Named after a Minor Threat song, Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC offers an intimate view of DC’s infamous punk and hardcore scene from 1980 to 1990. Of course you’re going to hear accounts from Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, and Thurtson Moore (this is a punk documentary, after all), but what makes Salad Days’ memories seem a little sharper than the oft-repeated and now-calcified opinions/versiond of events of our punk veterans is the fresh insight offered by the writer and director, Scott Crawford, who participated in the scene by showing up to every show and publishing punk fanzines as a 12-year-old (who looked no older than 9).

Salad Days takes us through DC hardcore's inception story in the early 1980s, when the crime-riddled (“the mayor smoking crack in a hotel room with a whore was the least scandalous part”), government-run environment caused enough isolated (yet fairly well-bred) kids to band together to buck the uniformity their city stood for, laying out how/why the DIY ethos developed and sustained the scene that created hardcore punk, post-hardcore, political action and organization, “proto emo,” and the beginnings of the alternative music scene of the early 1990s. (Dave Grohl stops by; Mark Anderson of Positive Force takes credit for Nirvana on behalf of Washington, DC.)

The most interesting parts of the documentary (besides footage of Ian MacKaye with hair) are the discussions of what didn’t actually work. Intelligent interviews with members of bands like Minor Threat, Marginal Man, Government Issue, Jawbox, Scream, Dag Nasty, Gray Matter, and many more offer honest accounts, with special attention given to clearing up the scene-splitting Straight Edge edict that apparently started as an innocent gesture (against venues with age restrictions due to liquor laws) and wasn’t meant to get as militant as it did. There is also acknowledgement of the violence, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and other unfortunate themes that hardcore/punk unintentionally bred as it expanded to include young aggressive types with the wrong ideas about what slam dancing and shaving your head meant. And yes, there were women in the scene, and they worked hard to form their own bands, but were very much of the “we’re trying to be seen as musicians, not women musicians” mind-set (meanwhile, a very different scene was about to be formed in Olympia).

Salad Days is sold out tonight, but plays through the weekend. Click here for more info on dates, times, and tickets.