by Jesse Hudgins
One of the best aspects of going through vinyl at a record shop is coming across something that you and others may not have heard of. In October 2024, that was me when I came across a record recorded by One Last Wish: 1986.
One Last Wish is a hardcore/emo group from Washington D.C. that recorded one record and played just six shows. Rites of Spring members Brendan Canty, Edward Janney, and Guy Picciotto looked to continue writing music after Rites of Spring broke up in early 1986 shortly following the recording of their 7”, All Through a Life. The trio wrote music and early versions of songs on 1986 before adding Mike Hampton to the group after the breakup of the band Embrace. The four already had a history performing as a collective under the name The Brief Weeds, putting together two singles under K Records and playing a few shows. Hampton also helped produce Rites of Spring’s self-titled record, he played with Eddie in a group named Faith, and he was living with Guy and Brendan in what they dubbed Garfield House. Bringing on Hampton, according to Guy Picciotto, who also went to elementary and high school with Hampton, “made sense.”
D.C. hardcore band members going on to form new bands with members of their previous group was nothing new. Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson played in multiple bands together before forming Minor Threat. Even with One Last Wish, after the group, the band Happy Go Licky formed, and later, Canty and Picciotto joined Fugazi alongside MacKaye. I asked Picciotto what made the D.C. community so special that moments like this could happen often:
“The DC hardcore scene initially wasn’t super huge so certainly most everyone knew each other – many of us went to the same schools and hung out all the time living together in group houses. There was a lot of cross-pollination of making music together simply as a way to pass the time and to feel productive. This was all pre-internet obviously, so the distractions were limited and even more so for us as it wasn’t a scene that was super drug or booze-focused. The primary focus was music and being creative. It was also sort of an ethos that if one person left a group then that group would break up, change its name, and write new material. Some bands would replace members and maintain a certain umbrella of material/vision but most bands just split up so there was just a lot of churn going on all the time with people swapping places like in musical chairs or something. I think we all were also aware that something special was happening – certainly seeing the Bad Brains made us all feel empowered with a sense of possibility and that baton kept getting passed around from the Untouchables to Minor Threat to SOA to Faith to Void – it was just an avalanche of amazing bands, so we all felt drawn to participate.”
Even though they recruited Mike Hampton to their group, the band still had a problem on their hands. “Eddie, Mike Hampton, and I (Guy) all considered ourselves guitar players, not bass players, so we had a problem baked into the formation of the band,” Picciotto said. “At first, I tried to play bass, but it was too hard to keep time while also singing – the guitar is a lot more forgiving that way. Eddie ended up drawing the short stick and had to play bass which he never really loved, and which was a bit of a waste of his talents on the guitar.”
The lineup was set after this with Mike Hampton on guitar and backup vocals, Guy Picciotto on guitar and lead vocals, Edward Janney on bass and providing backing vocals and lead vocals on tracks “Friendship is Far” and “Sleep of the Stage,” and rounding it out was Brendan Canty on drums. Five months after the breakup of Rites of Spring, the group played their first show in August 1986. That November, the group went to Inner Ear Studios to record what became 1986. Picciotto said the biggest difference in writing 1986 compared to Rites of Spring was having more experience. Picciotto wrote most of the lyrics on the album, collaborating with Janney on “Shadow.” Janney wrote the lyrics in “Friendship is Far” and “Sleep of the Stage.”
The recording process of 1986 went well with the group including more overdubs on this release than they did on Rites of Spring. The recording of 1986 was “recorded in much the same manner as the ROS 7”.” The group used 16 tracks that allowed for heavy guitar layering, an aspect that Picciotto says, “is the aspect that is most unique about the record.”
Photos for the album’s artwork were taken from the band’s live shows. The album cover features a photo of Eddie taken at a venue called The Complex before the group had the name One Last Wish. The back of the album features a collage of photos from a 1986 show in September at Chevy Chase Community Center. The album insert includes photos from the recording sessions at Inner Ear Studios in 1986 and of Guy when the band performed at the 9:30 Club opening for Screaming Blue Messiahs.
After the disbanding Picciotto, Canty and Janney reunited, wanting to put something together that was less constructed, featured more improvision, and felt loose. From this, early songs from Happy Go Licky would form with the group planning to just be a three-piece. A few months later, former Rites of Spring bassist Mike Fellows joined back with the three, rounding out the group. Picciotto said it was “basically Rites of Spring all over again but with different songs, name, and sound.”
Picciotto reflected on the band’s active period:
“Looking back, it is hard for me to believe how much creativity was going on. We all had jobs, were going to school, and doing music full-on so life was just packed. In 1986, I was in 3 different bands: Rites of Spring, One Last Wish, and Happy Go Licky (not even counting side projects like the Brief Weeds). That was a lot of songs/ideas/lyrics to crank out in just one year. I think it was just a product of being young, living together communally, and just being inspired by all the music that was being made in DC at that time. It was just a very fertile moment.”
As a record, 1986 was ahead of its time. It is 23 minutes of well-crafted tunes rooted in hardcore and emo. Hampton’s guitar layering is on another level throughout the entire record. Janney’s bass parts are extremely catchy, especially in the opening track “Hide” and the third track “Break To Broken.” Canty’s drums are driving but not overpowering. Picciotto’s vocals are harsh, but necessarily harsh, perfectly complementing the lyrics. I love the vocals and lyrics on “Loss Like A Seed” and “This Time.” “This Time” is a favorite due to the ever-present backing vocals that delve into the theme of not having a voice and wondering if you ever had a voice to begin with.
When listening to this record, it’s easy to see how the sound featured throughout, and from similar bands, would inspire both the emo and hardcore genre. Picciotto expressed gratitude for the influence records like 1986 and others from Dischord and D.C. have:
“The fact that some people still get something from the music is obviously wonderful – be that a large or small number,” he said. “At the time we were just focused on the task at hand, and we weren’t projecting into the future or even really much farther than to our immediate circle in Washington DC. I didn’t start touring regularly until I joined Fugazi in 1987 so my mindset in 1986 was very localized and it was never a careerist one. I was just making music with my friends for our friends. That the music still resonates with some people now in some small ways is great, but it is only able to happen because Dischord was there to document it and to make it available to people. That is the great service that local labels that support local scenes do – they provide an opportunity for people to discover something that could have easily have disappeared without a trace.”
