Difficult listening 2 - The '80s

A comment and my response on my previous DL posting made me realize that I don't want to be too exclusive in the idea of what may be difficult to listen to - I mean, Santana can send me screaming from the room and a lot of things that were "difficult" at first have just become "oldies" now. That's sort of the way I feel about these records - they're just oldies now, but they did push some of the boundaries in their day.

Black Flag was a Southern California band with a definite hardcore punk stance. This record, "Jealous Again", is a 12" 45 from 1980. The Minutemen album, "What Makes a Man Start Fires?", from 1983, adds some quirkier music to the basic punk style. A year later, The Butthole Surfers blew in from Texas with an intentionally offensive punk-ish attitude that morphed into some solid middle-of-the-road rock 'n' roll later in their career.

These records are what I think of as the Western flavor (as opposed to the "No Wave" of the East Coast) of American punk rock. SST Records in Southern California and Alternative Tentacles in Northern California were the top labels and were responsible for these and many other releases.