Poison Idea - Pearls Before Swine: The Early Years Volume 2 [LP - Green]
Release Date: December 12, 2025
Label: TKO
Seeing what an integral part Tom 'Pig Champion' Roberts is to the legacy of POISON IDEA, it might be hard to imagine the band ever existing without his six-strings of fury leading the way. But when they first started out in 1980, the band’s line-up consisted solely of Chris Tense on guitar, Helmet’s Henry Bogdan on drums and founder Jerry A. Lang on vocals and saxophone. It might also be difficult to fathom them not coming out of the gate as a blazing hardcore punk unit, yet when they first started out, they were more inspired by the challenging and disjointed sound of New York City’s No Wave scene than anything coming from the west coast of America. 'The No Wave stuff was hard to understand and kind of scary, so that’s what made it interesting' tells Lang, 'But when that first wave of hardcore hit, it hit so hard. It was breathtaking, so I was like, this is what I want to do now'. Ditching Bogdan and gaining Dean Johnson on drums, the band set out to be one of the first hardcore punk bands in Portland. Sadly, recordings of their first incarnation have yet to surface, but due to the tireless efforts of Mark Rainey and his TKO empire, we can now get an earful of their first stab at hardcore sans Tom here on Pearls Before Swine: The Early Years Volume 2. Kicking off the collection, we have POISON IDEA performing their first ever gig as a high-velocity punk band on New Years Eve 1980 – truly an incredible find. 'We put our gear in shopping carts and pushed it to the venue' Jerry recalls as well as the reaction from Portland’s first wave of hardcore kids, 'They only had 30 seconds in a song to throw each other around and pogo, so they’d go for it. It came naturally, like the music possessed them'. The embryonic versions presented here of future POISON IDEA classics like 'Give It Up' and 'Castration' are played in a more quirky and herky-jerky manner than how they would appear three years later on their debut seven-inch EP, Pick Your King. This recording also holds the most unfiltered display of Germs vocalist Darby Crash’s influence on Jerry. 'His voice gave me the license to go' states Jerry. 'You didn’t have to be a trained singer. Just open up your soul and scream'.
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Release Date: December 12, 2025
Label: TKO
Seeing what an integral part Tom 'Pig Champion' Roberts is to the legacy of POISON IDEA, it might be hard to imagine the band ever existing without his six-strings of fury leading the way. But when they first started out in 1980, the band’s line-up consisted solely of Chris Tense on guitar, Helmet’s Henry Bogdan on drums and founder Jerry A. Lang on vocals and saxophone. It might also be difficult to fathom them not coming out of the gate as a blazing hardcore punk unit, yet when they first started out, they were more inspired by the challenging and disjointed sound of New York City’s No Wave scene than anything coming from the west coast of America. 'The No Wave stuff was hard to understand and kind of scary, so that’s what made it interesting' tells Lang, 'But when that first wave of hardcore hit, it hit so hard. It was breathtaking, so I was like, this is what I want to do now'. Ditching Bogdan and gaining Dean Johnson on drums, the band set out to be one of the first hardcore punk bands in Portland. Sadly, recordings of their first incarnation have yet to surface, but due to the tireless efforts of Mark Rainey and his TKO empire, we can now get an earful of their first stab at hardcore sans Tom here on Pearls Before Swine: The Early Years Volume 2. Kicking off the collection, we have POISON IDEA performing their first ever gig as a high-velocity punk band on New Years Eve 1980 – truly an incredible find. 'We put our gear in shopping carts and pushed it to the venue' Jerry recalls as well as the reaction from Portland’s first wave of hardcore kids, 'They only had 30 seconds in a song to throw each other around and pogo, so they’d go for it. It came naturally, like the music possessed them'. The embryonic versions presented here of future POISON IDEA classics like 'Give It Up' and 'Castration' are played in a more quirky and herky-jerky manner than how they would appear three years later on their debut seven-inch EP, Pick Your King. This recording also holds the most unfiltered display of Germs vocalist Darby Crash’s influence on Jerry. 'His voice gave me the license to go' states Jerry. 'You didn’t have to be a trained singer. Just open up your soul and scream'.
