Angst (U.S. band)

Angst was an American band from San Francisco, California. In mid-1978, brothers Joseph Pope and Jon E. Risk formed their first punk rock group, the Instants, in Boulder, Colorado. The band gigged in the Denver/Boulder area before moving to England in late 1979 where they lasted only a few months. In 1980 Joseph and Jon then settled in San Francisco and formed Angst along with drummer Michael Hursey (later replaced by Andy Kaps).

Angst played their first show in mid-1981, and by the end of 1982 had contributed songs to Sub Pop (when it was still a cassette magazine) and the Alternative Tentacles/Maximum RocknRoll compilation, Not So Quiet on the Western Front. From the outset the band gigged regularly in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and sometime in 1982 they played a show with the Middle Class and 100 Flowers in San Francisco. John Talley-Jones (Urinals/100 Flowers) was impressed enough with the group that he offered to release a record for them on his label, Happy Squid Records. Angst traveled to Los Angeles shortly thereafter and recorded seven songs at Radio Tokyo studios (engineered by Ethan James) that would become their debut, eponymous 12”, released in 1983.

Though Angst played many venues with a wide variety of bands, the majority of their shows locally were within the punk/hardcore scene. Their eclectic mix of punk, country, pop, 1960s garage, etc. was not particularly well received by the strict hardcore audiences of early 1980s San Francisco. Angst actively sought out and played with many of Los Angeles-based SST Records’ bands (Minutemen, Saccharine Trust, Meat Puppets, Black Flag, et al.), and in 1984 was signed to the label by Joe Carducci, who subsequently produced the first two (of four) LPs that Angst recorded for the label (the latter LPs were produced by Vitus Matare of the Last).

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