"Mississippi" Fred McDowell - Live At The Mayfair Hotel

I'm not sure why exactly it started, but I got it in my head recently that I was going to start collecting all the Infinite Zero Archive releases. For the uninitiated, Infinite Zero was an imprint that operated under American Recordings from 1994 to 1997, serving as a reissue label. The releases were chosen by Henry Rollins and Rick Rubin, a duo who, regardless of how you feel about their own music, have pretty fucking impeccable taste. I mean, if in 1994 you're going to launch with Devo, the Contortions, and Gang Of Four, you're WAY ahead of the curve.

So I've been slowly accumulating what I didn't already own. There are a couple of Alan Vega reissues, adrift in Postal Service limbo. I've had my eye on a copy of "Black Monk Time", not really wanting to drop $12 before Christmas on something for myself. And I snagged this lil 5" slab of aluminum last week, having appeared in a local record store for less than half what I would have paid online.

Fred McDowell was 55 (so the liner notes say) and had been playing the blues for nearly four decades when he was "discovered" and exposed to a greater audience by Alan Lomax in 1959. He was a master of slide guitar, an influence on the Rolling Stones, and a mentor to Bonnie Raitt. It was on his second trip to the UK that "Live At The Mayfair Hotel" was recorded. It's a nasty-ass record, with McDowell playing a biting electric guitar, so much heavier than his earlier Lomax field recordings or his sides for Arhoolie. "Live" had originally been released across two records on the eastern British blues/R&B label Red Lightnin' in the mid-80s, but was remixed and compiled together for the first time here.

I can't speak with any level of scholarship about the blues; I definitely don't have any authority on the subject. But I do know what I like, and I like this. I can hear the roots of Fat Possum on this record, of the Gun Club and the White Stripes. If you come across a copy in the wild, definitely snag it.

And, yeah, as I grab more of the Infinite Zero releases that are out of print. I'll post them up. It's only fair.

Discogs

Click here to download.

The Heptones ‎– Unreleased Night Food & Rare Black Ark Sessions

Summer time is the right time to roll down the windows, turn up the bass, and drive around listening to reggae as loud as you can stand.

In honor of that sentiment, as well as the unofficial end of summer coming today, here's a now-out-of-print collection of Heptones recordings, circa 1976, the great majority of which have never been released anywhere else. It's only been in the past couple of years that I've branched out to embrace any roots reggae or lover's rock. What I had previously dismissed as second-rate Bob Marley now opened up, in great part to all the dub I'd been finding cheap and listening to since moving to the PNW.

The Heptones were a remarkable trio of vocalists whose history together dated back to the late 1950's as a street-corner harmony group. They'd gather together in 1966 for their first recording sessions, cutting a trio of rocksteady albums for Studio One before slowing down their sound. They'd work with a variety of producers from 1971 to 1975, before convening at the Black Ark, Lee Perry's renowned studio, at the behest of Island Records to make "Night Food".

What's cool about these recordings are not only the outtakes from a group at the height of their powers, but also the intersection of so many awesome musicians backing them. Leroy Sibbles would leave the group within a year of cutting "Night Food", but you couldn't tell by the level of performance heard here. A key chunk of the Wailers would back the Heptones here, contemporaneously with the recording of "Rastaman Vibration". Credited as the Wailers All-Stars, the Brothers Barrett, Touter Harvey, and Chinna Smith all lay down some amazing riddims. Of course, the standout is the engineering of Lee Perry. This was one of the final sessions held at the Black Ark before Perry burnt it down. The production is just out of this world; the collaboration between Perry and the Heptones would continue into Perry's "Super Ape" and the final classic-lineup Heptones release, 1977's "Party Time". To me, this is a perfect jam for the last warm days of the year.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Swank - Bound

Most of us didn't grow up on the Upper West Side, or taking the train into Boys Town, or sneaking in from the Valley. Mostly, we lived in small towns, on farms, in suburbs without distinction. We felt "off", which is why so many of us caught the first thing leaving town to chase a punk rock dream come true.

Not long after I learned about Fugazi and Bad Religion in the early 90s, I got turned onto what was happening in my town. There was Surge, whose singer was in my drama class with me. There was Suppression, who had two songs on a cassette comp with Surge and whose power violence made Megadeth sound like baroque pop. And then there were Swank, who all went to different high schools from me, but were literally the band to see in Roanoke. They became the link to the outside world; if they played with an out-of-town band, I checked them out, because they probably were awesome. When I moved from southwestern Virginia to suburban Baltimore, they became a bona fide. I could tell another kid who was into Maximum Rock 'n' Roll or Flipside that they were who I went to see back home. They were a common point of reference.

Their second full-length, "Bound", came out the fall I graduated from high school. I saw a Whirled Records ad in HeartattaCk promoting it and an Action Patrol record, and plunked down $10 to get both. They were the first people I'd ever met who put out a CD! So cool! And they'd play alongside all these bands from Florida and New York City, who ended up putting out records with No Idea and Moon Ska. I last "saw" them on a bill in College Park, MD, in 1999. They opened for (ahem) Leatherface, Hot Water Music, and Panthro UK United 13. I was broke as shit, so I sat outside during their set, listening in, then split and drank alone.

All of this is a long way around the block to mention that Swank got back together last year and released a new record, sans saxophonist and The Fest founder Tony Weinbender.. I just ordered a copy, unheard, because that's what you do when a band from 25+ years in your past puts out a new album. While I wait for it to arrive, here's "Bound" in its entirety. You'll probably dig it if you enjoy 90s punk weirdness, early 3rd wave skapunk, or kids channelling the Big Boys.

Get your nuts off.

Discogs / Bandcamp

Click here to download.

Servotron - Entertainment Program For Humans (Second Variety)

I don't want to get in that old fart mode of "I've done so many things I forget most of them", but I'm at the point where the random shit I've done is starting to blur more than a little.

I'm fairly certain I saw Servotron once, although the particulars escape me somewhat. I know this because the timeline for seeing them play Reptilian Records on a Sunday afternoon lines up. Any AmRep band on tour in the late 90s at least stopped in to say hi to Chris X. And if you were in or around town on Sunday, you probably played a free gig at 5pm in the back of the store, after Chris and Johnny Riggs and Gene had moved the videos and iguana out of the way. This was the first time I'd seen anything we'd now describe as synth-punk, although I'm sure my only frame of reference was Devo.

A bunch of college aged kids, leaning into kayfabe, dressed up like cyborgs, making punk rock about robot revolution is about as peak 90s as it can get. Throw in some cover art by Shag, and how pissed off the audience would get over a pro-robot message, and you have a package that's is sadly lacking these days. How stoked would you be where you can afford to get angry over such a silly thing? It'd mean life was pretty good, right? Bring back something like this as the soundtrack to freeing yourself from organic tyranny.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Grey march - Grey march

I don't have an awful lot to say about the self-titled 12" from Grey march. I like the recording enough, although hearing Grey march play live in 2013, almost 20 years after they initially broke up, really drove home how good they were/are. They were Baltimorian contemporaries of the Revolution Summer crew in the mid-80s, playing what we'd now call post-punk, but what slotted right next to emo and post-hardcore back in 1986. There's as much of a Factory Records vibe here as there is a T.S.O.L. or Rites of Spring influence.

All of this is an excuse to hype Toxic Flyer Fanzine, the longest running zine from Baltimore and one of the few living links to the days of Grey march, the Marble Bar, Reptile House, and Jules' Loft. Billy continues to do things the old fashioned way: a newsprint or photocopied zine featuring his own music writing and live photography. I'd love to see him digitize everything into an online archive, but, for now, if you want to dive back into that history, you have to visit his Etsy page. Billy just released issue #49 a couple of months ago, featuring photos from recent Subhumans, Krays, and Days N Daze shows. It's great, underseen stuff.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Unsane - Unsane

Screencap from YouTube/Noise r'us

Unsane came along for me at the perfect time and proved that ugly art could be sexy.

I had no clue, at the age of 15, that a lot of the material on their self-titled LP had existed for two or three years, or that drummer Charlie Ondras would O.D. within a year of the record coming out. All I knew was what I heard, initially, on a dubbed tape while skating (and falling) all over downtown Roanoke, VA. It was brutality on a level I hadn't experienced yet. It was the soundtrack to a New York City that would disappear completely within a few years. It was lurid; it made "Friday the 13th" and Metallica look two-dimensional by comparison. I think it's important to note what it's like when a teenager encounters a naturalistic performance like this. Everything else started feeling contrived and fake.

Now it's 2020, and Matador Records has long since stopped being the home for weird and noisy New York City bands. New York isn't even New York anymore; it's a place where people stash their money in real estate they never live in. Unsane got a "new" drummer in Vinnie Signorelli who only lasted through the lifetime of the band. They'd go on hiatus, get back together, record another 10 full-lengths, and eventually would call it a day in late 2019. This remains a keystone record for me; the thing that opened me up to noise rock, noise, power electronics, etc. I still remain shocked that it's still out of print.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Boot Power Vol. 5 - 1970-1979

PYMCA/UIG via Getty Images

We've reached the end of our Boot Power adventure with today's post of Volume 5. By now, you've found a boot's full of new bands to dive further into. My mission is complete.

Standout tracks here? Well, I'm partial to the punk tracks on the comp: Menace, Sham 69, Slaughter & the Dogs, those guys playing "Government Action". I'd never heard the Sensational Alex Harvey Band until downloading this. Now "Next" is a go-to record when making a glam tape. I also think I've mentioned it before; if you haven't checked out the (Hammersmith) Gorillas, do it now.

I'll admit to some real sadness when I come across an awesome blog with dead links. It's doubly bad when I consider a blog like Crazee Kids Sound, where I was aware of it in its heyday, but didn't dive in until they were defunct. So many cool comps and rarities, now lost to time. Enjoy it while you have it, I suppose.

Click here to download.

various artists - Boot Power Vol. 4 - 1970-1979

One of the fun things about the "Boot Power" series is how many awesome songs one discovers over the course of 100+ tracks. When would I have heard the Gorillas, or Protex, or the Sensational Alex Harvey Band? Possibly: my enthusiasm for seeking out music I don't know anything about hasn't waned as I've gotten older. I'm not sure, however, if I'd come across a track like Supernaut's "The Kids Are Out Tonight" if I would have been able to put it in a similar context that this curation provides.

That said, my favorite here is, and will always be, Cock Sparrer's "Trouble On The Terraces". Recorded in the same sessions that produced their self-titled 1978 debut, but not released until 14 years later, "Trouble..." is a perfect football anthem, as well as a great example of how pub rock transitioned into punk in 1976 and 1977. It's hard to believe that "Cock Sparrer" only came out in Spain, and wouldn't come out in England until it was released as "True Grit" in 1987. An OG pressing is rarer than hen's teeth, so, you know, now you know what to get me for my birthday.

As with the other collections in the series, there's some real cheeze amongst the rockers. That's fine, because they make a track like "Tired Guy of the Road" by Blood Chains really pop. Speaking of: don't let corny-ass band names sway you from listening. Some of the best cuts across the series come from bands like Giggles and Bilbo Baggins.

Click here to download.

Re-Re-up: Sweep the Leg Johnny - 4.9.21.30

(Re-up, June 2020: this is one of the first things I ever wrote for this blog [if not the first]. It's possible I re-bought this on vinyl last year just to have a vinyl copy.)

So I'm dating this girl. She's a riot grrl in 1997, so that should tell you something right off the bat. Or maybe not. But she & I get along swimmingly. We both live about 15 minutes from the Pennsylvania border in Maryland. We have a lot to do, but we spend most of our time making mix tapes for each other, hoping on the hood of my Grand Prix and shouting "Anarchy" and going to DC for shows. After all, the Ottobar was newly open, Memory Lane was a distant memory and the only thing Fletcher's was good for was the occasional H2O show.

She & I drive into DC to see Sleater-Kinney for the first time. We trek down to the old Black Cat, me terrified someone is going to break into the Grand Prix. It's probably the month "Dig Me Out" comes out, so we are fucking down for the show. I think Versus opened. Wow, they sucked. I'm not feeling it at all. Neither of us is legal drinking age, and if memory serves, there was no re-entry that night, so we both hawk the merch stand, furiously puffing cigarettes like only 20-year-olds can. (Now that I think about it, maybe it was 1998. I definitely seem to recall drinking a beer.) (But I digress.)

We end up behind the soundbooth, trying to talk over whatever P.A. music happened to be on. She had seen a flier for Fugazi's annual Fort Reno show, and we quickly made plans to attend. The music changes on the P.A. A marching band beat quietly plays. A guitar drops in for 8 bars, maybe 12. Then...fury.

"What the fuck is this?" I ask her. A shrug. Stop. Start. Weird time signatures. Whispery vocals that barely raise over the driving rhythm. For a kid raised on harDCore and John Coltrane, this was a revolution. "Seriously, have you ever heard something like this before-" and then I'm cut off by this skronky saxophone. And Mr. Whisper is hollerin' over the beat, and I really want to break a window out. That's how tightly by the throat this track has grabbed me.

I lean in to the soundguy. "Sorry to bug you, man," laying on my best impression of a hipster. "What is this you're playing?" "They're called Sweep the Leg Johnny. I think they're from Chicago or something." And that was the first time I heard Shower Scene.

I got to see Sweep live twice: once at the Ottobar, on a bill with Yaphet Kotto, the Exploder & League of Death; and out at the last Michigan Fest, where they were one of three reasons I drove halfway across the country for a show. I've heard them described as math-rock, but they always struck me as a little too aggressive for that tag.

Enjoy the reason I started this blog.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Boot Power Vol. 3 - 1970-1979

There's a part of me that counts "Boot Power Vol. 3" as the weakest of the four volumes I've heard. I suppose that should tell you something about the quality of the whole series, because there are wall-to-wall rippers here. Maybe it's the sequencing; it just doesn't flow for me. But, damn, if that's the worst thing I can think to say...

The one-offs here really make this comp. I'd never heard Darren Burn before downloading this, but "Quick Joey Small" is just a killer song from a child singer who really didn't make any other records. Bilbo Baggins is easily my favorite Tolkien-inspired glam band of 1974. The Rebels featured Gaz from Angelic Upstarts, and have a fantastic proto-Oi! cut in "All Hate". The best of all of these is Hector's 1974 track, "Bye Bye Bad Days". Label mates of Elton John, they only released two singles as a band before they disappeared in 1976. This is the one that I find myself singing all the time. It's an ear worm in all the best ways.

Click here to download.

Re-up: Trenchmouth Vs. The Light Of The Sun

Photo via Trenchmouth's Myspace page

Originally posted January 2009, which was a bloody long time ago.

Sorry, fam. Between vacation, catching up on work and the other various excuses that adults use to talk themselves out of fun, I haven't made any time to give you new music to listen to. So let me rectify this!

Trenchmouth is notable for a few reasons. Damon Locks gets a shoutout in the liner notes for Fiestas + Fiascos, which is the first time I'd ever heard of him (I'm a youngblood. What do you want from me?). Fred Armisen, star of stage & screen, played drums for them. And I heart Fred Armisen.

But, mostly, they were a kick-ass post-punk band from Chicago who cut a bunch of records, had some ties to Baltimore & DC and should be a helluva lot more appreciated these days. ...Vs. The Light Of The Sun is Trenchmouth's third full-length. Skene! released this one in conjunction with EastWest Records. It always cracks me up to see which punk rock bands got signed back in the early 90's. EastWest had Trenchmouth & Sick Of It All on their roster in 1994. Yep, someone totally got fired from their A&R job.

Anyway, I think I picked this up for $2 at Soundgarden back in 1999, then promptly misplaced the actual CD for about 7 years. My copy also came with a most excellent obi strip, which I feel is a most underutilized add-on for CDs. File this under excellent housecleaning music.

Click here to download.

various artists - Boot Power Vol. 2 - 1970-1979

Photo by Daniel Meadows

It took seeing Giuda to be open to listening to glam and pub rock; it took "Boot Power" to fall in love.

"Boot Power", ostensibly, is a series of comps curated by the blog Crazee Kids Sound from 2008 to 2010. I'm not sure if Volume 1 was ever posted, despite the appearance of a cover in the "Boot Power" video. Volumes 2 through 5, however, represent one of the best collections of 70s terrace rock that I've ever heard. It's remarkable to me how listenable these tracks are. For every Bowie or Cock Sparrer track, there is a Slade deep cut, or a track like "Always Plenty of Women" by Heavy Metal Kids that I've never encountered. Is it a key difference between the music industries in the UK and US that these songs were big hits in England, but rarely tracked here? I dunno; I wasn't alive for most of it.

So I'm going to post each of the four volumes I have over the next four weeks. The original links on Crazee Kids Sound are dead (old Megaupload links), and I think these are definitely worth keeping alive and available. I'm leaving the Skrewdriver songs in each comp intact (for now); I feel like it's dishonest to remove the Chiswick-era recordings, especially since "All Skrewed Up" stands as a great proto-Oi! record that is a key part of this story. Yet I'll can't ignore that within five years, they had transformed into the leading neo-Nazi/RAC band in the land.

Yeah, come back each Friday, and I'll throw up a new volume. Enjoy.

Click here to download.

various artists - We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001

I am a sucker for a good book about rock 'n' roll, and "We Never Learn" is exactly that.

Much like Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me", this here's an embed from right in the middle of the action, courtesy of Eric Davidson from New Bomb Turks. The Turks were probably my entre into this world of grimy yet tuneful punk rock 'n' roll, having first heard them on their third LP, "Scared Straight". Along with the noisy stuff coming out on AmRep and Man's Ruin, this is what I heard every weekend when I'd drive into Baltimore to visit Reptilian Records to buy music. It was so different from the mall punk then playing on the radio, and the crust and political hardcore my friends and I had been listening to.

The book itself is such a wonderful survey of those years leading up to 9/11, when, simultaneous with America losing her shit, people started paying attention to stripped down rock again. It pays proper homage to Tim Warren and Crypt Records. As much as anyone/thing, they served as the key influence to so many bands from this scene. It's also one of the first times I remember seeing anyone discuss and interview an (inter)national scene. While you could argue that the garage rock revival sprung from the Midwest, by 2000, you listen to similar bands from Osaka to Fagersta to Memphis.

Now what's disappointing is that there isn't a 10th anniversary edition releasing this year, putting this wonderful tome back in print. AbeBooks and eBay show copies running around $125.00, original publisher Backbeat Books is still cranking out music tomes, and Eric Davidson has continued writing entertaining, insightful articles and reviews for a wide range of publications and websites. It should be in print!

Anyhow, please enjoy the downloadable comp that came with the first printing. There aren't many names missing that I would have added, and an awful lot that, if you've never heard them before, you should check out. I'd never really listened to Oblivians, Clone Defects or Thee Headcoats before buying this; now it's some of my favorite stuff.

eBay

Click here to download.

The Rapture - Insound Tour Support Series No.19

Photo by Will Oliver

It was really nice when they gave us punks permission to dance back around 2000. It had been such a sexless existence in the late 90s, so when we figured out making out wasn't going to kill us, and we could repurpose our ADHD meds, well, things became a lot more fun. The dorks among us began to embrace New Wave and rhythm and every week there was a Britpop or soul night at the same clubs we'd been moshing in. Apparently, that book Meet Me In The Bathroom captures the spirit of those times pretty well, even with its focus being on New York City.

Insound.com, for a few years, at least, was THE spot on the Internet to mail order indie releases from. Along with Tiger Style Records and early Pitchfork, Insound was shining a light on the cutting edge of what was happening in American music right then. They had this "Tour Support Series" of limited edition CDs that highlighted what was on the road. If memory serves, you could order a specific release, or they'd throw one into your order if you bought more than $25 of records. These still serve as a pretty awesome snapshot of what was worth paying attention to, yet were inexpensive enough to feel sincere and real.

Throw the Rapture into this mix, and you have a grade A, pre-9/11, dance punk banger on your hands. They were already on the edge of that transition from 90s post-punk to indie dance, having released records on GSL and Gravity that were well reviewed and I remember liking a lot. But this...phew, this was like if Factory Records had recorded everything on a boom box in a basement. It was revelatory. It got us ready for "Losing My Edge" the next year, for DFA to blow up, to dance because the goddamned world was otherwise falling apart and we needed something unimportant to pay attention to.

Three of the six songs on this were otherwise never released. I believe these songs come from the same session that gave us "Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks"; one of the first DFA productions, if memory serves. If nothing else, I think this is worth having because the version of "House Of Jealous Lovers" is just intense.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Best Friends Forever - Special Limited Edition 2007 Tour EP

I'm a sucker for an interesting cover and a low price. You know this because you're already on the lookout for posts with the meet me in the dollar bin label. So even though I knew nothing about Best Friends Forever, I had to pick this up last year when I found it at a Goodwill wedged between a pair of Laserlight classical releases. This Minneapolis trio made records for 11 years, a number of them for Plan-It-X, yet I'd never heard of them. I feel like I would have booked these folks at some point on either side of my first marriage.

This was a very pleasant surprise. I want to avoid using terms like "sweet" or "naive" to describe this, although it wouldn't be a stretch to use either. You could power a small town with the energy and joy on these tracks. There's a through line from the Shaggs and Beat Happening to Best Friends Forever. This is, very literally (if you're to believe the press on BFF), the sound of best friends making primitive pop music together. You get three tracks from a 2007 radio session, and the two songs from BFF's 2003 split with Everybell and Whistle, all burnt onto a limited-to-150-copies CDr. Enjoy!

Discogs

Click here to download.

Revised: Mega City Four - The Peel Sessions

I originally wrote some bullshit about the first of Mega City Four's two Peel Sessions all the way back in October 2008. It seems like a lot of people visit me to listen to this, so I felt I was overdue to revisit it. Here's what I rattled on about:

I had just written this moderately long screed about how you shouldn't trust hyped rock bands, and that's definitely true. But, in the end, it had nothing to do with what I wanted post today. Mega City Four is easily my all-time favorite Judge Dredd-related band. A lot of the kids here in Baltimore were/are totally fanboyish over MC4, or anything Wiz related. Two songs from this, MC4's first of two Peel Sessions, popped up on my iPod today, including "Clear Blue Sky", one of my favorite songs ever. I think this record had a different cover when it was in my dream the other night, but was definitely at the top of that stack. I can't believe this recording is 20 years old...

It'd only been a couple of years since Wiz died shortly after playing Baltimore when I originally posted this. Hearing my friends rave about MC4 led me to explore a whole world of early 90s British indie with their sandpaper melodies. It blew my mind that I hadn't heard more of bands like Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Snuff, Drive, and Senseless Things. "Clear Blue Sky" remains one of my favorite songs of all time; it, along with "Springtime" by Leatherface, come to mind anytime there's a nice April or May day.
Here's what you should know about this disc. It compiles a five-song Peel Session from 1988 (supporting "Tranzophobia") and a four-song Session from 1993 (behind "Sebastopol Rd"). Five years of regular touring and songwriting, as well as the various pop waves in the UK, have given the "Sebastopol Rd."-era songs a real shine that are not present in the 1988 session. That's not a bad thing, although I prefer the 1988 jams.

Is this era remembered fondly by any more than a handful of people nowadays? My gut says it's as small a group now as it was back then; the bloggers, the record collectors, the folks who still exist on the outskirts of the music industry. I hope this repost leads someone down the same path that I went in the early aughts. I think it's worth spending a tenner on.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Tsunami - Deep End

Maybe it's because they were too punk for indie rock, and they were too indie for punks. Maybe it's because their label hasn't been open for over 20 years. Maybe they were the band that inspired the bands to come. In my humble opinion, Arlington, VA's Tsunami remains one of the most underrated bands of the 90s, with a catalog well worth re-appraising.

I'd heard about them around 1993 via the college radio station in Blacksburg, VA. One night, one of the DJs played the entire B-side of "Teriyaki Asthma VII", my first exposure to both Superchunk and Tsunami. "Punk Means Cuddle" became a through-line for me and my girlfriend; she didn't want to listen to Bad Brains or Fugazi, but we could listen to the mix with Tsunami and Tiger Trap on it over and over again. It wouldn't be until the next year when I'd finally come across a physical copy of any of their records. I found the CD of "Deep End" during my first visit to the Sound Garden in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It remained on steady rotation for me over the next couple of years, mystifying my friends who couldn't understand why I'd listen to this AND Youth of Today. "Deep End" is tuneful, emotive, noisy, powerful. I think it foreshadows the kind of music that would make Sleater-Kinney famous over the next 10 years.

I could wax poetic over the entire Simple Machines catalog. Their nine-year run from 1990 to 1998 would make anyone envious. With Tsunami leading the way, it offered a true alternative to both punk orthodoxy and major label co-opting. I'd love to see someone like Numero Group release a comprehensive reissue of Tsunami's back catalog. Until then, we'll settle for opportunities like this to take another look.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Goin' After Pussy: Teasers & Tidbits

Stolen from Etsy

Call me crazy, but I don't think you could put this record out in 2020.

There's this whole trash punk scene from the 90s that, despite being prime for revival, no one's truly examined in detail. I mean, I guess Eric Davidson touched on parts of it in his must-have history of late century punk, "We Never Learn".

(Sidebar: how the fuck is that book no longer in print? Somebody should reprint it, tout en suite!)

But there's this whole sleazy, Dead Boys-loving, pomade wearing scene, illustrated by Coop, I remember from the 90s that really doesn't get mentioned anymore. It came from labels like Sympathy for the Record Industry and Reptilian Records, and stood in stark opposition to the political punk and hardcore, or the much more cheerful Epitaph/Fat mall punk of the same period. Not that I'm the cat to write that history, mind you. But it's worth revisiting, especially since I think the greater culture lacks the nuance to permit so much off-color shit to happen in a 30-minute punk rock set.

Goin' After Pussy provides a nice snapshot of that time. It's ostensibly a sampler of the first 20 or so releases from California's Junk Records. It's also sexy, kinda dangerous, fun...like huffing glue in a dark alley behind the dive bar. I won't sit here and bitch and moan about the bad ol' days, but it was nice to come up in a time where not every mistake was recorded. The music and posture of each of these bands reflects that. You get some early period Electric Frankenstein, a Candy Snatchers track from the period around their second record, and a pair of ripping Zeke cuts, not mention an assbasket of other rippers. The music is intercut with answering machine messages, which is quite a lost art.

So if you find yourself with a handful of mysterious pills and about 75 minutes of free time, put this on and get weird. I'm pretty certain I pulled this out of a Half Price Books warehouse sale in 2018, so I paid something like 25¢.

Discogs

Click here to download

Grand Mal - Binge Purge

From Grand Mal Bandcamp

Moving to Baltimore in 1994 synched up nicely with my budding education in punk and hardcore. It was easiest to get into Dischord's releases; every record store had Fugazi and Jawbox records in them, and it wasn't tough to throw some well-disguised cash into an envelope, shoot it down to Beecher St., and in a few weeks open a box with an Ignition 12" and a Hoover CD inside. As I worked my way through the catalog, I ended up snagging copies of "Flex Your Head" and "State of the Union", both of which gave me a checklist of older DC bands to check out.

So I hear Government Issue for the first time, and start seeking out their other records, which is how I learned about Fountain of Youth Records. Despite only being in existence for four years from 1983 to 1986, Fountain of Youth released a lot of really killer records that existed outside the borders of the Dischord orthodoxy. One of those releases that I've grown to love 1985's "Binge Purge" from Grand Mal, a DC punk band with a hard deathrock edge to them.  I feel like this is a strong East Coast counterpart to Christian Death, circa "Only Theatre of Pain".

"Binge Purge" is one of those hidden treasures that you can still turn up for $10 or less. It's easy to see why this record is unjustly overlooked; Grand Mal split up around the time this 12" was released, with members moving on to more recognized bands. Malcolm Rivera is probably the best known, as he'd go on to play guitar in the Velvet Monkeys and Gumball, as well as come to notice as a prominent historian on the subject of 8-track tapes. Joe Aronstamn and Marc Lambiotte would move on to start Holy Rollers, who put out a trio of underrated records with Dischord during the late 80s and early 90s. Meanwhile, the rhythm section of Don Diego and Linda LeSabre would split off and found Death Ride 69, a pretty great goth/industrial band whose second record got reissued in 1999 and played a ton by my girlfriend at the time.

Originally, I had planned to post a link to my ripped copy of "Binge Purge". But in the course of looking for performance pictures, I discovered the Grand Mal Bandcamp page. So I'd suggest heading over there and downloading this. They've also posted up the Würm Baby demo from 1982 ("Apologies" comes from that session) and a live set from 1984 featuring some songs they never recorded in a studio. Let's face it: you're probably due to do something productive with your day. Go check it out.

Get it on Discogs

Bandcamp

The Worst - The Worst Of The Worst

So back around 2001, some amazing soul released ten fan club 7"s of early 80s American hardcore under the label Reagan Era HC. When you've only heard old heads talk about how great YDI or Offenders were, and you suddenly can cop a bunch of their master works at $4 a pop, you don't quibble over the morality of buying bootlegs. You just gobble them up. That's how I heard the Worst for the first time.

Their 1983/4 12" Expect the Worst, a proto-crossover classic, was suddenly available in a conveniently inexpensive format. And I was hyped. Expect the Worst was short/fast/loud...just perfect for what I was looking for. It took me down the road of exploring all the Mutha Records catalog...this really fun suburban New Jersey 80s label that stood as this counterpoint to the super-serious NYHC scene of Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, and Warzone. I mean, any label that put out Chronic Sick records had to have a good sense of humor.

Flash forward almost 20 years, and I'm making the rounds of local thrift stores. I hit this cache of what seems to be someone's hardcore/grind/emo CD collection. Lots of fun stuff...most of which I already owned. The best finds were the White Cross discography on Grand Theft Auto, a CD version of Propaganda - Russian Bombs Finland, and what you have below: The Worst of The Worst.

So what you get is pretty comprehensive. The Worst of the Worst starts off with their self-titled 1982 7", then crashes into the aforementioned Expect the Worst. THEN you get an unreleased 12" worth of material that was recorded for a 1984 release. The CD is capped off with a portion of a Worst live set from Max's Kansas City in 1979, all with unreleased songs. All told, it's a 29 song, 43 minute banger. Sadly, it's out of print, and currently selling for around $20 online...if you can find one. It's worth finding one. Stuart Schrader wrote a fantastic set of liner notes that serve as a loving history for this band that might otherwise be a footnote in some granddad's remembrance of the "good ol' days".

Yeah, here's the discography. If you like trashy, thrashy 80s hardcore that sounds like it was recorded on a boombox (and, yeah, that's a GOOD stylistic choice), then this is right in your wheelhouse. I picked this up for $3.

Buy it on Discogs

Download