If you’re reading this, it’s assumed that you’re familiar with basically everyone represented on Blasting Concept. How else would you have found the write up?
Either way, compilations from the early eighties are beginning to look – in retrospect – like a way to make a buck as much as a way to spread the good word around. With that being said, it’s really interesting to look at the order of the track listing.
As SST was run by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn, it would make sense that tracks from his band would sit up there at the beginning. That’s not the case, though. So, it’s possible to figure Ginn was attempting to make listeners take in other acts before making it to the meat, as it were.
After understanding that, placing the Minutemen at the disc’s opening makes sense for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t the most pop ready group SST sported, but the band had a great ability to vary its sound. That’s not necessarily expressed here, but the short jabs of politicism, personal and political go a long way towards expressing what the group was all about.
What’s funny, though, is that there’s not an act here contributing multiple songs that takes up more time than Saccharine Trust’s single effort. As per usual, that ensemble toss off some repetitious opening allowing for the remainder of the song to provide space for weird explorations of a few chords. What makes the band – and “A Human Certainty” – so cool, though, is its ability to reign in the disparate musical interests SST was trucking in. There’s a bit of punk, some improve and enough of a vocal hook to perhaps understand Saccharine Trust as the ur-band of the label.
Some lesser known acts turn in a track, like the Stains. And even the Meat Puppets in its early rattlings find a place on The Blasting Concept with punkier voicings of its oddities.
And by the time listeners make it all the way to Black Flag – sitting in the middle of it all – it was probably a shock to hear a few different singers. But that’s what the band means, to a certain extent: constant evolution. There wasn’t a single Black Flag sound, but a range of them. The same can be said for the top tier acts on the label, which are mostly represented here.
It was all still for a buck, but The Blasting Concept easily out stripes most other early eighties’ comps.