Let me tell you a little about my day yesterday. I woke up to the reality that A) I had to fly during Thanksgiving week, and B) that I was coming home to some unexpected family medical excitement. To compound this, I had a dead car battery that would not jumpstart, I had the usual work annoyances, and when I arrived at the airport, the traffic and parking situation was beyond disastrous. Once I boarded the 3.5-hour flight, I got to listen to a baby with higher range than Mariah Carey on a good day for the entire flight. As you can imagine, by the end of this day, my mood was less than spectacular. There could not have been a better day for me to put on the album “Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing” by the UK punk rock band Discharge, which is rated as the #10 punk rock album of all time by loudersound.com.
This was the last of the Punk Top Ten, and it was by far, the angriest and most intense of the records so far, which matched my mood perfectly. Most of the songs are about one minute and twenty-six seconds in length, and the theme through this album is anti-war and the darkness of violence. I put this album on as loud as I could and blocked out the world as I navigated my way through downtown and interstate traffic. It would be difficult to really distinguish between any of the tracks, they were all exactly what I needed at the moment. If I had to pick some favorites, I will go with “Drunk With Power”, “Meanwhile”, “Cries of Help”, “The Blood Runs Red”, “Free Speech for the Dumb” and “The End”.
Hopefully not everyday will present me with the mindset and challenges I encountered yesterday, but it is soothing to know that I have Discharge to turn to in that moment of need. Historically, they definitely moved the needle forward on the intensity, speed and aggression of hardcore punk rock, and they helped to set the stage for a genre of music that remains vital and strong to this day.
A Lifetime-Plus of Music 