I want something new: Limp Records and the birth of DC punk, 1976–80

Abstract

Recountings of the Washington, DC punk rock scene’s history often start with the founding of Dischord Records in 1980 and focus on the subsequent ascent of Dischord co-owner Ian MacKaye’s bands like Minor Threat and Fugazi. As seminal as Dischord remains in the narrative of DC punk – a community still thriving today – the years just prior to the label’s founding generated the scene’s true incunabula. Beginning with the self-released debut EP from the Slickee Boys in 1976, this first wave of DC bands – also including Razz, Nurses, White Boy and others – combined elements of art rock, surf, proto-punk, pub rock and power pop together to craft a protean version of punk that embraced eccentricity and humour, serving as the city’s own defiant rebuke of the staid state of 1970s rock music. No record label was more central to the nascent punk scene in DC than Limp Records. Operated by Skip Groff, Limp provided the punk community with its first proper record label. Rather than a label that centred around the efforts of a single band – as most other new DC punk labels did – Limp issued singles for several groups, collaborating with the fledgling Dacoit and O’Rourke labels to co-release defining singles for the Slickee Boys and Razz. DC punk would not have taken shape the way it did without Groff’s efforts, particularly considering his connections with bands like Bad Brains and the Slickee Boys and his musical and entrepreneurial influence on local teenage punks like MacKaye, Jeff Nelson and Henry Rollins. This article is a history of DC punk record labels from 1976 to 1980 and seeks to establish this overshadowed era of the scene as one of the most critical in the community’s 43-year existence. Considering the outsize influence the DC scene ultimately had on punk culture – whether through the eponymous clean living philosophy inspired by the Minor Threat song ‘Straight Edge’, the unwaveringly independent business model of Dischord or the pacesetting music reliably turned out each decade by participants in the scene – the impact of Groff and his first wave DC punk peers must be acknowledged.