Re-up: Charm City Suicides - s/t

There are strange doings afoot here in Bodymore. To be fair, the birthday post was already written, and scheduled to post, and, fuck it, why wreck the schedule just to put in new news? My boss approached me with a proposition Friday. Suffice it to say, it scared the shit out me. I have no idea how to react except to jump in a give this new thing a shot...soldier up, as one might say. But it's weird, someone you respect looking you in the eye and telling you they believe in you. I've always had a hard time hearing it, even if I was always able to say the same thing in total sincerity. "I'm proud of you." "I believe in you." "I trust you." We live in cynical times, where every commenter would rather drop a glib line than honestly state how they feel. I watched Can't Hardly Wait tonight with the wife. We're both still full of the birthday buffet she put together for the family and I this morning. I feel like a big ol' fat ass, packed to the sinuses with creamed chipped beef and fresh cantaloupe. It gets harder to have true enthusiasm for these kinds of events every year; not due to the excitement of the event, mind you. Again, it's just hard to be truly joyful when life surrounds you with post-irony...insincerity...the wink and the nod. But fear not, here's where the music comes in, kids. There was a band around these parts a few years ago by the name of Charm City Suicides. They were the band that made you fall back in love with a live show. Their screamy, trashy garage sound was equal parts Oblivians, Black Flag & Sam and Dave. They were the perfect teenage band. They were honest and wore their attitudes, along with their hearts, on their sleeves. They fucking rocked. Like a lot of music, I talked mad shit on C.C.S. for the first couple of years I was aware of them. Then I saw them play a show in Fallston shortly before I was released, sometime in the fall of 2001. Like just about every other band I ever talked a bunch of crap about, Charm City Suicides knocked my dick in the dirt that night. Playing to a crowd of about 50 kids in a Republican-town V.F.W., they said a lot about the power of D.I.Y., of how proud and strong youth can be, and how it doesn't matter being cool, looking hot. It was angry and smart and I'm still stoked I got to see them three more times before breaking up in October 2002. During their last set ever, I pulled off the most perfect stage dive I've ever done. I haven't dove off a stage since. The record known as Charm City Suicides, "I", was originally released as an LP by Vermin Scum Records in 2001. This quickly went out of print, and bookended Vermin Scum's long record as the best label for Baltimore & Annapolis-local punk. Mark McCoy heard the LP and released a version on CD on Youth Attack! in time for C.C.S. to break up. That's the rip to be found here. Every town has a punk rock band full of piss, vinegar, three chords and the truth. For five years, Baltimore had Charm City Suicides. 

(Postscript: this blog was originally posted on my 31st birthday in 2008. A lot of water has passed under that bridge since then. I still love the Charm City Suicides.)

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