I didn't pick this one up for a while after I grabbed Volume 1, and it shows up in how my taste developed. Hüsker Dü was on Volume 1, had a reissue of their early Reflex/New Alliance records on Rhino, and an in-print SST catalog. So I was super into them by the time I copped this in 1995. Likewise with Negative Approach, whose discography on Touch & Go was as big a deal for me as "The First Four Years". I'd been turned onto Fear via a dubbed copy of their infamous 1982 Saturday Night Live appearance. And EVERYONE from D.C. covered "12XU" by Wire, leading to purchases of the first three LPs, helpfully reissued on CD by Restless Retro.
Zero Boys and Black Market Baby, however, were mostly out of print, with some records available on Germany's Bitzcore, which didn't have great distribution in southwestern Virginia. I wouldn't get into the Germs or X or the Dils until Frontier put out their Dangerhouse surveys. Naked Raygun was relegated to rumors and 3rd generation dubs until the Quarterstick reissues came out in the late 90's. I'm STILL not sure I've ever seen a Strangehold record in the wild.
But that's the cool thing about both volumes of Faster & Louder. The songs have a way of burrowing in, so that when you saw that Posh Boy pressing of "Living In Darkness" or a cassette of "Over The Edge", you knew to snap them up, because you'd heard "Bloodstains" and "Romeo" for the first time on a comp CD. This wasn't what was coming out on Epitaph or Lookout!; this was the first wave, where it all began. And while it felt like a different era back then, it was, like, only 10 years old in a lot of cases. There's truly no way to compare it to anything today. But, shit, man, I'm glad this was there for me.
1 comment:
Thanks for both!
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