Kick-Ass Punk Compilations of the 1980s

If you wanna know ’80s punk, start with the compilations

Black Flag, 1983 (UCLA Library Special Collections via Flickr Creative Commons)

Eighties punk was messy. If you were into that music at the time, in the US anyway, you had compilations — some of them taped by your buddies from the highlights of their albums, others released by micro-labels who signed the bands.

If you’re looking to explore the harder side of the ’80s, here are a few old LPs that will give you the immersion therapy you need. So here we go…

NB: Punk music is often vulgar, violent, and confrontational, and I don’t even claim to like all this material. This stuff ain’t Green Day, y’all, so be forewarned.

Burning Ambitions (Cherry Red, 1982)

I can’t think of a better place to start than *Burning Ambitions, although the order of albums here is merely alphabetical. Compared to what follows, excepting the Repo Man soundtrack, the material on Burning Ambitions* sounds much closer to standard hard rock with songs nearer three minutes, intelligible vocals, conventional guitar solos, proper mastering, and discernible melodies. As such, I’d recommended it as a starting point for anyone totally new to the genre.

Cherry Red has an amazing catalog of British punk, including classic bands like Buzzcocks, Exploited, The Fall, The Members, Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, and U.K. Subs, along with American acts like Dead Kennedys, The Dickies, and Iggy & the Stooges. There are 38 tracks on this monster, all of them worth a listen, from several of the above bands as well as GBH, Killing Joke, Generation X, The Damned, Stranglers, X-Ray Spex, and Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash outfit The 101'ers.

We practically wore this record out. A CD version was released at some point, but they couldn’t secure all the tracks for a second go-round, so it’s incomplete. Anyway, here’s a sample for ya:

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The Decline of Western Civilization (Slash, 1980)

*The Decline of Western Civilation* is the soundtrack to a 1980 documentary film on the LA punk scene, and is a great place to start if you’re already familiar with more public-facing punk (e.g. Sex Pistols or Ramones) and want to know what Los Angeles punk sounded like when it was confined to dive bars, warehouses, and squatter parties. The music was loud, hard, fast, and so lo-fi as to be utterly unintelligible half the time.

But no matter, no one was there to ponder the meaning of the songbook. They were there to blow off steam, ingest things, and knock each other around. By the time the album came out, its literal poster boy, Darby Crash of the Germs, had already OD’ed on heroin, although not live on stage as he’d threatened/promised to do.

Here’s a sample of Germs, performing a song appearing on the album, written by Darby Crash and Pat Smear (later of Foo Fighters), this version produced by Joan Jett. The material by Black Flag on the soundtrack is only slightly more coherent.

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A lot of this stuff is really raw and intentionally offensive. Lee Ving of Fear, especially, relished taunting the audience with misogynistic, homophobic, and racist slurs. I recall a Fear show in the spring of ’86 in Florida when Lee egged on the hawks and skins until the place finally erupted into a stool-throwing brawl that had to be busted up by the police, ending the show.

The most mainstream band on the album is X, who went less for shock value and more for actual songcraft, as rough and low-rent as it was. Of all the bands here, they’re probably the most accessible for new listeners to punk.

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International P.E.A.C.E Benefit Compilation (R Radical, 1984)

The *International P.E.A.C.E. Benefit Compilation* is jam packed with all sorts of punk and punk-adjacent music, some of it on the weird side. And that’s a good thing.

I don’t know of anyone who listens to this behemoth all the way through, certainly not myself, but no matter what you’re into you can make a solid cassette from it. It was compiled by MDC’s frontman and R Radical label founder Dave Dictor, together with the fanzine Maximum Rocknroll, bringing together punk and avante-garde acts from around the world to raise money for denuclearization.

If they turned any groups down, I’m unaware of it. The Atlanta band Neon Christ was on there, which I thought was cool. But if Dave managed to pull down even four figures for the cause with this thing, I’d be shocked.

So it’s a mixed bag, collecting the obscure and the scene-famous. None of these acts were known outside of punk scenes at the time, and most of them still aren’t, although these days bands like Dicks, Crass, D.O.A., Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, Dead Kennedys, Subhumans, and MDC have some traction in wider musical circles. And if you’re familiar with Butthole Surfers from “Pepper” off Electric Larryland (1996), here’s a taste of more typical fare from Gibby and the boys:

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Let Them Eat Jellybeans! (Alternative Tentacles, 1981)

*Let Them Eat Jellybeans!* was the third LP released by Dead Kennedys’ self-publishing label Alternative Tentacles, compiling east and west coast punk, and including an insert that served as a kind of roadmap to US and Canadian punk bands. Side one features now-classic tracks from foundational American groups like DK (of course), Black Flag, Circle Jerks, D.O.A., and Subhumans, including alternate takes of some songs like the fast version of The Feederz’ “Jesus Entering from the Rear.”

The second side is kinda weird. But again, that was always part of the punk scene, it’s just not what folks tend to remember these days. Unfortunately, arguments between members of DK, and between Black Flag and Alternative Tentacles, have prevented a re-release, so if you find this one in the crates in decent shape, snap it up.

Here’s a little taste of the music you’ll find there, from the grand-daddies of DC punk, Bad Brains. (Bit o’ trivia: Beasty Boys chose a band name starting with B.B. in homage to Bad Brains.)

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Not So Quiet on the Western Front (Alternative Tentacles / Maximumrocknroll, 1982)

*Not So Quiet on the Western Front is a grab bag of Northern California loudhardfast punk, most of the tunes clocking in at under two minutes, and most of the bands active only in their local scenes. It’s a really fun romp, and also featured the first issue of Maximum Rocknroll* as an insert.

If you’re familiar with punk, you might recognize groups like 7 Seconds, MDC, M.I.A, and Flipper, but otherwise you’re probably in for lots of surprises here. This is one that got a lot of play among me and my friends, in my case mostly from the cassette I taped from the LP so I could listen in the car. Here’s the kind of thing you’re in for if you give it a spin:

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Punk and Disorderly (Posh Boy, 1982)

*Punk and Disorderly is a UK compilation, although it does include the ubiquitous Dead Kennedys. This one was put out in association with Cherry Red, so it’s very much in the vein of Burning Ambitions*. There’s a volume 2 released the following year, but I never had that one. A very solid collection, highly recommended. Here’s a taste:

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Repo Man (San Andreas, 1984)

*Repo Man is the soundtrack to the cult classic film of the same name, and is the most polished of all the compilations listed here. If Decline of Western Civilation was an ode to the hardcore street punks, Repo Man* was a long distance dedication to guys like us, kids from shag-and-panel homes who had a hard time seeing any future for themselves that seemed worth the price of admission.

I highly recommend watching the film, by the way. I remember playing the soundtrack on the way to midnight showings, then relistening on the way home. Even today, the script is part of my buddies’ shared vocabulary. Anyone seen eating food out of a container will hear, “put it on a plate, son, you’ll enjoy it more,” to which the invariant reply is, “couldn’t enjoy it any more, mom.”

What’s especially cool about this compilation is the inclusion of Latino punk bands The Plugz and Suicidal Tendencies. Despite being a standard studio production for a mainstream producer (Mike Nesmith of Monkees fame) the material here is solid So Cal punk, essential listening.

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Rock Against Racism (RAR, 1980)

*Rock Against Racism is a British compilation featuring performances at the R.A.R. concerts which began in 1976 in response to white supremacist statements made by Eric Clapton and David Bowie**. It’s a great mix of punk, post-punk, new wave, ska, and reggae, which means it’s not entirely a punk album, but I include it here because it’s a favorite of mine, all those scenes overlapped, and I like the message.

Like I said, punk was messy, and on these compilations you’ll often find overt misogyny and homophobia from bands like Fear or Bad Brains on the same album with queercore groups like Dicks or MDC and radical fems like Bags or X-Ray Spex. It’s nice to be able to spin a whole LP and not run across any of the former.

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Welcome to 1984 (Maximumrocknroll, 1984)

*Welcome to 1984* is an international compilation by MRR of bands from 17 countries, and is an essential snapshot of the global punk scene of the early 1980s. As is typical for MRR, the material focuses on short, gritty, anti-establishment hardcore punk, often reacting against the rise of Reagan-Thatcher era right-wing politics.

There’s some great material on here, like R.I.P.’s “Anti-Militar” (Euskadi, aka Spain’s “Basque Country”) and Depression’s “What a Strange World” (Australia). It’s a much tighter tracklist than the P.E.A.C.E. compilation. And for the most part, you don’t need to know the language to get the music. This album has since been re-released so it’s not as hard to find as some of the others.

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What’s missing?

There’s a lot you won’t find on these records. No Sex Pistols, no Ramones, no Minutemen or Hüsker Dü. So they’re not a comprehensive vista by any means.

Listening to these collections is like rummaging through a shoebox of old family photos. Maybe you don’t recognize everybody, and you sure as hell don’t like everybody, and some of the best pics aren’t there because they’ve been put into the family album that sits on the bookshelf in the living room.

But you remember it all, the good and the bad, the times you wish you could relive and the times you wish you could live down. At times thrilling, at times embarrasing, all you can say is it was what it was.

And what it was was punk.

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*Eric Clapton, August 1976: “I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white.”

**David Bowie, 1976: “I believe very strongly in fascism… People have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership. A liberal wastes time saying, ‘Well, now, what ideas have you got?’ Show them what to do, for God’s sake.”