Gray Matter

Formed in the summertime 1983 from your ashes of many Washington, D.C., region punk bands, Grey Matter’s mixture of melody and punk power helped essential the 1984-1985 punk resurgence in the country’s capitol. Comprising guitarist Tag Haggerty and drummer Dante Ferrando (both of questionable 1st wave Dischord music group Iron Mix), guitarist and vocalist Jeff Turner (creator of WGNS cassette label and studio room), and bassist Steve Niles, Grey Matter was influenced by English punk rings. The music group rehearsed but hardly ever performed out, and it wasn’t before summer time of 1984 which they performed their 1st important general public gigs, obtaining alliance with rings like Rites of Planting season and Beefeater. The group produced their 1st recordings in November of 1984, entering Dischord’s “home” studio, Internal Ear, with Small Threat’s Ian Mackaye helping with creation. The recordings, which uncovered the impact of early-D.C. punk (“Grey Matter,” “Caffeine Blues”), also warned regarding the hazards of punk nostalgia (“Retrospect”) and highlighted a unexpected cover from the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” was the initial hint from the band’s solid pop streak. The record was released by a little local label, after that reissued by Dischord in 1990. The group strike their stride in the August 1985 recordings that became the Consider It Back again EP. Crashing power chords blended with pop melodies and hurrying rhythms on “Chutes and Ladders” as well as the name cut, as well as the record stands being a landmark from the middle-’80s Dischord design. The record was cut during what had become referred to as “Trend Summertime” in D.C., an interval of punk solidarity that helped switch attentions from personal worries to politics and social types, paving just how for latter time heroes like Fugazi. Jon Kirschten changed Haggerty in nov 1985, however the music group had nearly work its’ course, splitting up within the springtime of the next season. Turner and Niles reunited with Haggerty in Three, including former Small Threat drummer (and Dischord co-founder) Jeff Nelson while Ferrando continued to try out with Ignition. Turner also used Senator Flux. The music group reunited in past due 1990, touring and documenting Thog, an excellent disc that demonstrated the group’s understand of pop punk sensibilities but lacked their previous power. They known as it quits once and for all in 1993.