Something I Learned Today

One of the nice things to find in my mailbox upon my return from vacation was a promo copy of Alternative Tentacles reissue of the collected works of Miami’s The Eat. It’s Not The Eat, It’s The Humidity collects 30 studio tracks and 29 live cuts on 2 CD’s. And you know, it’s about time. The Eat are KBD legends, with their first two singles commanding ridiculous prices. It’s Not the Eat… collects these two gems, the Scattered Wahoo Action cassette from 1982, and the full mid-90’s sessions that spawned the Hialeah 7″. In the late 90’s the band themselves was distributing most of this material on a CDR called Slowly I Turn. All in all, this is enjoyable melodic, garage punk with a biting satirical edge. As the AT bio labels ‘em:

top-floor melodic punk ‘n’ roll - sort of a sped-up Real Kids with rock-bottom Angry Samoans-style lyrics

The second disc is live, and I can do without most live releases. This is no exception. (note that the double vinyl edition skips the live material). I’ll stick with the studio material. The Eat never topped “Communist Radio”, but they come close on a couple of these. Some of my favorites:

The Eat - Communist Radio.mp3
The Eat - Nut Cop.mp3
The Eat - Party Line.mp3
The Eat - Hialeah.mp3

You can buy It’s Not The Eat, It’s The Humidity directly from Alternative Tentacles
(Or, you can try and win one from Peter over at Killed By Death Records)

So here’s my first stab at a podcast, consisting of Boston area bands inspired by all the comments in response to the F.U.’s post below. I am by no means trying to pass myself off as an authority on the bands and the scene in question, just trying to group my favorite bands and songs from a deep and diverse scene. This is great shit. Hopefully I didn’t fuck this up (advice welcome). If you want more of these things let me know. Grab the file here (right click, save as):

Podcast #1 - Boston Hardcore & Punk 1978-1987 (68 minutes, 63 MB, 128 Kbps)

Playlist:
Last Rights - Chunks
The Freeze - Nazi Fun
Jerry’s Kids - Machine Gun
F.U.’s - Boston’s Finest
SS Decontrol - Fight Them
DYS - Stand Proud
Impact Unit - My Friend The Pit
Gang Green - Rabies
Negative FX - Together
Seige - Walls
Sorry - Doomed From The Start
Mission of Burma - Peking Spring
The Proletariat - Decorations
The Freeze - Trouble If You Hide
Nervous Eaters - Get Stuffed
La Peste - Better Off Dead
Lemonheads - Hate Your Friends
Stranglehold - She’s Not Leaving
Unnatural Axe - The Creeper
Moving Targets - Always Calling
Volcano Suns - Cans
Psycho - Kids Are For Tricks
Cancerous Growth - Corporation Vegetable
Deathwish - Condemned
Jerry’s Kids - Vietnam Syndrome
Gang Green - Sold Out
F.U.’s - Me Generation
Last Rights - So Ends Our Night
Moving Targets - Waiting For The End
The Proletariat - Recollections
Mission of Burma - Dirt
The Real Kids - Reggae, Reggae

Thought about posting about The Gears a couple of months back only to find the excellent Last Days of Man on Earth had just posted The Gears 7″. Six months later and I’ve looped back around, ready to dish out a couple of tracks from the CD reissue of the band’s 1980 LP Rockin’ At Ground Zero on Dionysus. The press release sums it up:

“Rockin’ at Ground Zero” is by far the most rockin’ album to come out of the final days of the original Los Angeles punk rock explosion of 1977-1980. Here’s a band that wanted to have FUN; get drunk, do drugs, get laid and make some damned good music! They were ahead of the curve and made a super-musical concoction by mixing together styles that were a direct or indirect influence on the original punk scene, surf and rockabilly groups and even The Ramones

So there you go. While there are a couple of duds on this, the majority is melodic punk with a greaser rock undercurrent. Bonus points for tacking on the band’s 1979 7″.

The Gears - Baby Runaround.mp3
The Gears - Don’t Be Afraid To Pogo.mp3
The Gears - The Last Chord.mp3
The Gears - Heartbeat Baby.mp3

I prefer the version of “Hard Rock” from Bloodstains Across California to the remixed version on the CD
The Gears - Hard Rock.mp3

Notes:
>> The Gears on MySpace
>> Buy Rockin’ At Ground Zero

You want the story on Boston’s Unnatural Axe? Check out the Axe page on Boston Rock Storybook. Want the abridged version? Hit Break My Face for a brief writeup (including a discograpy). Want a full length retrospective from a Killed By Death hitmaker that doesn’t disappoint? Track down Unnatural Axe Is Gonna Kick Your Ass, a 15 track compilation that captures all of the band’s studio material Yeah, it’s a dopey title but it is apt - there’s lots of killer three chord punk nuggets here, most notably the full 1978 EP. Worth it just for “The Creeper” and “The Man I Don’t Want to Be” (guitar solo and all) if nothing else. Some of the hits:

Unnatural Axe - They Saved Hitlers Brain.mp3
Unnatural Axe - Summertime.mp3
Unnatural Axe - The Creeper.mp3
Unnatural Axe - The Man I Don’t Wanna Be.mp3
Unnatural Axe - Tonight We Fight.mp3
Unnatural Axe - Sex Substitute.mp3

Notes:
>> Unnatural Axe alive and well - on Myspace (source of photo)
>> 2006 interview from Razorcake
>> 1979 interview from BGN

When it comes to punk compilations a post on the first Rat Music For Rat People compilation may seem ordinary given all of the rarities now available via blogs, p2p, and usenet. Nothing obscure here by any stretch - all of the bands are legendary and all tracks are live versions of songs that also appear on the official releases of each band (with the exception of the Dils, I believe). So why post it then? Two main reasons:

Not to mention that it’s out of print and the CD version (with only 27 of the 42 cuts from all three volumes) is selling for the ridiculous price of $126 on GEMM. WTF? BY comparison an original press of this LP on Go! can be found for the bargain basement price of $15 on Ebay. Go figure. Below are my favorite tracks from the comp, all recorded live in San Francisco from 1977 through 1982. You can download the whole thing as .rar archive right here.

DOA - America The Beautiful.mp3
Flipper - Life.mp3
Circle Jerks - Live Fast, Die Young.mp3
Bad Brains - You.mp3
Crucifix - Steel Cage Enclosure.mp3
Dead Kennedys - Forward To Death.mp3
Black Flag - Scream.mp3
TSOL - Sounds of Laughter.mp3
Avengers - Cheap Tragedies.mp3
Dils - Blow Up.mp3

Impatient Youth were almost featured here a ways back. I had the tracks ready to go only to find that Strange Reaction had just posted the exact record an hour or two before I was ready to post. Well, now that Scott has moved on to bigger and better things I’ve decided to finally go ahead with my own (Impatient) Youth writeup. Not that I have much information on the band. Impatent Youth were a San Francisco band active in the late ’70’s/early 80’s. The band managed one 6-song 7″ and an appearance on Alternative Tentacles’ Not So Quiet on the Western Front compilation before going silent.

The vaults were full though, and in the late 80’s Lost & Found released a full LP of tracks from 1977-1980 as Don’t Listen. A year later the Frontline 7″ consisting of primae 1978 material was included in the Lost & Found 4 7″ box set. Around that same time Billy Ray Martin put Impatient Youth back together, releasing new material. I don’t know about the later stuff, but the archive material is melodic, infectious punk rock here that shouldn’t be passed up.

Frontline 7″ EP
Impatient Youth - Frontline.mp3
Impatient Youth - Suburban Boy.mp3
Impatient Youth - Take Me Back Home.mp3
Impatient Youth - Yankee Go Home.mp3

From the Don’t Listen LP
Impatient Youth - In Your Backyard.mp3
Impatent Youth - The Workbells Ring.mp3

from the band’s first 7″
Impatient Youth - Business Man.mp3
Impatient Youth - Don’t Listen to the Radio.mp3

from Not So Quiet on the Western Front
Impatient Youth - Praise The Lord & Pass The Ammunition.mp3

Notes:
– “Business Man” and “Don’t Listen to the Radio” were originally posted on Dressed For The H-Bomb. Thanks to Malfeitor I was finally able to hear this record after searching for it for ages.
– shitty pic, sorry.

A couple more great Portland, Oregon punk rock tracks here, this time from The Stiphnoyds. These guys would release a 3 song 7″ on Greg Sage’s Trap Records in late 1979-early 1980 along with a couple of tracks on the 10/29/79 Portland comp. The songs are rough and cool, with a great shock/stun guitar sound. This was reissued on Sage’s Zeno Records in 2001 along with other Trap singles (Wipers, Sado-Nation, Neo Boys) as the History of Portland Punk (which is where these tracks are from). The original disc is now out of print, but you can buy a CD-R of the material direct from Zeno for $6. Not too bad at all. Rave Up also reissued the 7 inch along with a good sounding but not terribly essential live set from 1979 on one LP back in 2002 (you can still grab that one from Interpunk). The band briefly reformed in a couple of years back and even had their own website for awhile, but all traces now appear to be gone. Any more info out there?

Stiphnoyds - Afraid of the Russians.mp3
Stiphnoyds - Mom’s a Fake.mp3
Stiphnoyds - Radiation.mp3

Cover image from Punk Rock Picture Sleeves

Quick and to the point - this is the lone single from Portland, Oregon’s Count Vertigo dating from 1979. I don’t know much about these guys other than they shared a label (their own Cool Records) and most of their members with fellow Portlanders Ice 9 (KBD Records has the Ice 9 7″ right here ). The two tracks here have been comped on the Killed By Death series, natch. “I’m a Mutant” is a nervous track marked by a powerful descending bass line, jittery guitar, and off-kilter keyboards. “X-Patriots” is the more immediate of the two cuts, a subversive punk stomper. Looking for more info on these guys - if you have it please share.

Count Vertigo - I’m A Mutant.mp3
Count Vertigo - X-Patriots.mp3

For fuck’s sake, I’ve been trying to conjure up a post for this evening with no luck. I’ve been beaten to the punch by bloggers with quicker reflexes, which is becoming the norm these days. With all of the quality punk/hardcore mp3 blogs around these days it’s getting harder and harder to find something worthwhile that hasn’t already been posted somewhere. Of course, the big winners in all of this are you bastards - there is so much great, previously hard to come by music easily available for mass consumption. So what was I looking to post you wonder?

Dressed for the H Bomb gives us both tracks from the Huns lone single. Weird, wonderful stuff

Last Days of Man on Earth delivers a 1+2 punch of late 70’s LA punk greatness with both the Flesh Eaters first 7″ and the Gears Let’s Go To The Beach 7″.

Killed By Death Records has been on a roll lately, posting like a goddamn machine. Check The Normals single right here. Peter didn’t post the b-side for some reason. I’m more than happy to offer up “Hardcore”, which is a mighty fine piece of ‘78 Louisiana p-rock

The Normals - Hardcore.mp3

Chew on that (if you haven’t already) while I go back and try and come up with something for tomorrow.

Shit, before I knew Greg Prevost as the frontman for Rochester, NY garage rock revivalists the Chesterfield Kings I knew him as the “fag with the eyeliner” (sorry) who worked as a clerk at the House of Guitars music/record store in Irondequoit. I was never all that big on the Kings, but many years later I was turned on to some of the cool earlier collaborations of Prevost and Andy Babiuk. In 1978 they released a single as Distorted Levels, then soon morphed into the Mean Red Spiders (also known as the Tar Babies ). The material here is from a reputed full album session recorded in 1978-1979. These 4 tracks were released in 1990 on one off label Buster Bulb, and display a nasty, Stoogified guitar sound complete with demented Iggy shrieking. Loud and nasty stuff. Hard to believe that less than a year after this was recorded the tepid (by comparison) first Chesterfield Kings single would be released. Check it out:

Mean Red Spiders - Rejected At The High School Dance.mp3
Mean Red Spiders - Diabolical.mp3
Mean Red Spiders - Kick Your Ass Across The USA.mp3
Mean Red Spiders - I Got VD.mp3

and for good measure, here’s the A-side to the Distorted Levels single

Distorted Levels - Hey Mister.mp3

Notes:
I know I sound like a broken record, but Hinman nails this one. After reading that last year I just had to pull this one out of the closet and give it another listen. Well worth it.