various artists - Bread: The Edible Napkin

Look, there's no way I'll ever look at the late 90s as a golden age to grow up punk. You could grow up poor & ugly, yet still be happy, because the shows were typically going to be $6 ($5 with a canned food donation) and if you didn't live in NYC or California, you had no expectations of being offered the opportunity to sell out. So you just did it with a bunch of like-minded nerds and freaks, raised on Lucio Fulci and "G.I. Joe" and Tetsujin-28 and Fugazi shows. If you were lucky, you'd run into folks like Var, who created No Idea down in Gainesville, and they'd introduce you to a world of new sounds.

It's how bands like Braid and Hot Water Music show up alongside Cavity and the Locust, right next to Skankin' Pickle and Against All Authority on the same bill or, in this case, on the same comp. "Bread: The Edible Napkin" came as a CD or double LP attached to No Idea #12. My copy of the zine was long ago donated to the CCAS zine library, but I've held onto my CD copy for almost 30 years since getting it. It's a great snapshot of the underground from that time, featuring names that continue to tour and play regularly, and those who made only slight inroads outside their home scenes. No Idea was always good about that, drawing the bands together under one banner of punk rock, regardless of what subgenre you could group them in. It became aspirational for me, whether I was making my own zine or booking shows, to pull from disparate tribes and bring them all together.

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various artists - Let's Do It For Lance! J Church Tribute

We live in a world where a wonderful, kind Hawaiian man who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the 80s UK anarcho-punk and who wrote some of the finest, most literate punk rock songs of all time has been dead for 16 years, Yet Donald Trump still darkens the planet. It hardly seems fair.

Lance Hahn was always a dude I deeply admired. He made great music, released some great art from his friends, shared his knowledge freely. J Church remains incredibly underrated. Cringer is barely a blip on the modern radars of music listeners.  But his successors are legion, filling up Gainesville's venues every Halloween, treading the boards in punk house basements and on stages in tiny clubs from San Pedro to the Lehigh Valley to Manchester to Sendai.

A bunch of labels put together this record to aid Lance's healing back in '07. It's a suitable monument to his songcraft, as well as those he inspired. It has some pretty great bands turning in pretty great versions of the man's cuts. It's a great sing-along record. The organizers got Ben Snakepit to do the illustrations. If you see this one on a rack for $5, I say, grab it quick.

Discogs

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Left For Dead - Splitting Heads

A goddamned all-time ripper of a discography, up there with the likes of Rorschach or Infest, in my humble opinion. Of course, I didn't hear this until after their demise, coming to it as a result of Ruination and Haymaker. B/C I was young and dumb and really hyped on ska when LFD was playing out, the follow up to the Beckman Brothers' immortal Chokehold. Working my way backwards, I put it together that Left For Dead did that Acrid diecut buzzsaw split on No Idea, an amazing concept that I somehow missed buying. So dumb.

"Splitting Heads" features just 14 studio tracks (their splits with Ochre & Acrid) and their half of a live split 12", shared with Chokehold. The front half was recorded for $40 in a psychopath's basement; it sounds like it. Not a lot of output for such an influential band, but every single cut is explosive. A389 reissued the studio portion as "Devoid Of Everything" in 2013. Left For Dead played a surprise set at CCAS after the A389 Anniversary in 2013, and were as great as I had hoped.

Totally worth spending at least $10 for. Do it.

Discogs

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various artists - Down In Front

It's pretty comforting when I still have to seek out information on someone who interests me, instead of just stumbling across it in social media. The search is still valuable, I think. To go out, almost blind, into the world and to find something new by choice rather than have it broadcast at you is a delightful thing. Sure, Instagram will, thankfully, keep me fully appraised of what John Brannon and Coop and Baseball Card Vandals are all up to. But if I want to keep up with the likes of Aaron Cometbus, historian of the East Bay scene, zinester extraordinare, and drummer of a million bands, I still gotta pick up a copy of his eponymous zine (now on issue 59). 

Anyway...so Aaron Cometbus. The dude started a tape label and his zine when he was 14. The zine is nearly 40 years old, and I get something engrossing from it any time I read it. I'm not sure if he's still making music; he was a part of the short-lived Thorns Of Life, but after that, nothing that I recall. I suppose we all step back eventually.

No Idea put together this CD version of a simultaneously-released 7" box set of unreleased Aaron Cometbus songs. The CD has one unreleased song from each band, along with a previous vinyl-only release. Confused? You shouldn't be. Here's who's on the CD:

• Redmond Shooting Stars - a three-piece that existed in Eugene, OR in 1995 and 1996 and did a single 7" on Broken Rekids
• Astrid Oto - a female-fronted, Asheville, NC-based quartet with 7"s on No Idea, Broken, and Meconium. They'd get a discography on No Idea in 2002
• Pinhead Gunpowder - arguably the best known of Cometbus's post-Crimpshrine projects, this band featuring Billie Joe and Jason from Green Day and Sarah and Bill from Sawhorse put out four albums and a host of 7"s from 1994 to 2008
• Cosmetic Puffs - this punk band from Eureka, CA made their only recorded appearance on the "Down In Front" comps
• Sweet Baby - Cometbus replaced Sergie from Samiam on drums for this East Bay band's post-LP songs back in 1989
• Retard Beaters - this four-piece with the awful name put out a single 7" on No Idea in 1998. They do not appear in the 7" box set
• EFS - EFS self-released a single cassette containing 25 songs, six of which made it to vinyl via the 7" box set
• Shotwell - Shotwell is still a band (!), although Cometbus left this Bay Area institution after the release of their first LP
• The Blank Fight - pre-This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb folk punk from around the same period as Astrid Oto. Their two songs on the CD were their first releases
• Mundt - a one-off project made with Quitty from Behead the Prophet NLSL/Mukilteo Fairies. They did a single split cassette with Long Hind Legs on Punk In My Vitamins
• Cleveland Bound Death Sentence - best known as Paddy Costello's Dillinger 4 side-project, CBDS did a pair of 7"s for THD in 1997 & 1998, then reunited in 2005 for four more songs on No Idea

Discogs

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various artists - No Idea 100: Redefiling Music

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I miss No Idea Records as an active purveyor of punk rock. If the ethos of Ebullition and Dischord informed my politics, then No Idea taught me it was cool to be goofy, never pose out, and have fun.

As their 100th release, they put out this fun lil comp, featuring a fat stack of No Idea bands covering other bands. Pretty straight forward, although the cover choices are inspired. Will you ever again see bands covering Assück, Johnny Cash, Galaxie 500, and Morrissey in the same place? Doubful. Plus, take a gander of the beautiful tri-color vinyl, limited to a measly 1,110 pieces:

Fuck, that's just lovely.

All the tracks are great, but I'm a huge fan of Small Brown Bike covering "Jailbreak". One of my favorite live bands playing one of my desert island cuts; what's not to like? It's dirt cheap to get a copy these days, so maybe you grab a copy.

Discogs

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