The recent death of Poison Idea guitarist Pig Champion has hit me pretty hard. Poison Idea were playing hi-speed, brutal hardcore years before a lot of other bands caught on. Their demo, Darby Crash Rides Again, is at least a few years ahead of the curve. Pick Your King, their debut ep, is arguably the best hardcore record ever made. I can't think of a way to dispute that. As they went on they continued to put out solid record after solid, even experimenting a little bit with melody and heaviness. They peaked with the early nineties LP Feel The Darkness, which combines the speed of the early stuff with a very “dark” tinge.

We Must Burn was actually the first punk record I owned on vinyl. I didn't even have a record player yet; but I ordered that, a Flipper CD, and the William Burroughs/Kurt Cobain Split CD from a record distro. I was 13 probably. Whenever 8th grade was. I accidentally put down We Must Burn for vinyl (Orange!) and had to go to a friend's house to make a tape copy of it. Whoops. I wouldn't actually get a record player until a year or two later. Pretty cool I got to hear a Gism cover in 8th grade though.

Unlike a lot of bands, Poison Idea never did a bad record. They never changed their sound to fit what the masses thought “punk” was about that week.

The tributes have been pouring in from all over the net. Here are some of them:

A Blaze In The New Jersey Sky
Something I Learned Today
Punk Vault
7 Inch Punk
Strange Reaction

Also here is an interview Suburban Voice did with Pig + Jerry.