I wouldn't typically dive into KBD territory, but having gotten this 2001 reissue for a fantastic price a bit ago, I couldn't resist sharing it. The Afrika Korps were a DC-area proto-punk/garage band active in the late 70s. When I first encountered them, it was along with other pre-Dischord punks like the Slickee Boys White Boy, and the Chumps on mixtapes and comps like "30 Seconds Over DC". It was all more new wave than hardcore, which meant I wasn't going to dig it until I was older, but tracks like "N.Y. Punk" and "Jailbait Janet" appealed to me in that scuzzy way that Iggy and Turbonegro did. The older I get, the more I dig it.
This reissue came out on the esteemed, long-lived Gulcher Records of Bloomington, Indiana back in '01, It's topped off with a slew of outtakes from their initial recording sessions, and four tracks from a 1977 show at Cantone's in Boston. This would be followed up a year later with the complete Cantone's set, a 2005 reissue of the Korps' second LP "Hellow World". cBased on how much I dug this one, I'll no doubt be following the link above to pay full freight on those two discs in due time.
If you're reading this, that means it is now 2025, which means I'm in the eleventh year away from my homeland of Baltimore, and six years into the revival of this here bloggin' concern. It's a pretty nice feeling, yet bittersweet. We've made it another year, a bit farther away from then and much closer to tomorrow.
I don't know why I don't recall Decatur Blue; it's the exact kind of place I would have been stoked to visit in DC, during a period in my life when I would have been most able to do so. This 2003 comp commemorates that period, courtesy of Planaria Recordings. Don't let the minimal artwork below fool ya. This was home to a lot of DC's cutting edge visual art and music, ranging from the noise rock of Early Humans to the one-two no wave punk of Black Eyes and Measles Mumps Rubella to Canyon's winsome Neil Young-goes-emo alt-country. These are the folks that played the Talking Head, CCAS, the Ottobar, the Sidebar; some spots long gone, others still kicking against the pricks. It was a good time for DC independent music and art, and this, a fine document.
And if you came here thinking this was a collection of late 70s/early 80s Peter Holsapple/Chris Stamey tracks, well, sorry to disappoint cha.
In the real world, most folks don't know that I write here.
They know me as a low-level bureaucrat, a mental health peer leader, a wiseacre, an aging hipster. But they don't know that every few days for the past five years, I talk a little bit about a recording that means something to me. Sometimes, it's something I just picked up recently; others, it's a record that's foundational to the person I've become. I just wanted to find some meaning, to have a discpline, when the world was falling apart because of COVID-19, when I had been laid off from my first minimum-wage job since I was 18 and I had no fucking clue what was going to happen to my life.
I knew I could share some jams. So I did. And here we are, 600 posts in, with no desire to break the discipline.
Fugazi was, for me, the band that kicked it all off for me. I liked music well enough before I learned of Fugazi in 1992. It was, after all, the year after Punk broke, and I was exposed not just to Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, but also Sonic Youth and Shonen Knife and Smashing Pumpkins. But I was still more into hip-hop than college rock then; I had to sneak my Public Enemy, N.W.A., and KRS-One tapes into the farmhouse my dad bought in moonshine country. There was an authenticity present in rap music that I didn't quite feel in rock. So when I read a Michael Azzerad review of a Fugazi show at Irving Plaza in a June issue of Rolling Stone, there was something about it that felt not dangerous, but very real. I mean, whqt band comes out of Washington D.C. and releases their own records AND keeps door prices at $5? That's something I can experience, I thought.
I went out and bought a copy of "Steady Diet Of Nothing" a few weeks later. And even though it's now my least-favorite Fugazi recording, Christ, it hit me like a lightning bolt. THIS was what I was looking for. Even though I didn't think I'd be able to play music like this, I could still participate. I wasn't going to be a hundred yards from the stage, or 200 miles away from the nearest show, or $20 short of buying their newest CD. Shoot, I could write them a letter and send well-disguised cash, and a month or so later, I'd get a personal response FROM THE SINGER and a new record to listen to.
Dischord's always been really good about keeping their catalog in print, especially with their digital archive on dischord.com. And because one of my goals has been to focus on out-of-print or not-readily-available music, that's kept me what diving into one of their numerous blog-worthy records. I don't need to post "Flex Your Head" or "State Of The Nation"; just go buy it from them. But this thirteenth issue of Perpetually Twelve, one of numerous great, defunct zines, seemed like a good one to share for post 600, and an excellent excuse to talk about Fugazi. This is a wonderful digital release, ready made to print out at home or work and read, old-school style. Or you can load the PDF into your digital reader on your phone or tablet and experience 78 pages of Fugazi love electronically.
The accompanying compilation suits the zine well. There's Bob Nanna delivering a solo version of "Kill Taker"s "Smallpox Champion". .org-core punks White Murder, who delivered a pair of outstanding full-lengths back in the 2010s for Recess, cover "Nice New Outfit" from "Steady Diet". San Diego is well represented by No Knife, Andrew Mills of Barbarian, and Brandon Welchez. It's all capped with an amazing version of "The Argument", performed by DC's Devin Ocampo (Smart Went Crazy, Faraquet), spouse Renata Ocampo, David Rich (the Effects), and bassoonist Aaron Harmon. It's a worthy labor of love that deserves an ongoing audience. Which I'm happy to provide.
I'm grateful for y'all who visit here, whether it's once in a blue moon or every three or four days. Thanks for coming by and providing an audience of around 150 folks a day. Happy Boxing Day; now open your presents.
Here's another record that I can't understand hasn't been reissued again. It's one that I'm forever grateful to Henry Rollins for turning me onto. And it's one that I listen to, front to back, whenever I miss living in the DMV.
The almighty Trouble Funk is who I'd play a stranger who didn't know what go go was. Specifically, I'd give them the live record I share here, originally released as a double, white label LP by the band, then reissued on Infinite Zero in 1995, along with a compilation of their early singles. This scene existed on a parallel track to DCHC, and the best of it is just as rare to find, existing today on crumbling tapes and limited dub plates. It's important to remember that Minor Threat's final show in 1983 was headlined by Trouble Funk (and supported by Big Boys). That's not as weird a concept as one might think; it's two localized scenes, propelled by DIY and alternate performance channels.
If you find yourself travelling this week for the holidays, listen to this one in sequence, and see if it doesn't get your ass moving.
I miss playing records on the radio. I miss having ime to play records on the radio. The key here is that I wouldn't necessarily sacrifice the time and energy that it'd take to play records on the radio in 2024; I'm ure I could probably find a once-a-week slot at some left of the dial, 200 watt station around here.
Or maybe that's just ego talking.
The details behind this comp are a bit hazy, and I put it into a box after re-ripping it at 320kbps, so maybe one of my few readers who also lived in Delmarva around the turn of the millenium can fill in the blanks. At the same time I was blasting out punk, hardcore, and ska up near the PA border, there were a few dudes down around DC doing the same. They had much more juice than I; I believe Kent Stax was somehow involved in their show. So when it comes to members of Scream participating in your radio show, they had a 1-nil lead.
This 1999 comp bears their mark. There are a few familiar faces in the liner notes; dudes who you'd see at shows and record stores and the occasional Orioles game. And the bands harken back to an age I find particularly golden. It was a wonderful clash of sub genre; '77 punk next to org-core alongside third wave ska and Dischord post punk, all bounded by Chicago-style pop punk and . 1998 and 1999 were very good times, friends. The wave had just barely started building, and it felt like your friends wouldn't have to starve while they went out on tour.
And that was all a quarter century ago. Fuck, I'm getting old.
This record will turn 30 years old in a few weeks. This millenial of a compilation is still paying off its student loans, has probably delayed getting married, might have moved back into their mom's place.
A split release between DC's Teen-Beat and NYC's Matador, Teen-Beat 50, as the story goes, was originally scheduled to come out in 1990. which would have made this one of the first ten recordings on the now-indie titan. I'd guess it'd slot into that same space now filled by New York Eye And Ear Control. Teen-Beat was well known for split releases, working with Homstead, No. 6, Ajax, and a host of others; all to get some of the best bedroom indie of the late 80s and early 90s off of cassette and onto wax/CD.
Your listening experience runs the gamut, from Dischord contemporaries Circus Lupus and Autoclave, to goof-assin' from Sexual Milkshake, to an early Carl Newman track from his pre-New Pornographers band Superconductor. A shitton of Teen-Beat luminaries perform: Unrest with 3 appearances, Butch Willis, Jonny Cohen, Andrew Beaujon (on four tracks). This here's the CD release, which has 11 more recordings than the LP version.
I'd held off writing about this b/c I wanted to talk a bit about what Teen-Beat means to me as a counterpoint to Dischord in DC music history, but I never could pull my shit together well enough to make a solid enough essay. Let me say that I feel very lucky haven't been turned onto Fugazi and Unrest almost simultaneously, and to become aware of both frontperson's labels. To discover that sense of possibility, that you could follow your own path and have folks glom onto it...it stuck with me. Clearly.
I wrote about Measles Mumps Rubella back in May, covering their 2002 demo (still available for download, as far as I can tell). Go check that out to hear the embryonic MMR. This is their final recording; a full length that was long overdue, and that I didn't acquire until just a couple months ago.
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.
I had kept an eye open for a physical copy of this one for, oh, I dunno, probably 25 years when I finally found one for $3 on a shelf in the record store my wife grew up visiting on California's Central Coast. I knew Manifesto as the post-punk band led by Mike Hampton (Faith, Embrace, One Last Wish) and backed by longtime collaborator Ivor Hanson (S.O.A., Faith, Embrace) and Bert Queiroz (Youth Brigade, Double-O, Rain). If the tattered edges of my memory still tell the truth, I remember Johnny Riggs talking them up on 'HFS the year I moved to Baltimore, even though a 1993 copyright date on the tray card doesn't quite align with my arrival to Charm City. Regardless, here was an early 90s curiosity, featuring Dischord royalty on a major label, that'd I'd wanted to hear for a very long time.
It...doesn't hold up. On my first listen, my takeaway was, "Who is this for?" I tried to put myself in the shoes of a music listener in 1991/92. This came out on Fire Records the same year as Pulp's "Separations" and Television Personalities' "Closer to God", as well as Eugenius's "Oomalama". There's a sort of cool joy present in all three of those records that doesn't exist here. If I didn't know better, it's like a band decided to make a British-sounding record operating off assumptions of what British audiences would like, without having actually listened to any contemporary British music. Does that make any sense?
I will say that, when Manifesto sounds have come up on shuffle over the past few months, that I like the songs by themselves, removed from the context of a single full-length. So, maybe, in that respect, this is a release far ahead of its time, better suited for addition to a playlist than a CD player. I guess I'm not at all bummed out that I bought this; Lord knows I've spent more money on worse records.
Postscript: It's dawned on me in the space of writing this that I've been mixing Michael Hampton up with his contemporary Mike Fellows (of Rites Of Spring, Miighty Flashlight, Silver Jews), thinking they were the same person, all this time, which may account why this record rattled around my head for so long.
When sadness comes, you can watch videos of dogs being obnoxious on YouTube, or you can listen to tight jams. Whatever floats your boat. I guess since you're here that you don't want to see a French bulldog sneak french fries off its owner's plate.
Rain was a short-lived DC band of the Revolution Summer vintage whose recorded output consisted of a 1990 12" on Guy Picciotto's impeccably curated Peterbilt Records and an appearance on 1989's "State Of The Union" comp on Dischord. The lineup is a Murderer's Row of DCHC/post-hardcore luminaries: Scott McCloud (Soulside, Girls Vs. Boys), Eli Janney (Girls Vs. Boys), Bert Queiroz (Double-O, Youth Brigade, Manifesto), and Jon Kirschten (The ChrisBald 96). And you get exactly what you'd expect: that heady mix of emotive hardcore that stood apart from much of the East Coast's dominant trend of youth crew and crossover from the same era.
Now, typically, I wouldn't share a record that you can readily acquire via an inexpensive Bandcamp download (which you should totally do). But I thought it'd be good to contextualize the real gold, which is a 4-song demo dating from 1986 of Rain, featuring a track ("In Rain") that didn't make it onto the EP. I think I might have gotten this from Stormy over at Blogged & Quartered before his hosting service went tits up; I do know I've had it for a long time.
Anyway, I figured it was a good time to share this one, it being that time of year, and all.
Thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the vegan pot roast; it's better than it sounds.
I keep coming back to Rick Pitino's quote about being saved:
"Larry Bird isn't walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they're going to be gray and old."
If there's a better summation of where we are as a country as we end 2020, I've yet to hear it.
Hope and cynicism rarely go hand in hand, which is probably why I've been diagnosed with major depression and really connect with "Welcome To Hell World". If I've been able to weather COVID-19 and layoffs and potential evictions and the deaths of family members and everything else that this year has thrown at me...welp, I'm sure that it's because I live the old adage "Hope for the best, but expect the worst," and I've lived believing that it's only those closest to you that will be willing to help when the chips are down. It's almost validating to see a jowly Senator decline to offer a financial lifeline to people days away from homelessness while pushing for corporate protections and military funding.
Jack Crosbie had a very good blog the week before Christmas about mutual aid, and it was a great reminder that, even when the pillars of power refuse even bread and circuses, there is empowerment and growth available by banding together. Not only that: it's easy to support mutual aid, and it's easy to do it yourself. We can keep each other afloat. Each other is all we have.
Punk and hardcore comps were the first examples I had that facilitated mutual aid. Case in point: 1994s "Land Of Greed... World Of Need". It was a tribute to Embrace, that short-lived Revolution Summer alliance of Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye and members of Faith. A contemporary band covered each song on the sole Embrace LP, with the proceeds going to local, grass-roots homeless shelters and organizations. It's still a pretty great comp: the cuts by Lifetime, Rancid, Farside, Ashes, and Avail remain standouts. And it taught me that, if you want to see a change in the world, it's not even as complicated as coordinating a 14-band compilation. Just figure out what you want to see done, and do it.
Whatever the analogy, no deus ex machina is going to save the day for us. The vaccine isn't going to solve all illness, Joe Biden surely isn't going to lead us all to a promised land, and Amazon isn't going to magically keep your fridge full. WE are going to have to make things suck a little less in 2021. But we already have the examples available, we have the power, we have the ability, and we have the time. So let's get to it.
If you follow him on Instagram, then you're probably already hip to John Yates' take on the classic graphic design aesthetic behind Blue Note Records. John kicked off his "Punk Note" series in May, with a killer take on "Here Are The Sonics", influenced by Reid Miles' covers for the timeless jazz label in the 50s and 60s. As John notes in his initial posting, "I took [Miles's] aesthetic and applied a history of punk filter. I took 1965 as my starting point, and took it through to 1990, the year before “punk broke” #sonicyouth. There are going to be bands/musicians I either missed, or chose to leave out, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time." 200 covers and a month later, he'd covered a huge swath of punk history. And all of it, as you'd expect, looked pretty grand.
While that was taking place, the Bad Brains were consolidating chunks of their back catalog under their dormant Bad Brains Records label. Teaming with California's Org Music, the DC/NY hardcore legends had regained the masters to all of their records from their first 10 years in existence, excepting 1986's "I Against I" (still under control of SST Records). They relaunched their website and solicited preorders for the first round of reissues, due to launch in February 2021.
Now, you're probably like me, in that you own every Bad Brains record you want to own, often times in multiple formats. I have my Caroline CD of "Rock For Light" that I bought from Stikky Fingers in Fells Point sometime around 1996, a yellow shell copy of "Bad Brains" that I snagged on eBay a few months ago, and my Victory Records picture disc 10" of "The Omega Sessions". Having copped that 2019 "Black Dots" vinyl reissue when it came out, I don't need any more Bad Brains records any more.
BUT, part of this reissue campaign involves Sr. Yates doing limited edition "Punk Note" covers for the BB's first, second, and fourth records. Over the next year, Bad Brains Records will reissue "Bad Brains", "Rock For Light", and "Quickness" on limited-to-1,000-pieces colored vinyl, featuring a redesigned cover. "Bad Brains" (aka the ROIR tape) comes in green, "Rock For Light" on yellow, and "Quickness" on red. "Rock For Light" is even reverting to its original 1983 mix and track order, a great development if, like me, you've only had access to the 1991 Ocasek/Jennifer remix. And as used to the lightning bolt hitting the Capitol Building as I am, the design and photography on these reissues is simply phenomenal.
One can preorder "Bad Brains", as well as a new pressing of the "Pay To Cum" 7", at Bad Brains Records now. Both are shipping spring 2021.
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.
A comprehensive look at Tim Green and Seth Lorinczi's bands from 1979 to 1989 (from the Thee Evolution Revolution 7")
When you've listened to the Dischord catalog as much as I have, you get real excited when you discover something like Vile Cherubs.
Vile Cherubs seems to have played out from mid-1986 to mid-1988, leaving behind two demos and an LP, "Post-Humorous Relief", that was co-released in 1989 by Dischord. If it sounds to you like it has something in common with Nation of Ulysses, it's because future NoU/Fucking Champs guitarist Tim Green played guitar here as well. It's his first recorded output, along with regular collaborator and future Circus Lupus/Antimony/Quails guitarist Seth Lorinczi & Jesse Quits, soon to play bass for Capitol City Dusters.
I feel like you can draw a direct line from the regional garage 45s that make up the "Pebbles" comps to the demos that make up "The Man Who Has No Eats Has No Sweats". Seeing that Geoff Turner recorded these tracks at WGNS makes a lot of sense; it has more in common with his contemporary band, Senator Flux, than it does with, say, Ignition or Soul Side. I wish I had more trenchant insights for you here. I like it for the same reasons I like New Bomb Turks; it's a big ol' punk rock 'n' roll racket that I wish I'd heard of a lot sooner.
A monorchid is a being with only one testicle. (The) Monorchid was a brainworm I couldn't shake out of my head, with triple the balls the name would imply.
I came to Monorchid in a backwards fashion. I booked Wrangler Brutes into the Art Space, in no small part because Andy and Brooks from Skull Kontrol were the rhythm section behind Cundo from Nazti Skins and some dude named Sam. I liked Skull Kontrol (check the name of the blog, dog), and someone mentioned that Andy and Chris, the singer of Skull Kontrol, had done a band in DC before that called Monorchid. So I snagged a copy of their second and final LP, "Who Put Out The Fire?", and, well...
This is where I finally learned that if Chris Thomson was involved in something, I'd probably like it. The thru-thread spun through DC to Madison back to DC and on to Chicaog, from Ignition to Fury to Circus Lupus to Las Mordidas, on to Skull Kontrol to Red Eyed Legends to Coffin Pricks. It was going to be punk and weird and beyond cool and worth studying. When I sang, I wanted everything to sound like a glorious ad lib, no matter if it was stream of conciousness or written months before...to possess that sense of cool I always heard in Chris's voice.
"Who Put Out The Fire?" came out the same year as "Terraform", "What Burns Never Returns", and "Starters Alternators". It was a veritable murderer's row of great records from Touch & Go in 1998, which makes their infrequent releases in 2020 a goddamned shame.
I honestly couldn't even tell you the "when I saw them" part of when I saw the Out_Circuit. I would guess it was the Ottobar, 2002, even though I haven't the faintest idea who else played with them. Such was the impression they left on me that night. It was what I heard when I listened to Smart Went Crazy, to Karate, to Juno; the influence of ambient music, jazz, post-hardcore, presented live in a way I hadn't heard often. I listened to "Burn Your Scripts, Boys" like it was going out of style. I assumed they'd end up doing the record with Magic Bullet or Lovitt or DeSoto. Yet it took over two years for a label to pick this up, finally releasing in 2004 as a split between D.C.'s Lujo Records and the UK's Autoclave Records on the CD, and Austin's Arclight Records on the vinyl. I was pretty boggled at the delay. Even going 15 years since my last listen, I'm still amazed that more people haven't discovered this.
This is ripped from the initial, limited to 250 units CD-R that I picked up from Nathan that night at the Ottobar. Recorded by Ken Olden and Brian McTernan in DC, it would later be mastered by Chad Clark for the actual release. I hear more distortion on the bass end of this unmastered release. It's never been an unappealing thing to me; I like hearing things in progress. I discovered that Nathan Burke now lives out here in Seattle, and put out a new Out_Circuit record in 2018. I'll be picking that one up this Friday for Bandcamp Friday.
What do you think the high muckity mucks at Epic Records heard in Shudder To Think when they signed them in 1993/1994? What about this arty post-hardcore band said, "It's the next Nirvana!"?
None of this is to denigrate the beloved DC quartet. I really love StT, especially "Pony Express Record". I just like putting myself into the shoes of an early 90s A&R and trying to figure how a band like this, so distinctive in their mix of mid-80s proto emo, glam, 60s psychedelica, and bubblegum pop, would work on a larger stage. It hurt my head hearing "Hit Liquor" and "X-French Tee Shirt" on HFS in 1994; both singles really stood out in a landscape of Live, Veruca Salt, Oasis, and Weezer. Of course I loved it; I was a 16-year-old virgin who stayed home on Fridays taping songs off the radio. But their signing, even with the continued work that Craig Wedren does on soundtracks 26 years later, still strikes me as a wild, wonderful swing.
It's interesting to me, listening to Shudder to Think on YouTube while writing, that the next band to appear was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Has the algorithm gotten so strong as to be able to make the sonic comparison between Nathan Larson's and Nick Zinner's guitar work? Is there a thru line that I've just missed until today?
"Your Choice Live 021" was the only recorded output from the StT lineup of Wedren, Nathan Larson, Stuart Hill, and Mike Russell. Larson had joined a few months prior to this recording from Swiz, and following this tour and their departure from Dischord, Adam Wade would replace Russell and join on drums from Jawbox. This is a great sounding document of Shudder to Think's catalog from the Dischord days, mixing tracks from 1991's "Funeral at the Movies" and 1992's "Get Your Goat". And it's inexpensive! You can probably snag one for less than $10 on a good day.
It's still kinda amazing to me that two of the great punk/indie catalogs of the 80s, in Touch & Go and SST, have no gotten the comprehensive remastering and reissuing that we saw out of Dischord 10-15 years ago. Not only that, there are rarities from T&G, especially their early hardcore days, that haven't been revisited. I'm thrilled that the early Necros stuff is available digitally on Bandcamp from the band, and that "Tied Down" got new vinyl pressings last year and this year. But it sucks that bands like Hüsker Dü and Minutemen and Naked Raygun haven't gotten even a portion of the scholarly, loving treatment they deserve.
I'll step off the soapbox to, instead, share a record that (probably) rightfully has never been released. In 1983, Void was coming off the previous year's release of their split with the Faith, possibly the greatest split 12" of all time (prove me wrong!). They were the perfect melding of hardcore and metal; like Bad Brains and Motörhead making beautiful monkey love. How could you top such a ripper?
Turns out, you can't. Like their contemporaries in SSD, Void recorded a glam metal record, highlighting not just the fracturing interests of the band members, but also state of the hardcore scene in 1983. The leading lights were growing up, and many were ready to go pro and start making real money off their craft.
"Potion for Bad Dreams" was originally recorded for Touch & Go, a reflection of their alliance with T&G owner/Necros drummer Corey Rusk. But between the band falling apart, the lack of enthusiasm in the recording, and the need to focus on upcoming releases from Tesco Vee, the Butthole Surfers, and Die Kruezen, Rusk shelved this sucker. I say, for good reason.
This rip comes from my copy of the tape that Das Boots put out in 2014/15. I have no clue what generation recording they used for their release; I do know this has been booted almost since the day it was recorded, and my copy is one of the better I've heard. Some of y'all may enjoy this. If I remember correctly, I remember both Sean from White Zombie and Buzz from the Melvins saying in interviews what a shame it was this had never been put out. I'm not one of them, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be shared.
Sweetbelly Freakdown, live at CBGB's, 1997 (photo by Mark Beemer)
"HELP ME OBI-WAN, CAN YOU HELP ME?" If you want my attention, there are very few better way to grab it than by making a Star Wars reference in a song titled "Pleas to the Action Figure".
Swiz had been broken up for nearly six years when Sweetbelly Freakdown got together in 1996. I remember wondering why they didn't just reunite Swiz when the four ex-members joined forces; it turns out they decided to go with a minimal, almost primal sound for their single and LP. The nine songs on their self-titled record just buzz. It's very out of step with a lot of their contemporaries. I remember only really seeing them on bills with metallic hardcore bands; maybe I saw them with 454 Big Block and Hatebreed?
I see a lot of comparisons to the Rollins Band and the later Black Flag records. To that, I say...maybe? I don't hear the metal or Grateful Dead influence present in those records. And as much as I love ol' Hank, Shawn Brown doesn't present like a poet so much as a method actor in his vocals. The Jason Farrell artwork here is also one of my favorite of his record covers; it certainly lays the groundwork for his Damnation A.D. and At The Drive-In illustrations. This is yet another release that I wouldn't mind reissuing and remastering, should I end up with a spare million spacebux to spend on a label.
Here's a story about the first time I met Ted Leo. It's the spring of 1995. A friend from my drama class invites me to join him and a couple other classmates to skip school on a Monday and trek from HarCo down to DC to see the Cranberries play a free show at the Sylvan Theater, down by the Washington Monument. The 'Berries were mid-tour in support of "No Need to Argue", and while I wasn't a big fan, that record was ubiquitous. And it was a perfect day in DC: sunny, not too hot, just really nice. We had arrived in time for an opener none of us had ever heard of, a local band called Chisel. They were just great, to the point where I remember asking aloud, "Why doesn't 'HFS play these guys?" They were punk in the same way Jawbox or Shudder to Think were punk, yet tuneful, with enough pop flavor to cross over easily.
They wrap up their set, and, by this point, it's a pretty big crowd. No one watching the show knew it at the time, but there were about three times as many people in attendance than had been expected. The Cranberries take forever to come out, and when they finally do, they play "Linger". I've seen more restrained pits during Cro-Mags show. People were flying off the stage. It was wholly inappropriate for the show and I was probably one of a handful of people reveling in it. Dolores O'Riordan sat her acoustic guitar on a stand behind her, and the 'Berries began their second song. I remember noticing half a dozen mounted police had appeared on either side the stage...then the song cut out. The Park Police had ended the show, and, suddenly, we're all in a riot. Our brave quartet was a Mekons song come to life. We darted between a pair of horses to stage right, watched as a drunk college guy took a swing at a cop, and beat feet to Union Station.
We're earlier than we expected to be, so we have no clue which train to take towards home, or when said train will leave. We're trying to interpret the big schedule; after all, we're four high school kids from the northern suburbs of Baltimore. What do WE know about the Metro system? I turn to my left, and who do I see, but the band we'd just seen, pre-riot. One of the women in our group whispered, "Oh my god, are those the guys from that band?" They hear us talking about them, turn and look. I wave and say, "Hey. You guys were great today." And we all start talking. I had no idea that they hadn't released an LP yet, just a few singles to that point. Or that they were barely a few years older than us, fresh out of Notre Dame. Here were some fellas just an hour after opening for the biggest band on the planet (at that moment). They actually wanted to talk to us. It was an amazing feeling.
I told Ted that story a number of years later before a show at the Ottobar, thinking he'd have no clue what I was babbling about. Instead, he recalled parts of the day I hadn't been familiar with; that Chisel was at Union Station because they'd gotten the gig last minute and hadn't driven their van, that the Cranberries had been pissed off because Chisel had to share a backline, that they'd had a giggle after we left because they couldn't understand why we were treating them like rock stars. We clinked glasses of Jameson and toasted each other for surviving the great WHFS Riot of 1995.
I was already a fan of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists before that night, but that encounter really sealed my love for the man and his music. It bums me out that they had such shitty luck with labels: Lookout going out of business, Touch & Go almost completely ending release of new records, Matador just abandoning support of the band. That 10 year run, between "The Tyranny of Distance" and "The Brutalist Bricks", remains one of my favorite series of records from a single band. I feel like they were a contender for the best indie rock band around during that time, as well as one of the last links to the indie scenes of the 80s and 90s.
"Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead" came out in 2003, between the TL/Rx's third and fourth albums. It was both a throwback to their early dub recordings, as well as the record that best reflects Ted's Irish Catholic heritage. There are a trio of covers, interpreting The Jam, Split Enz, and Ewan McColl. Dan Littleton (the Hated, Ida) makes an appearance on "Bleeding Powers", as well as handles producer duties on much of the record. I'll even argue that the title track might be the weakest part of the release. It all reminds me of the Joe Strummer solo records, or something you'd hear played from the corner of an Irish pub in an East Coast city.
The "Sharkbite Sessions" was recorded and released 2 years later, and shares two songs in common with "Balgeary". But this is a tighter, more raucous affair. The trio of Leo/Lerner/Wilson had been playing out live for three years at that point, and it shows up in this recording. I bought this mainly because TL/Rx covered "Suspect Device" by Stiff Little Fingers, but I think it serves as the flipside of the coin from "Balgeary". At any rate, I have no clue if these are streamable, but I think they're hella great summer records. So plunk 'em on a tape and drive around, enjoying the fresh air at least six feet away from everyone.
