Our occasional series “Secret History” features profiles of classic D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District’s contributions to music over time. This installment finds DCist speaking with members of Chisel about their debut LP, 8 A.M. All Day (Gern Blandsten, 1996).

Before the Pharmacists ever prescribed their first dose of politically-infused, Thin Lizzy-informed indie rock, Ted Leo headed up the D.C.-by-way-of-South Bend neo-mod-punk outfit Chisel. Filtering post-punk and hardcore through mod and soul, Leo and his accomplices created a thrilling and exciting sound with a debt to the past but an eye on the future. Chisel stood out from the pack of early ’90s punk-poppers due to an abundance of style and clever concepts, setting the foundation for Leo’s subsequent sound and establishing the Jersey troubadour as a talent to watch.

Chisel, with Leo on vocals and guitar, Chris Infante on bass, and John Dugan on drums, formed at the University of Notre Dame in the early 1990s. Leo was a veteran of the New Jersey and New York all-ages punk scene, while Dugan had been playing in D.C. hardcore bands since high school. After Infante graduated, South Bend native Chris Norborg replaced him on bass.

Norborg’s tastes were a bit different, and helped to shape the more mod-influenced direction of the group. “I had never been a big punk rock kid,” Norborg said. “I was always a big ’60s music fan. I loved The Who and the Beatles and Big Star…. To be fair, my coming into the band, I think there was a natural evolution towards being more sort of a mod/pop ’60s sort of rock band.

“[Early Chisel] were very different from how we ultimately turned out, because Ted was much closer to his hardcore roots at that point. The stuff that they were doing was much more in line with East Coast hardcore stuff.”