It Just Deserves To Die: Dealing With It

D.R.I.’s 1985 Album: Dealing With It

Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, or D.R.I., marks the first spot on our journey at number 100 on Rolling Stone’s list. Immediately, we are hit with a “Does this count as punk?” album. My answer, quite frankly, is I do not care. I’ve argued over what is and isn’t punk enough in my life. I think it’s got the spirit, the je ne sais quoi, the telos, the quiddity, of punk. Blending hardcore and thrash metal, Dealing With It starts off heavy and loud, with Snap, before transitioning into what appears to be the biggest hit off the album, I’d Rather Be Sleeping only a minute and seven seconds later. This is something of a theme here with D.R.I.; they love short songs. There are 25 songs on the album, and the album is only 35 minutes long. Hell, Counter Attack is only 18 seconds long. You barely have time to finish processing that a new song has started before it’s over. It makes for an excellent album listening experience, you move from one song to the next with very little in the way of breaks.

There is an amusing downbeat moment early on in the album; on song 6, Mad Man, in which the father of the vocalist and drummer interrupts a recording session to complain about the noise. This then transitions into a classic semi-comedic/semi-serious “I hate my dad” song, before then becoming more serious as more of the character of the father is laid out; he’s not just angry at his kids for being too loud, he’s an abusive racist. To me, this is sort of a defining feature of the album: It appears rather childish at times, and sometimes that energy is welcome, but it often pivots to more serious subjects with a rapidity that can be jarring.

The album is extremely unsubtle with its political theming. There’s no room for nuance or depth of thought here. Stupid, Stupid War is about a refusal to serve in the military, to be a part of C.I.A. schemes and kill in the name of the country. Soup Kitchen is among the longer songs on the album, at two minutes and one second, about poverty and struggling with unemployment. Reaganomics merely consists of the lines “Reaganomics killing me / Reaganomics killing me / Reaganomics killing me / Reaganomics killing you,” repeated four times over 42 seconds. We don’t come to punk because it’s subtle, we come to it because it’s primal, it’s raw, and D.R.I. delivers on this front.

By far, my favorite song off the album was also the longest, coming in at three minutes and nineteen seconds, Argument then War is a screed against late Cold War warmongering, about the perplexing desire of the human race to kill ourselves. The simplistic lyrics compliment the message: it really doesn’t need to be more complicated than this. We kill each other because we find a grim satisfaction in it. We argue, then we turn to violence because the simple parts of our mind lead us to take this path.

This album I think was a good place for me to start this project. It’s something I hadn’t listened to before, it was in a subgenre I don’t really touch often, and it was an enjoyable experience. If every album off this list can provide me with the same experience Dealing With It did, this entire endeavor will be well worth it.

Up Next: Paramore’s 2009 album Brand New Eyes.