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When punk and new wave were exploding in New York City in the late ’70s and early 1980s, Allan Day wasn\u2019t old enough to drive a car, much less play a gig in a bar. But the New Jersey youth was inspired to his core by the sounds coming out of the metropolis across the Hudson River. So, he wrote an album\u2019s worth of original songs with the intention of eventually recording\/performing them with a group. But when the band he envisioned failed to take shape, he got on with his life. Now, several decades later and 700 miles away, Day is belatedly realizing his teen dream with the self-titled debut album by The Discs, which was released Oct. 30.<\/p>\n
Though the dozen songs were recorded in Asheville in July,\u00a0The Discs<\/em> virtually screams \u201c1979.\u201d When Day wrote the tunes, he was deeply immersed in the cutting-edge music of that era. \u201cWe were hearing and reading about this new movement called punk rock,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I had a very good friend of mine turn me on to the Ramones.\u201d<\/p>\n That Ramones album \u2014 1979\u2019s Road to Ruin<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 was a catalyst. \u201cI saw them at a free concert in Central Park. That just blew everything open,\u201d Day recalls. \u201cI started investigating, looking to see if there were any other groups in the genre.\u201d He quickly discovered bands from England as well, including the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Buzzcocks.<\/p>\n Day, who by that point had been studying guitar for several years, was captivated. He feels the new sounds \u201copened my world up to what could be possible in terms of message delivery through music.” He was also intrigued by the straightforward nature of punk and new wave. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a lot of special skill needed on your instrument to actually play this music,\u201d he notes. \u201cAnd I liked the fact that it harkened back to roots rock and roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Punk\u2019s loud, often aggressive tone was appealing to a teenager as well. \u201cAll of these things coalesced for me and gave me an opportunity to write songs and have a voice at a time where I didn\u2019t have one,\u201d Day says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s when I started to write this batch of material for this fictitious band, The Discs.\u201d<\/p>\n But Day\u2019s typewritten songs never went away, and right after he relocated to Asheville this past summer to pursue postgraduate work, he decided to revive his long-dormant musical project. He dug out the old songs and found that they still held up melodically and lyrically. \u201cThat kid was really onto something,\u201d he says with a chuckle. As he explains on The Discs’ Bandcamp page, some of his \u201cchord progressions [were] committed to memory, some [songs were] demoed over the years, others coaxed from the recesses [of memory].\u201d Working alone save the help of a socially-distanced recording engineer at MAG Audio Technologies in Mills River \u2014 this was in the middle of a pandemic, after all \u2014 and with financing via an Indiegogo fundraiser<\/a>, Day created The Discs\u2019 debut album, and\u00a0resisted any inclination to \u201cupdate\u201d or otherwise change the songs he had written as a teenager.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to alter the vision of that kid,\u201d Day says. \u201c99% of the recording remains faithful to the original vision.\u201d With its stripped-down, no-reverb aesthetic, Road to Ruin<\/em> would provide a template for The Discs<\/em>\u2019 production values. On record, The Discs sound like a cross between Johnny Burnette\u2019s Rock and Roll Trio and The Buzzcocks. And the songwriter\u2019s mix of passion, angst and youthful exuberance shines through on catchy, edgy rockers like \u201cMisanthropist\u201d and \u201cFather of Profanity.\u201d<\/p>\n On the Bandcamp page, Day sums up his motivation for making the long-delayed album: \u201cBecause recording and releasing a Discs album in hellish 2020 would simply be more fun than not doing so.\u201d Yet The Discs\u2019 story doesn\u2019t end with the release of the new album. When it\u2019s responsible and practical to do so, Day plans to assemble a full band to play live and record more of his original \u201cold new wave\u201d songs, whose style he believes is timeless: \u201cWhen you think about newer genres like pop punk, they\u2019re just updated versions of bands like the Ramones or The Buzzcocks.\u201d\u00a0thediscs1.bandcamp.com<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When punk and new wave were exploding in New York City in the late ’70s and early 1980s, Allan Day wasn\u2019t old enough to drive a car, much less play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,50,59],"tags":[4405,4406],"class_list":["post-20235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-new-wave","category-punk","tag-allan-day","tag-the-discs","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-50-id","cat-59-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20235"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20264,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20235\/revisions\/20264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/discs.jpg\")
After teaming with a like-minded friend who sang, Day ran an ad in the local paper, looking for a bassist and drummer. A promising response came from a bassist who modeled her style upon the work of Talking Heads\u2019 Tina Weymouth. \u201cWe loved the idea of [potentially] having a woman in the band,\u201d Day says. But when they went\u00a0<\/strong>to meet the bassist, she was a no-show. Eventually, the concept of The Discs — with a name inspired in part by British group The Records —\u00a0 faded into memory, and Day moved on to playing other styles of music, including hard rock, metal, power pop, acoustic\/ambient and other genres.<\/p>\n