various artists - California Ain't Fun No More

This one is a bit of a perfect storm. Let me explain.

It's put together by Jason Duncan from the Parasites, who runs Just Add Water, which is the place I learned about Jesse Hector. JAW put out the CD; Berlin's Alien Snatch Records handled the vinyl. Chuck Loose from the Crumbs did the cover, which reminded me of a lot of Baltimore-local artwork from the same period. This one popped up on eBay as a penny CD; a bona-fide bargain at that price. The artwork took me back, even at 300x300 dpi, so I didn't give a shit what was actually on the record.

This is twelve tracks worth of delicious West Coast garage rock circa 2002. Pre-Burger Records, contemporaneous with Gearhead, Estrus, and Man's Ruin and all kinds of other great Mordam-distributed labels. They're the sort of bands championed by the likes of Hit List, the knuckle dragger's MRR and a zine whose demise I've long lamented. I'm a bit sad it took me 22 years after the release to cop this one.

It's just a good-ass, "drive around with the windows down and a cold drink in your crotch"-type record, even missing the two vinyl-only songs.

Discogs

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David Axelrod - Anthology II

You start with Terminator X, with a tape you bought in Quebec City in 1992 and hid the entire trip home from your grandparents, and work within a year backwards to "Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel". From there, you jog sideways to Grand Masters Kaz and Theodore on the "Wild Style" soundtrack. You sprint forward to chase everyone on "Masters of the 1s & 2s", and you end up with Coldcut, Invisibl Scratch Piklz, DJ Shadow, which takes you into Solesides/Quannum, Deltron 3030, and the guy whose sound underpins much of it: David Axelrod.

Soul-funk and jazz-funk were, when I was a kid, fucking jokes, the realm of bare-chested hipsters with Fu Manchus and perms, stinking of cologne and dusted with cocaine. But to view both genres through that stereotype is like saying Judaism is all space lasers and blood libels; it just ain't true. They're black as fuk, harder than hell, proto-hip hop that just grooved so hard. And David Axelrod's production fingerprints were all over it. I thought I'd written about him before, but it sure seems not to be the case. In addition to his solo work, most of which has been reissued by Now-Again over the past ten years, he produced so many standout records for Capitol in the 60s and 70s. Lou Rawls, Cannonball and Nat Adderly, Stan Kenton, Willie Tee; these, along with his solo work, make up a body of work that still isn't fully acknowledged by any but the deeper crate diggers.

Alright, I've waxed poetic enough. I like David Axelrod. I like his stuff a lot. It seems like a real miss that so many of his records, even the inconsistent ones, remain out of print. This anthology came out in the UK in 2002, I'm guessing it was to ride off the attention brought by his self-titled record on Mo'Wax that came out the year before. This one has a pair of stone-cold Lou Rawls classics, two from Cannonball Adderly, two from actor David McCallum that are pretty great, and, of course, a bunch of cuts from Axelrod's three Capitol releases. Listen for yourself. I won't fault you for unbuttoning your shirt down to your navel and pouring some brown liquor.

Discogs

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various artists - Punch Drunk III

I apparently own three of the five Punch Drunk samplers, which, as I acknowledge it, might sound like a complaint, but is more a reflection of just how much fucking music I own. It truly boggles the mind to

1. Try to remember when I grabbed these, and
2. Try to figure out why I held onto them.

My taste was so less refined in 2002 when this came out, and all these bands that Bruce Roehrs championed at the time wear barely on my radar, Electric Frankenstein and Angelic Upstarts notwithstanding. 22 years on, however, and I'm a lot more stoked listening to this front to back. I'm now a monster fan of that Riot City/Pax/No Future sound that TKO proudly carried the banner for, so this is just a treat for me.

To steal from the cover, this is definitely better than a kick in the head.

Discogs

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various artists - The Giant Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

I always thought Shepard Fairey's whole deal was a bit cringey. But I can think of a lot worse things that a youngster could have walked out of Hot Topic with back in '02. This one serves as half label sampler for Boston's Fork In Hand Records, half "here's what's cool in edgy rock" comp, all wrapped inside Fairey's post-Giant/pre-Hope aesthetic. There's a Hives song and an Icarus Line song and, honestly, even the songs I don't like aren't bad, per se. It's just not always my thing. And far be it for me to gate keep.regarding a 22-year-old compilation. You do you, boo.

Sometimes, I don't even know what I'm talking about.

Discogs

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various artists - How We Rock

Think of this as a sophomore-level sampler of the sleaze rock days of the early aughts, which are being celebrated by my peers and old acquaintances. I guess you can call me a "well wisher", in as much as I don't wish anyone any specific harm.

What were we talking about again? Medium drugs? The last great rock 'n' roll major label spending spree? How low-res a scan of the cover I found?

I promise, the cover of the CD/2xLP is a lot more attractive than what appears here. And the artist list (the Hives, Turbonegro, New Bomb Turks, Supersuckers, RFTC) is front to back awesome, just a fist pumping, head banging, hip thrusting tracklist that still takes you out behind the elementary school and gets you pregnant.

Discogs

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various artists - Fighting Music

This one should probably be subtitled, "The Soundtrack of Summer 2001".

A shared sampler of the early days for Boston's Deathwish and Bridge 9 Records, along with Philadelphia's now-defunct Thorp Records, just about every single band on this CD played the I-95 circuit between Richmond and Boston between 2000 and 2002. And I saw just about all of them. It was a time I remember best with snippets of Derek Hess art, zip-up hoodies, cheeseburger subs from the Greek diner down from Reptilian, and a half-dozen hole-in-the-wall venues, all long since gone.

When I was younger, I had this expectation that the music I listened to 20 years ago would sound dated. Is it because the music I first heard as a child in the early 80s sounded ancient, and I assumed, no matter how connected to it I was, it was all going to sound old two decades later? Yet when I re-listened to this a few days ago, I didn't just get snagged with nostalgia. "There's A Black Hole..." and "Thaw" and "Your Airstream Future" still feel vital, and fit seemlessly within any mix of modern HC and punk I could whip out,

If you see this one out and about for a buck, I say snag it. Give your in-dash CD player a workout.

Discogs

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various artists - ClePunk.com Volume One

Smog Veil Records in Cleveland put out a ton of great records over their 30 years in existence. The Offbeats discography they put out in 2002 just rips, "The Day The Earth Met Rocket From The Tombs" is a must have for any self-respecting Dead Boys or Pere Ubu fan, and they released great records from Obnox, This Moment in Black History, x_x, and the Pagans. It's all good stuff worth keeping an eye peeled open for.

This is not one of those worthy releases. That's not talking shit, or even implying it's bad. Compiled by the folks at clepunk.com, I'm sure I copped this because I've never been afraid of a scene sampler, and it was on S.V., who'd never steered me wrong. But there aren't much in the way of standouts here, IMO. I was familiar with Allergic To Whores when I got this; they'd put out a pair of albums on Sound Pollution. The Unknown came from that vein of Midwestern pop punk from whence sprang Screeching Weasel and Dillinger 4. There's a band called Hellvis who play...you guessed it...psychobilly. There's also a band called Standing 69s, and one called Jacknife Powerbombs, and one called Phestur, so if you're into clever band names, you'll probably be way stoked on this.

This one might not be worth the $3 (plus shipping) you'd pay on Discogs for a copy, but it's better than a sharp poke in the dick. Enjoy.

Discogs

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Organic – The Life And Times Of Sal Sagev

I think this is going to be the last single artist release I post for a while. I've been considering going compilation/sampler only for a long time, and that's all I have left in my queue, so now's as good a time as any.

Organic was a punk rock band from Las Vegas who released a single 7" via the nascent Microcosm Publishing. Per the liner notes, they self-released a CD and a demo tape before going, as most punk bands go, the way of the dodo.

But they weren't forgotten.

In 2002, Microcosm teamed up with Boss Tuneage to compile the old songs, add eight new songs, throw in a couple of period live tracks, and, Bob's your uncle, you get "The Life And Times Of Sal Sagev". Twenty years later, I'd add it onto an online order because it was on Boss Tuneage, it was cheap, and someone told me a long time ago it'd remind me of Crimpshrine.

They were right; it did remind me of Crimpshrine.

Discogs

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Measles Mumps Rubella – Summer 2002 Demonstration Model

Double Dagger. Jesuseater. Economist. Black Eyes. Crispus Attucks. Q And Not U. Liars Academy. Pageninetynine. Oxes. Municipal Waste. Measles Mumps Rubella. Those were the sounds of my summer twenty years ago. I hesitate to call it a golden age for the Baltimore/DC/NoVA metro area, but it definitely was the first time where I felt I could go to a life-changing show any given night. And I pretty much did.

It was a High On Fire show where I remember seeing MMR for the first time. I remember being really bummed out that there weren't any Baltimore bands in support, but psyched that Black Eyes was going to play. They had already played a few gigs up north, and had just owned the show every time. I knew very little about Measles Mumps Rubella, except that one of the guys was in Panopoly Academy, and another one of the guys had done some stuff with His Name Is Alive. Pretty "meh" credentials, as far as I was concerned at the time.

But they lit it up when they opened up the show. Brett sang and played percussion, alive like Fela Kuti fronting Gang Of Four. In about 30 minutes, they blasted through a half dozen sweaty songs, setting the stage for almost certain disappointment with the rest of the show. It's one of those nights I can only remember in little blasts of sound and light, a feeling more than a concrete memory. I'd see MMR play a handful more times, but they never had the same sort of impact of punks playing disco than they did that night in 2002.

Discogs

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various artists - The Philadelphia Sound

One of my favorite 10" releases of all time. Purchased mostly for the two early-era Paint It Black tracks, kept for the early exposure to Dave Hause (via the Curse). The Knives Out cuts also slap, and I remember very little of the Go! For The Throat songs, but, hey, six out of eight is a pretty damned good percentage.

I remain pretty sad about the fate of the CD sampler/benefit compilation/scene report. There's really no reason to put the work in to compile something like this, not when Spotify playlists seem to be what a lot of folks would rather listen to. "The Philadelphia Sound" remains a really cool snapshot of where things were just north of me in my mid-20s, highlighting the bands we'd host every weekend, or trek up I-95 to go see on our days off.

Discogs

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Paint It Black - demo

I think I got this at Paint It Black's second show; a last-minute addition to a Baltimore matinee that I wasn't working, but if it was on a Saturday, I was almost certainly going to attend, regardless of the lineup. Checking out Dr. Dan and Dave's post-Kid Dynamite band ended up being the focus of a day that, if faltering memory still serves, was otherwise full of mediocre mosh metal. It was a bonus that Andy Nelson from Affirmative Action Jackson was in the band, too.

There was a ton of good stuff happening in Philadelphia at the time, and this demo still reminds me why we'd drive up I95 for shows. Lots of dudes consistently topping their earlier bands and riding a cresting wave of DIY into greater attention. THIS is what I wanted to hear.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Re-up: Vesper. & Dan Sartain - tour promo

Note, 24 March 2021: It wasn't via Facebook or News app or Instagram or BBS that I found out Dan Sartain had passed away recently. It was during my nightly scroll through Wikipedia's "Recent deaths" section. It's macabre and a bit weird to discover someone you knew, albeit not well, via such an impersonal method.

Dan's family has set up a GoFundMe to fund his memorial. If this recording means anything to you, and you have a few bucks to kick up, I'd suggest sending it their way to honor a musician who died far too you.

This is easily the weirdest, rarest (?) thing in my collection. I got this unsolicited in the mail when I was splitting time booking at the Talking Head and Charm City Art Space. It had a Alabama return address, and went into the stack of "I'll listen to later". I guess the stack wasn't that big, because I got to it, liked what I heard, and I guess I booked Dan Sartain and Vesper. a show in Baltimore. I say "I guess" because I have zero recollection of booking the show, but a year later, I ran into Dan when he was opening for Beehive and the Barracudas, and he said hi and bought me a beer. It was that kind of time in my life.

Now, there's no listing this on Discogs, although maybe I got the CD-R from the folks at Skybucket Records. Shoot, I'm not even sure I have it still; I'm pretty anal about entering my collection on Discogs, and I don't have an entry for it. Vesper. has a strong "2002 indie vibe" present in their three songs. Having not been able to find out anything else about them surprises me; the songs sound pretty good. The three Dan Sartain songs here all appeared on his 2003 Swami record, "Dan Sartain V.s The Serpientes", but these demo versions predate the John Reis/Gar Wood sessions. I hadn't listened to these in years, but upon relistening, I remembered why I liked 'em. It recalls a lot of what I like in early rock 'n' roll: tuneful, energetic, sexy, and a little dangerous.

It pleases me to no end that Mr. Sartain not only has a new record coming out soon ("Fall 2020", says ye olde Bandcampe), but that it's all interpretations of 50s and 60s music from American westerns. "Western Hills" has been out digitally since April, but there's a limited-to-500-copies vinyl version headed our way. I'd be remiss to not note that the man is doing a cover of "The Return of Ringo" by Ennio Morricone here; in my mind, that's reason enough to buy it.

Click here to download.

Trial By Fire - Ringing In The Dawn

Trial By Fire was one of those hardcore bands that came out of the Wilson Center scene in WDC around the turn of the new millenium. Kevin from Majority Rule played bass; Jason, who was the only non-Kane brother to play in Turbine (who did a split with M.J.), sang and played guitar. Colin and Mike were DC hardcore kids who'd round out the lineup. They go on to do more things: Mike would play drums in the Loved Ones and Dark Blue after heading up to Philly; Colin would help start Cloak/Dagger with his brother Aaron, Matt from Majority Rule, and Colin K. and Jason from Count Me Out. They played fast, political songs of a type that paired well with the likes of Strike Anywhere and Propaghandi. It was whip smart and danceable so of course I loved it.

It was, of course, a "big" deal when they ended up recording with Brian McTernan at Salad Days and releasing what'd be their only record on Jade Tree. They'd burnt fast and bright since their demo had come out the year before; now they'd essentially be filling the same spot as the beloved but disbanded Kid Dynamite on Jade Tree's roster. But they didn't last very long. If memory serves (and it's fading fast), they would themselves break up within a year.

And that's the way it's gone for most of punk immemorial. You get a few years, play some shows, put out a demo and hopefully a record, and you split up. Maybe you get lucky and someone remembers you 15 or 20 or 30 years later and says, "you should check this out." So here's your Sunday wake up call.

Discogs

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Crucial Unit - Everything Went Strunk

"Baby, I don't want to make out

"I just want to circle pit!"

-Crucial Unit

I remember my then-girlfriend being really bummed out that I wanted to go see Crucial Unit play in the basement of Charm City Art Space instead of whatever she wanted to do. It should have been a clear sign that it wasn't going to work out.

Crucial Unit kept things fun at the turn of the millenium. I'm kinda shocked they didn't play Baltimore more; I remember their only CCAS show being packed and steamy, with a crowd that didn't circle pit so much as make waves like the sea. Their songs were short, pun filled, with outstanding titles like "Freegan Reich" and "One Less Jeff Gordon Fan". They believed in consuming gallons of iced tea and smashing all buffets. In short, they were champion piss-takers and the antidote to far-too-serious punk rock of the early aughts. There should have been more of them.

They put out a split LP with fellow thrash revivalists Municipal Waste and a second full length with Athena and Jeff at Six Weeks. "Everything Went Strunk" was named after their first drummer and collected their first three 7"s and a mess of comp tracks, both released and unreleased. There's also a live set tacked onto the end. It's 38 tracks of thrash revival, more punk than metal, from the post-9/11 years, back before irony was dead. And it features an excellent illustration by Mike Bukowski of kindergarten children moshing around Chris Strunk. It's well worth your $4 + S&H from your local Discogs vendor.

Discogs

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Augustus Pablo - East Of The River Nile

I'm 43 today.

I've really hit a wall about what I wanted to write about for this momentous occasion. Birthdays are just...mehf. I come from Patton Oswalt's stance on the matter: when you're an adult, a celebration once a decade until you're 90, then a slap on the ass the other nine birthdays. Is it a sign of a depressed personality? Almost certainly; I'll own it. I'm part of that last "great" generation of white men who were raised to believe that no one really gives a shit about your feelings, and that you should do something that really "matters" if you think you should be celebrated. No wonder I'm fucking depressed. What a hell of a way to be raised.

I've often thought about musicians dying young as I've grown older. I once thought I wouldn't make it past 22 (Buddy Holly, Darby Crash). 1999 was such a shit year, having sold a big chunk of my record collection, split up with the first love of my life, and moved off to a college I'd fail out of within a year. I slept with a pistol under a pillow for months, begging myself not to use it. I blew past the 27 Club. I got married, finally got a degree, and bought a house. Within another five years, most of that would be gone, the only thing left another several years of student debt. I hit 40, and I felt like I finally had the world by the balls. I lived in a place I loved, with a woman I adored, making a living wage for the first time ever. I even took a real staycation for the first time ever. I returned to work three days later, and got laid off. I haven't had a stable job since.

Can you see why I'm not high on my birthday? There are times where it feels like it's the herald of a new load of misery.

Augustus Pablo was 44 when he died of a collapsed lung in 1999. There are two ways I look at this. One is that I'm almost as old as he was, and that I'll never make a work of art as great or lasting as "East of the River Nile". The man made the melodica sound as cool as Coltrane's sax or Watt's bass. What can I possibly do to measure up? The other is that I'm still here; I can still discover the genius in a piece of art like this. It's in the discovering that, even when everything else feels like it's shit, I find the momentum to keep moving. Crate digging can make a bad day good, a good day great. I found a Canadian cassette of this a couple years ago that had never been entered on Discogs; at 19 cents, it's probably one of my favorite thrift store finds from the past few years.

Depression is an anchor that weighs me down every day. I take medicine and participate in therapy and work on myself every day and it's a fucking drag even on the best days. Yeah, even on a day like today, it can be tempting to let myself drown. It's music like this that helps me float, sometimes even surf in life.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Yaphet Kotto / This Machine Kills / Envy

Yaphet Kotto, circa 2003 (photo by Naz Hamid)

I'd imagine any show featuring these three bands would have been a pretty good one.

In 2002, Santa Cruz's Yaphet Kotto and This Machine Kills from Santa Barbara traveled to Japan to play with Envy from Tokyo. The tour was entitled "No Sleep Til Jaguchi". I have no clue what that's a reference to. When the tour ended, the three bands wrote a song called "A Collaborative Song", which was then performed by the lineup of Steve and Brian from This Machine Kills, Casey & Mag from Yaphet Kotto, and Masahiro, Nobukata, and Tetsuya from Envy. It's all pretty magical.

The divergent fortunes of each band after this Japan-only release fascinates me to no end. Yaphet Kotto would carry on for another three years, putting out one more 12" with Ebullition and making music that was out of step with the popular paradigm of the early/mid-aughts, but that fits in really well with what seems to be hot with the punx of 2020. Casey from YK now plays in an Oi! band with Lars from Rancid; Mag has a new band called Middle-Aged Queers that looks to be following the Limp Wrist template of fun queer punk.

This Machine Kills called it a day shortly after this tour. Steve Aoki became a pretty big deal in the following years. Dim Mak had already become the West Coast's answer to Troubleman by 2002, putting out super hip records from indie bands just emerging above ground. Within a few years, they'd be the home base for Bloc Party and Pretty Girls Make Graves. Then, of course, Aoki started making his name for dance music, becoming one of the few people to headline both the Ché Café and Electric Daisy Festival.

Envy really started hitting their groove and making their rep with this tour. They followed this up with 2003's self-released "A Dead Sinking Story", which would soon be championed by Mogwai in the UK and in the States by Level Plane Records. Their next three full-lengths would explode brains, melding post-rock sounds with Tetsuya's intenses spoken/screamed vocals. They collaborated with Justin Broadrick and Thursday on separate split 12"s, both of which continued to set bars for what could be done coming from the world of 90s hardcore. And after a break of three years, they returned this year with "The Fallen Crimson", which I really should buy a copy of.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Henry Fiat's Open Sore - Adulterer Oriented Rock

How about some of that old-tyme Swedish garage punk?

Henry Fiat's Open Sore are the yang to the Hives' yin. Both bands wear suits onstage, play garage rock, and generally act like cocks of the walk. But while the Hives can headline festivals, HFOS is better suited playing in the back of a dive bar. It's all gimp masks, three chords, and attitude, paving the way for bands like Carbonas, Black Lips, Sick Thoughts. Naturally, I loved finding this out in the wild for a mere $3. It's the kind of shithead punk that I just can't get enough of, slotting nicely with my Dwarves, Sniffany and the Nits, and Queers records.

This collection of the first four years of HFOS singles came out in 2002 simultaneously with the American reissue of their first LP on Berkeley's Coldfront Records. Coldfront was run by one of the guys who wrote/edited for Hit List magazine, and reflected that zine's focus on streetpunk, garage, and Oi! They were both short-lived and amazingly prolific, putting out close to 70 releases in just over 5 years. There are some great overlooked releases in that catalog: I'll write about their Wynona Riders comp in the future, and I love their various samplers, which capture a really fun slice of American punk rock. As for Henry Fiat's Open Sore, they went on hiatus around 2004, reappearing with an LP in 2008, then fully reuniting in 2019 with a pair of new records on Stockholm's Push My Buttons.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Charm City Suicides - II

What do I remember about Charm City Suicides?

I never walked away from a Charm City Suicides show disappointed.

I was in love with every Mike Apichella flier I ever experienced.

I remember being so in awe of these kids who were the same age as me, who lived less than 10 miles away from me, but were so hip and juiced in.

Flier by Nolen Strals

I'd never seen them until I went to College Park for a year, even though they all lived less than 10 miles away from me for five years. Then I probably saw every saw they played in the Baltimore/DC/NorVA triangle for the last two years of their existence.

I had two years of digital photos of Charm City Suicides on a external hard drive that disappeared in a move. I mourn their loss more so than I do my own baby pictures.

I remember Mike and Dubin giving me this CD the night they got them back from the printer and thinking, "How am I so cool that they thought to get one to me right away?"

I remember stage diving at their final show at the Ottobar with Nolen and Walker, thinking that things might never get any better than this.

They, along with Daybreak, were the musical bridge from me being a Harford County kid to becoming a Baltimore resident. They released 28 songs from 1999 to 2002, across two LPs, a single, and a pair of compilation appearances. When they were done, they were done; there'd be no encore, no reunion show, no retrospective. All that was left was a legacy of sheer abandon, ringing ears and hoarse throats.

Charm City Suicides never phoned it in. How many other musical groups can you say that about?

Discogs

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Encyclopedia of American Traitors - self-titled

I associate this late-90s hardcore-bordering-on-screamo band with Frodus, Reversal of Man, and Pg. 99, all of whom I'm reasonably certain I saw them with. They did a split with Orchid, and one with Kwisatz Haderach. They came from up around Lancaster, PA, a town which (oddly) got a ton more "big" punk shows throughout the 90s than Baltimore. So hearing a band like Encyclopedia of American Traitors come out of a town where I saw Citizen Fish and Rancid...it was jarring at the time. It wouldn't be until years later that I learned they were ex-Spirit Assembly, and at least one member would move to Florida and play in Fiya.

Does every generation of punks, when they have enough distance between them and the moment, think that they had the world by the balls? Or were we part of something truly special, unrepeatable? I tell some story about seeing some random band with ten other kids in a dank basement, repurposed into a showspace, and suddenly, to the listener, it's a Velvet Underground moment. It's not that this world was poorly documented; it's that it's one of the last times the world would be mysterious, up for interpretation, grainy like a VHS tape.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Dillinger Four - First Avenue Live

Paddy Costello of Dillinger Four by Rebecca Reed

It was rare that I'd get drunker or have a better time than at a Dillinger Four show. As soundtracks to your twenties go, they were a good one. D4 played Baltimore once on my birthday, and, as you might imagine, if you're familiar with them, it was a total piss-up. I started drinking before doors opened, and didn't stop with kamikazes and Jameson until last call. Or so I've been told.

This was recorded at the height of the band's powers. As the story goes, Bad Brains was scheduled to play upstairs at First Avenue in Minneapolis the same night that Dillinger Four was playing downstairs at 7th St. Entry. H.R. called the club a few hours before doors and left a message stating that Bad Brains wouldn't be playing that night. That left a well-liquored D4 to entertain the hometown crowd. And entertain they did, ripping through 15 songs with some of my favorite stage banter ever.

I don't want to give anything away, but you will hear the H.R. message in its entirety. That's worth the price of admission.

Discogs

Click here to download.