Government Issue

***“In November of 1982, I went into the studio with GOVERNMENT ISSUE to record what was to be their first full-length album. Up until that time, they had only released the Legless Bull 7-inch EP, and the tape they recorded early 1982 would take over a year and a half to be released as the Make An Effort 7-inch EP. The members of G.I. excelled at driving each other crazy and there was a lot of arguing, but still we had a great session at Inner Ear and we managed to track 20 songs in one day. From the beginning the band had been divided on what to record, and it was only after much debate that they decided to leave off the material they had recorded with the earlier line-ups and only put out 10 new songs. In early 1983 Dischord was strapped for cash, meaning that we could only work on one release at a time. Since all of our money was tied up with the manufacturing of Minor Threat’s Out of Step 12-inch EP, the G.I. record would have to wait. A new DC label, Fountain of Youth expressed an interest in releasing Boycott Stabb, so it was decided to do a ‘split-label’ record. In this case, Fountain of Youth put up the money and we let them use the Dischord Records name to help with context and distribution. It has since been reissued on a number of different labels and formats, but after coming across the master tapes and hearing the songs that had been left off, we thought it would be cool to release the complete session, and to fi nally release the record on Dischord proper. In going through the tapes, I discovered that most of the outtake songs were never mixed, so earlier this year I took the recordings back into the studio. Hearing the separated tracks amazed me. Such great playing and songs! With the technological advances in the recording world making multi-tracking and overdubbing so common, it’s easy to forget that studios could also be used as something more akin to a photo-booth, capturing what was happening at that very moment. Most of the early Dischord sessions were essentially ‘live’ recordings, so the bands had to be able to play, and because the budgets were minuscule, they had to get the songs down in short order. G.I. stepped up on both counts.”—Ian MacKaye, August 2010. Includes a free download.