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”.
The remainder of this release is culled from a recording done in June of 1981 at a birthday party for Kim Kincaid, vocalist for local punk group, Neo Boys. The event was held at the short-lived but groundbreaking punk venue for Portland, Clockwork Joe’s. “Clockwork Joe’s was like Peter Pan’s island of lost boys” Lang recollects, “There was a lot of booze, a lot of drugs and a lot of young kids”. Hearing this ferocious, tightly-wound set, one can only imagine the sweaty debauchery that occurred that night, especially during the pounding rendition of “Underage” presented here, yet another future Pick Your King track.
Despite their progression, there were still elements to POISON IDEA mark two that stuck in Jerry’s craw, namely Chris Tense’s apprehension to turn up his amp. Concurrently, Tom Roberts, guitarist for local band Imperialist Pigs, was equally fed up with the unpredictable, booze-fueled behavior of their vocalist, Eddie Avery. “It was at a party in July that I fired the whole band and Tom fired his singer. So, I just took the rest of the Imperialist Pigs and started calling them Poison Idea” Lang reveals. When it became apparent their drummer wasn’t up to snuff, a forgiving Jerry welcomed Dean Johnson back into the fold. Not long after, Tense was brought in on bass. It is with this line-up that Poison Idea galvanized into the powerhouse unit that would record their classic initial triumvirate of records: the aforementioned seven-inch EP Pick Your King (1983), the twelve-inch EP Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes (1984) and their first full-length, Kings of Punk (1986).
Listening to these newfound recordings, it’s abundantly clear there was something sinister and special to POISON IDEA right from the beginning. Being granted the chance to hear them in their primordial form shouldn’t be taken lightly. So crank the ever-livin’ shit out of Pearls Before Swine: The Early Years Volume 2 and thank your lucky stars for the opportunity..
-Tony Rettman, September 2025
