Yeah, all that weird SST stuff is incredible. You ever heard Saccharine Trust? "Paganicons" and "We Became Snakes" are essential. Also, later, weirdo SST stuff like Flag's "Proccess of Weeding Out", Divine Horsemen, Universal Congress Of..., First two Gone records...So good when Ginn let his Deadhead roots flourish.
funny, i Dled that Saccharine Trust LP ("paganicons") today... i have been looking for that record for at least 10 years and i guess i may never find it at a decent price... nothing on there is as good as "a human certaintity", the song i heard by them way back when on "the blasting concept" compilation of early SST stuff... i have a 2 LP live comp by ST called "past lives" that is at turns great and terrible... those guys could really fucking play...
just read "Enter Naomi: SST and all That" by Joe Carducci... his look back at the SST era using the life of photographer Naomi Petersen as a framing device... i knew her name from photo credits on old SST stuff, but nothing about her... anyways, there are annectdotes for days about Greg Ginn, Pettibon, Mike Watt, Rollins, Jack Brewer, Mugger, Spot, and everyone involved in the SST thing, shining a light on the female presence that gets ignored (people like Greg Ginn's punk rock girlfried Medea, who wrote the lyrics to "Room 13" by Black Flag, MY FAVORITE SONG FROM THE DAMAMGED LP)
re: greg ginn and the Dead... yeah, the evil hippie undercurrent ran thru Flag (Carducci touches upon this, tracing the history of Hermosa Beach counterculture... bohemian surfers...)... i LOVE "the process of weeding out" and some Gone stuff is good, but those guys went overboard with that stuff... that October Faction record SUCKS!
re: the "cutoff date" for H/C... there isn't one, there's just Old School, NEw School, etc... the Cro-Mags are kinda like the first Second Wave NYHC band... that first Cro-Mags record is so fucking ill, but it's different from Kraut, or Urban Waste (that 7" is AMAZING)... and then you have bands like Underdog, Leeway, Sick of it all. 25 ta life (man, did they suck), whatever... i mean, there is a direct chain of HC... but to me, there is a magic to the 80-86 stuff that is missing from everything after...the template was set... so, i don't think that an Eye for an Eye record from 1990 is any better than Sam Black Church record from 94, but that Jerry's Kids are WAY better than both of 'em...
the thing is with hardcore after 86 is most of the smart kids had left the room... big tatooed dum guys need music too, but judged purely as MUSIC, some of it is absolute shit..
Sherbourne's list is OK, but like for the "direction" of Post-Hardcore, i would have put Siege on my list, not Rites of Spring (shit, i would have put 9353 on there instead of Rites of Spring)... i mean, bands like Lungfish or the Laughing Hyenas or the Jesus Lizard are all great, but they're not hardcore... that whole post-rock AmRep/Touch and Go late 80's early 90's sound is indeed THE LAST GREAT MOVEMENT IN ROCK, and a lotta those guys came up in HC bands, but that stuff is NOT hardcore...
i do agree with Sherbourne on:
Germs- GI
def the Bad Brains ROIR tape
Negative Approach- first EP (he is dead on w/ the Oi influences on this record and the way in influenced NYHC)
Black Flag- Damaged (for me still the prototype for what INTENSITY means in loud music)
Suicidal Tendencies- S/t kinda a ridiculous record, like if a ZZ Top cover band was locked in a room with "Damaged" and not allowed to leave... the angst is mixed with beach party vibes...
i'd add:
SSD- Get it Away - (a HUGE influence on the modern metal/mosh sound that dominated HC from the early 90's onward)
Agnostic Front- Victim in Pain EP
Angry Samoans- Back from Samoa (if you're going to have one of those lists that puts the Dead Kennedys and the Germs as H/C bands, you have to them)
OH AND "BIKINI KILL" are NOT HARDCORE... they are fun, but their whole bedroom sloppiness vibe is what makes them not hardcore, i mean they are art kids... if you wanna put a girl band on the list, put Frightwig!!!!!!
on the Saccharine Trust weird vibe, the bands the messed with the rules, yeah those ARE the most interesting...
Saccharine Trust
Kilslug
Flipper
No Trend
100 Flowers
TSOL (just for the way they inexplicably mixed HC w/ goth)
Virus (doomy art damaged NYHC on Rat Cage records... there was a junk store in Brooklyn that used to have about 300 copies of this... i bought about 10 and have 2-3 left...)
Meat Puppets (that first LP is just fucking bizarre)
The Proletariat
also working on a mix tape project involving the begining of the METAL CROSSOVER era... SO MANY bands went metal around 84... SSD certainly, DY as well... by 87, they were all straight metal bands (another reason 86 is THE DEATH YEAR of HC)...
Corrision of Conformity
DRI ("Dealing With It" really combined HC with the underground metal thing)
Siege (the begining of grindcore)
psycho
wasted youth (went total speed metal by 87)
gang green (their later stuff on roadrunner blows, but the "another wasted night" LP is such great HC with a metal tinge)
the accused
post-mortem