various artists - Supersonic Sounds from the "Fuck You" Movement

When I was a wee slip of a youth, full of piss and vinegar but still discovering myself and what my taste was, I picked up a comp tape from the counter of the local Record & Tape Exchange. I think I snagged it because one of my classmates' bands had a pair of songs on it. Very heady stuff at the age of 16...I knew people who made records!

It was all Roanoke bands, circa 1992-94, and while I've misplaced the tape, and no one's every listed it on Discogs, it was the first time I'd heard Swank, a ska-punk band of some renown who'd eventually put out a pair of recordings on the pre-Fall Out Boy version of Fueled By Ramen. It was also the first time I'd encounter Suppression, local audio terrorists who broke my brain more than just a little bit. How the hell was I supposed to get anything out of the Dave Matthews Band or Metallica or the goddamned Red Hot Chili Peppers when I'd just gotten my first sip of grindcore?

I wasn't aware of it immediately, but Suppression had a label they self-released on called Chaotic Noise Productions (C.N.P., as the literature goes). And while I never targeted their records, I ended up with more than a few over the years. From early cassette releases like the Cripple Bastards comp and the Agoraphobic Nosebleed demo to something more recent like the "Eardrill" comp tape, I'd cop something because I heard it'd be strong and extreme, I'd open it up, get my mind melted, then see that mailing address of Roanoke, then late Richmond, VA.

This one came out in 2001, during what might be called "the middle period" of C.N.P. The only release from the label that year, it's a goddamned cacophonous comp, featuring a bunch of noisy motherfuckers just going for it. When the most conventional track comes from Charm City Suicides ("covering" Reagan Youth), you know you're in for something nearly opposite a Def Jam street sampler or the current NOW! comp. There's a pair of Kojak tracks, a quartet of Suppression cuts, a little something from Bastard Noise that clocks in at (checks track length) 9 minutes?!? There's a monkey man making a man monkey suck his banana on the cover. This isn't for kids, ya know?

One last anecdote: P.C.P. Roadblock contribute three songs here, just one of a handful of appearances they made on aluminum, wax, or magnetic tape during their existence. I don't recall the other bands on the show, or even the instigating circumstances, but I remember them playing the most antagonistic set I've ever seen in my life at the old Ottobar, ending with at least two band members getting kicked to the floor during their set, and a Rubbermaid trash can getting lobbed at them. There's nothing really to take away from that, other than to note that's what you're getting yourself into here.

Discogs

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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.)

Discogs

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Sex Vid - Voyeur

I was thinking about mysterious guy hardcore recently, and what a feverish, overblown internet thing it was, conjured out of message board hype and limited run vinyl. Now, it's not that there weren't, simultaneously, a bunch of bands making grimy hardcore influenced as much by industrial music as they were UK82 or the early Touch & Go releases. But to assign sub-genre to highly anti-commerical bands is kinda beside the point, no?

Sex Vid are one of those bands I remember best from that time. They hailed from Kill Rock Stars country, but sounded like they'd been raised on a diet of third-gen Die Kreuzen bootleg cassettes they found while skateboarding down at a truck stop. I'd heard them for the first time on the second Fucked Up mixtape. And, unlike kindred spirits the Repos or Vile Gash, there was no redeeming art option to the presentation. Sex Vid was all degraded photocopies, UHF static, whispers through a ham radio. They might as well have been from a goddamn separate universe from the branding machinery that had been infiltrating punk music for most of the past decade. This was ugly music for the uncool.

Oddly enough, "Voyeur", their final 7", is the one Sex Vid record I don't own a physical copy of. It's a live document from 2008, from their home territory of Olympia. It was also the second of three records they'd release in 2008, culiminating in the "Communal Living" 12". They were cooked by the time 2010 rolled around. Guitarist Dave Harvey has left the most evidence of his post-Sex Vid life; as the good Captain Tripps Ballsington, he's recorded a ton of your favorite records of the past ten years, including the new All Hits and Gag slabs, of which I'm a fan.

Discogs

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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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