Government Issue 'Boycott Stabb Complete Session' LP

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”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”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” 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 finally 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 made 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