hear me.
Come on in and listen, y'all. Come on in.
Grohl: Butch has a Southern accent now.
( in Southern accent ) "Come on in and listen, y'all.
We're in Shirlington, Virginia."
Vig: If Dave had grown up in Los Angeles,
he wouldn't be who he is. I think in the nature
of him growing up in DC and in Virginia,
you're sort of forced to find your own path.
Pretty darn good, Dave Grohl.
I fuckin' hate what I just did.
Oh, God, it's perfect!
Grohl: Most of the albums from the Dischord label
were recorded at Inner Ear Studios.
This studio was so important to me as a musician.
Not only because it became the soundtrack of my youth,
but these albums were my teachers.
Ian MacKaye has been my hero
since the day I met him.
Vig: Dave told me about your interview
was you were schooled on Ted Nugent
when you started out, man. That just fucking rules so much.
Grohl: One of the most honorable things about him
is his evolution as a musician,
from being the bass player of Teen Idles
to being the singer of Minor Threat
to being the guitar player of Fugazi.
In the Teen Idles, my proficiency...
It wasn't great, you know. I was learning.
The Bad Brains, I think they really were the ones who said, like,
"Don't waste time on the stage."
Like, if you're gonna do it, do it right.
( music playing )
♪ We're just a minor threat. ♪
♪ That's a promise. ♪ ( chuckles )
I love Minor Threat.
I think the reason they were so good
was most of the other punk rock bands
were influenced by English punk rock,
which talked about political things and class struggle
and things that didn't really apply to our American life.
And Minor Threat, I think, was the first band
that talked about, like, sociological issues
that really did matter to us. "My friend lied to me."
You know... "You didn't do what you said you were gonna do."
Much more personal and relatable
and the stuff you could really get behind.
MacKaye: Yeah, I remember, like, Teen Idles
I was writing to 25 kids in Washington, DC,
never thinking, really, that it would be a song
that would ever be heard outside of the city.
Because... let's face...
Who would ever listen to some punk band from DC?
Andersen: So this is the example
of the power of the DC punk scene...
Its reputation reached even Montana.
By the early '80s, I knew about Bad Brains,
I knew about Minor Threat.
Henry Rollins, of course, was in Black Flag at that point.
I bought Black Flag records in Montana.
I actually came to DC
'cause I was going to graduate school.
Looking back, it was my effort to grow up.
Found an apartment near Dupont Circle
September of 1984.
I put my stuff in the apartment,
walked across the street to the pay phone to call my mom
to assure her that, yes, I was in Washington, DC,
but no, I had not been killed yet.
I had not been robbed. But what I saw
spray-painted on the wall next to the pay phone
was "Nazi punks rule. Oi, oi, oi!"
Honestly, I felt in... In those moments
like it might have been better
if punk rock had never been invented.
( rainfall pattering )
I went and visited all those beautiful monuments
to our national idealism.
Everywhere I went...
there were homeless people, people asking for money.
And I thought, "Wow.
'Government of the people, by the people, for the people.'"
It's heartbreaking.
I'm not ashamed to say I cried.
♪ I look when you walk. ♪ ♪ I look when you walk. ♪
♪ I look when you walk by. ♪
Here we are in Washington DC, probably the single most
affluent metropolitan area in the entire country.
At the same time,
a community with a gaping wound at its heart.
( audience cheers ) Thank you so much.
Good to be here.
MacKaye: I remember the first time I met him.
Mark was like, "I'm really disappointed in this scene."
And we're like, "Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm Mark Andersen. Punk activist from Montana."
Pickering: Mark Andersen is really earnest,
and he loves everyone.
And he wants good for the planet
and will fight for that.
Everything I believed in Montana about punk rock was a lie.
You want the truth, you don't want fucking lies.
That's kind of how I felt.
One of the very first signs that made me feel
like I had some brothers and sisters in this scene
was a little cassette tape I picked up
at Smash! Records in Georgetown.
A band called Mission Impossible.
( music playing )
I remember Dave being just like
the most insane drummer I'd ever seen.
( rapid drumming )
( camera shutter clicks ) When I listened to the tape,
I was like, "I have to find these guys."
Grohl: And then he fucking, like, buys a demo tape of my band
and comes over to our rehearsal space.
- Really? - Yes!
I think I was 16.
What I discovered
was a window into a universe of possibilities.
Grohl: When Mark Andersen came to Washington, DC,
all of a sudden we were going to protests
in front of the South African embassy.
This whole thing called "Revolution Summer" was building.
There was definitely
a lot of political awareness developing
with a lot of the people in the music scene.
Sort of the politics of, "Well, the world's a little bigger
than just our little subsect of people
and maybe we should care about that."
Revolution Summer all came together
in the mind and the heart of Amy Pickering
over at National Planning Council.
Pickering: The NPC had a summer program
to keep teens engaged or something.
Somehow I fell into this job.
And I hired all of my friends
to come work there, too.
But I'm not sure what we did all day.
It was very straightforward.
Mostly what they were doing was fucking around
and getting paid for it. ( laughs )
We started making ransom notes.
Grohl: I remember seeing flyers around Washington, DC
that said "Revolution Summer."
Pickering: There were a lot of things
like apartheid that we thought were wrong
and we should be actually acting against.
Andersen: She was watching TV one day,
and she saw pictures from South Africa
and the incredible courage
of folks rising up against apartheid.
But apartheid looked like a system that would never fall.
That's how strong the South African white regime was.
But what struck Amy was the youth
of many of the protesters, and their courage.
She was watching this and all of a sudden, she started feeling ashamed.
The idea that we should act for the greater good
outside of our own issues in our community
inspired me and a number of other people to say,
"This is Revolution Summer. Let's do something about this."
Spring ended today.
And the Revolution Summer began today.
( audience cheering )
Pickering: One of the ways to draw the community together
was to have shows.
I feel like half or more of the shows that happened
a few years running there were all Positive Force shows.
( screaming )
( music playing )
Grohl: Seeing the gigs go from 50 people
to 5,000 people
and all of them connected by this message,
I guarantee you that the people
that were at these shows were inspired
to go on and do something with their lives
because of Positive Force.
It was the idealism of Washington, DC,
it was also the idealism of punk rock.
And Positive Force, for me, was a way to live out all of that.
Grohl: I remember going
to the local punk rock record store
and finding the Scream album,
"Still Screaming."
There was a PO box address,
and it was from Falls Church, Virginia,
which was only two miles from where I lived.
Scream became one of my favorite bands in the world.
Not just from my neighborhood, but in the world.
So, when I saw a flyer in our local music store
that they were looking for a drummer,
I immediately called that phone number.
We needed to find a drummer because our drummer
was getting ready to have his first kid
and he didn't wanna go on tour anymore.
Grohl: I was still in fucking high school.
I couldn't imagine being the drummer of Scream.
I was just in that moment,
jamming with my heroes.
( music playing )
When he abruptly left to join Scream,
I understood why Dave did it.
Besides the fact that they were his heroes,
he just wanted to tour and go out.
Just be in a band that's working and on the road.
( music playing )
Grohl: My first show with Scream was a Positive Force benefit
for Amnesty International.
And it was triumphant.
MacKaye: Great show.
I remember it. I remember it well.
( music continues )
Grohl: I remember the show.
The band and audience all marched up the street.
Everyone brought a drum
and we stood across the street
from the South African embassy
and played as loud as we could.
We were protesting apartheid,
which made you feel like a human being,
but you also felt like the luckiest person in the world
because your hero from your favorite local band
was standing next to you with his drum
and we were all doing it together.
Pickering: It was about us
as a community taking action.
( cheering )
Mark took the sentiment of Revolution Summer
and put it into action.
You were challenging the world and yourself
to do something really hard.
Which is to live out these glorious dreams.
Dreams that we like to put on monuments...
and then kind of forget about.
You could never live them out alone.
MacKaye: And by the time you came along,
there was like, a scene, right?
You could go fucking see how many bands?
It was just like, a reality.
It didn't exist five years earlier than that.
Grohl: When you were young,
did you know much about the local music scene?
When I was in my first band,
I was obsessed with finding out
about everything from Dischord and DC hardcore
and, like, we respect it so much.
But I just remember everyone was following that model
and making their own CDs and passing 'em around.
We learned from that.
You know, we started doing that ourselves.
The way that like, record labels work
like an antiquated process,
it slowed that band up.
I think that they're on their way,
it's just that
they've got to go touch the people, man.
Figure out who you are and establish a rapport with your group
of people.
Brown: Music, it takes a certain amount of willpower.
Not only us, any band in this town.
We was, like, recording this music, man.
We was putting out music like every other week.
And the music was like, spreading like a disease.
The DIY thing carries through
a lot of different music scenes in DC.
I'm sure you've experienced this where you run into some guy
who's like a jazz guy or some funk player.
You're from the punk scene and you guys relate
in a way that's very...
A Washington, DC-like language.
I saw a real parallel with the go-go thing,
but never could connect with them,
'cause they were a totally different world.
And then we decided, like, "We should play with Trouble Funk."
They headlined, we opened for them.
Big Boys, Minor Threat, Trouble Funk.
Trouble Funk were interested in it,
'cause they heard about the punk scene.
We were into it, 'cause we loved the go-go thing.
Grohl: Then there's these punk-funk shows.
Yeah.
They both are like, two underground type of sounds.
( silent )
And it just goes together. You know what I'm sayin'?
We got there... This is real culture clashing.
I remember again, Minor Threat playing
and just looking out at the soundboard,
seeing all the Trouble Funk guys,
just going like... ( laughing )
Look at us like, "What the...?" Like laughing and pointing.
It was pretty amazing, I gotta say.
- ♪ Small man... ♪ - ♪ Big mouth! ♪
- ♪ Small man... ♪ - ♪ Big mouth. ♪
( music playing )
♪ Let us send you to the top. ♪
♪ Nonstop... ♪ ( all chant )
Where the real power is...
The real revolution, if you will,
is simply getting people
who otherwise might never encounter each other,
to know each other.
Fisher: Man, we should get together and do something
- like a go-go/rock project. - Grohl: Tony, I'd love to.
I think it'd be so much fun, man.
It'd sure be nice to do some of them big money shows, man,
with the Foo Fighters and stuff.
( laughs )
Grohl: Welcome...
to Big Tony's birthday bash! Everybody ready?
( audience cheering )
One of the best things about growing up in this area
is the fuckin' music and you know that's true.
If it weren't for Washington, DC and the music scene here,
I wouldn't be standing up here with a mic right now.
What we've done is we've put together
an evening of entertainment
that celebrates generations of Washington, DC musicians...
People that have inspired the next to go on
and do better things and keep the tradition alive.
And I consider myself a Washington DC musician.
For life, no matter where I am.
Just so you know, it's gonna be a long fuckin' night.
Grohl: The experiences that I had here in this city
from the age of 14 years old
set this foundation
for the rest of my life as a musician.
The community,
the support,
the love
that was here in the DC music scene
has carried over into what I do now.
The way the Foo Fighters work as a band,
we're like a family.
And we try to treat everyone that way.
I honestly feel like that comes from Ian,
that comes from Dischord Records,
Don Zientara and all of the bands I saw when I was young.
The message wasn't "We were rock stars
and we are better than you,"
the message was that "We're people
and we're all in this together."
I got that from Washington, DC.
And it makes its way into our music.
_
( playing guitar intro )
_
( full band playing )
_
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com
( music ends )
_
( music playing )
♪ I am a patient boy. ♪
♪ I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait. ♪
♪ My time, the water's down the drain. ♪
♪ Everybody's moving, everybody's moving. ♪
♪ Everybody's moving, moving, moving, moving. ♪
♪ Please don't leave me to remain in the waiting room. ♪
- ♪ I don't want the news. ♪ - ♪ I cannot use it. ♪
- ♪ I don't need the news. ♪ - ♪ I won't live by it. ♪
♪ Sitting outside of town. ♪
- ♪ Everybody's always down. ♪ - ♪ Tell me why. ♪
- ♪ Because they can't get up. ♪ - ♪ Yeah! ♪
♪ Come on and get up! ♪