Written by: Dave Cantrell

Legendary indie label Bar/None have been celebrating their 30th anniversary all throughout 2016 and as part of that jubilee they’ve digitally reissued all four studio albums plus a live EP from storied Midwest garage punkers The Micronotz – still known as the Mortal Micronotz when their eponymous debut was released in 1982 – and we here at SEM decided that there would simply be no more appropriate way to pay our own tribute to the pride of Lawrence K-A than by bringing you a full-length video of the lads tearing it up live in 1985. Recorded at the historic First Avenue in Minneapolis on July 29th of  that year, it offers as pure a view of the quartet’s hard-punching, invincibly melodic brand of 80’s college radio punk, their ragged precision placing them smack in the middle of a spectrum that sees the Adolescents at one end and Hüsker Dü at the other. While the records are great and well worth grabbing (you can do that here, by the way), there’s little doubt that the band, at this point consisting of Jay Hauptli, John Harper, David Dale, and Steve Eddy, were – and are – best seen live, a point we think is made persuasively clear by these 39+ minutes. Dig it. [feature photo: Jason Willis; check his pretty damn cool website out here]