VARIOUS ARTISTS - "The Fucking Rice Harvester Compilation" - Tape - 1996

   Rice Harvester was a zine I made for 20 years. A zine is a bunch of paper that someone scribbled on, photocopied for free at a chain store, and then stapled together to hand out on the street so that someone might understand their feelings. For the fourth issue, I compiled a cassette of punk bands to go with the issue. A cassette is a piece of plastic that houses quarter-inch magnetic tape that somehow magically holds music onto it. You put these cassettes into an even bigger piece of plastic or metal with big clunky buttons. These bigger pieces of plastic or metal used to be found for almost nothing at thrift stores or on the street. Anyway, you push down one of those big, clunky buttons and, if everything is right with the world, actual music comes out...or whatever it is that someone recorded onto that cassette.
   SO, like I was saying, I put together a compilation tape that was given out for free with the free zine. I stole every last cassette from chain stores, sometimes just walking right out the front door with a few boxes of tapes in my arms because fuck capitalism and What Is Anything? The tape consists of some local favorites at the time (local at that time meant Huntsville, AL), bands that I wrote to for a song and some far-flung punk bands that were culled from my friend Joey's compilation LP that he never, ever intended to release. Imagine sending off your exclusive song with the intention of having it appear on this cool LP comp, but then it comes out on a free tape with some crappy zine from Alabama. Fuck yeah life!
   THE CRUMBS, from Miami, FL start it off. They were a RAMONES-loving punk band from Miami. They were all fun and everything, but we stopped setting up shows for them once our friend stopped playing drums for them and they said some sketchy shit about women.
  THE SLOBS, from Cincinnati were a weirdly underrated band from the mid-90's and they played sloppy basement punk. They put out a slew of shit, mostly in 1996 and this song, "Politician" did not appear on any of it, as far as I can tell. It's a funny concept for a song. "I don't wanna be a politician!!" Yeah, that's pretty easily avoidable, but a great thing to sing along to.
    JABBERJAW was a Huntsville punk band who always sounded better live than on tape. I saw these three teenagers play a bunch of different shows around town. They were always great, but could never really channel their enthusiasm onto the recording. I asked them to be on this comp and remember being impressed that they knew how to dub a plane crash sound onto their song. I still am. I can't do that shit....still. I love that this song is about being a dead pilot.
   FUN GIRLS FROM MT PILOT were from Nashville, TN and featured four guys who dressed in drag at their shows. The Huntsville scene really liked them, but I was kinda over them by this point. They were really fun and a good band...super bouncy punk and always a good live show, but I just wasn't too enamored like other folks were. What IS interesting is that they broke up and their singer, Cat went on to be a wrestling manager...like total WWF showman style, but on a DIY level. He wrote some articles in zines about it and seeing the similarities to DIY punk was really interesting. This song might be exclusive, but I'm not sure.
   PROPERTY is from Huntsville. They started in 1994(?) and they're still a band. I'm not sure if they've ever left the southeast US. At that time, their shows often included members of the band running headlong into other members of the band and knocking them across the room, completely ending the song. The 5 members of the band brought a lot of styles to the table, but mostly settled into hardcore and catchy punk. They were always great and fun to watch. I bet they still are. I love this song because the teenage singer's voice (Shane) is cracking and the song is just plain great.
  THE GRUMPIES have been discussed at length here, here and here so I will spare you. The two songs on this tape are from their original demo, which I loved so much that I jumped at the chance to be their drummer when the original one quit.
 SWEATER PUNKS were another Huntsville band and their inclusion here is a mystery to me. I don't remember ever seeing them when I lived in town, but their guitarist Seth was always a solid fixture in bands so I probably trusted this new band of his to be good. My friend Jack (also from AL) did some minor detective work (meaning he asked Seth) and came up with this info: The band only recorded once when Jack went over to try out for the band on drums. So, that's him on this recording. The rest of the band was Seth on guitar and vocals and Greg (not me) on bass. This recording never got vocals put onto it, but the song on here was intended as an instrumental. Later, Joey from the 3D's heard this song and asked Seth to join the band. They re-recorded this song as "Spontaneous Human Combustion". Thanks to Jack and Seth for the info!
    THE CRIMINALS were from Oakland / Berkeley and they recorded an exclusive version of their song at Gilman. That's all I'm gonna say because why do you need to know more info about posers?
   JOEY TAMPON AND THE TOXIC SHOCKS was my old band There is more info about the band here.
   WHITE TRASH SUPERMAN wrote the best punk song of the 90's and I asked if I could put it on this tape. They said yes. You can and should find more info about them here and here.
   THE RICKETS were from Olympia, WA and were maybe the only spikey drunk punk band at that point in the town's history. While everyone else was concentrating on twee pop, minimalist punk and feigning pre-teen innocence even though they were pushing 30, THE RICKETS sang about getting drunk, hating their job, destroying Olympia and getting drunk again. Here. they contribute a song about my friend Janelle because it was the 90's and that's what bands did for some dumb reason.
   CHICKENHEAD was a drunken, chaotic machine. This is the last song they ever recorded on the day they broke up. You can find more info about them here.
   That;s it. Enjoy or don't.

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APPARITION - Demo - Tape - 2017

   There's a floppy haired maniac who lives in Athens, GA and I've known him since our bands crossed paths in 1995. Every time any of his bands puts out a new thing, he gets in touch so he can send it to me and every time, it's exactly what I need in my life at that moment. APPARITION is no different. Full throttle, no fucking around, insane, throw-everything-down-the-stairs-over-and-over-and-watch-it-break style hardcore!! Shit is dark. The perfect soundtrack for consuming the everlasting horror that is our daily lives.

Every breath that I take 

Of this planet's stupid air

Makes me nauseous.

DOWNLOAD IT FROM THEM, TURKEYS.

I don't update this site often now because I think writing about music so much has kept me from actually feeling the music. You know what I mean? 

IT GETS WEIRDER - Tape - Compilation - 2015

   Olympia, Washington. Love it or hate it. For whatever reason, it's a small town that brings up a lot of different emotions for people, but I've rarely met anyone who feels indifferent about the place. I myself have been on both sides of the wall at different points in my life. Once, I went there for a week just to lay on a couch while it rained.
    It's gotten a lot of attention in the past because of K Records or BIKINI KILL or whatever-the-fuck and now they're maybe getting a lot of attention because of G.L.O.S.S. or K Records or whatever the fuck. I've come around to liking the place again (and I have for years now) but I'm not about to pack my bags and move on up. I think it gets a bad rap, but imagine fighting to live your life in new and interesting ways while being somewhere small enough to see real, actual results. I'm not saying it's easy by any stretch of the imagination. I'm mostly telling you this convoluted shit to bring light to the fact of all of the hard work that my friend Meg and a lot of other hard workers do in Olympia. They helped to open the Interfaith Works Overnight Emergency Shelter, which is a shelter for people living on the streets of Olympia. I can't get into the details of the whole thing because I don't really know them. What I can tell you is that I went to a party at the shelter while a hardcore fest was happening 2 blocks away and all of the interactions I had there were so genuine, real and positive that I had to walk around the corner at least 5 times and just fucking cry. I know it's not like that all the time and I know it's a lot of hard work and I just wanted to point that out. Going back over to the fest felt like a step down, even though I would literally kill someone to relive that CCTV/BIG ZIT/VEXX show again.
   Also, I like eating tater tots at the Reef...a diner downtown that has burned down like 2 or 3 times.

   Oh yeah, there's music here. This tape was compiled by Sadie (G.L.O.S.S./DYKE DRAMA) and Joey (a true genius/madman who is responsible for most of the sick recordings you like from Oly) to showcase the myriad of punk shit coming out of the basements and dives of this small town. I love that this tape is truly all over the map of punk...it's not just hardcore or pop-punk, but those things are there too. I think my favorite discovery from this tape is DEFACEMAN, who I'd never heard before...just true fucked, chaotic, messy, brilliant beauty. I want to hear everything by them now. Other heavy hitters featured here are VEXX, GAG, G.L.O.S.S., BROKEN WATER, CC DUST and NASTI. The entire tape is worth your time though and provides a perfect glimpse at all the new shit going on there...or at least what was happening in 2015. Some of these bands have broken up already. Get into it.

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I don't think this tape is available anymore. 

I took a long break from the blog for many reasons and one of them was archiving makes me feel weird now. That's all I'm gonna say about it, but I'll keep doing it for the time being.
If anyone in the Bay Area wants to give or sell me a functional cassette console, please get in touch. I had 4 break in one week.
Thanks to Alex Turner for digitizing this one. 

VX GAS ATTACK - Tape - 2014

   For the last week or two, I've been combing through stacks of tapes to digitize for the blog and coming up with stuff that I'm not particularly excited about. What I've noticed though is that almost every time I've been looking, this tape has actually been the one playing on the tape deck. In fact, it hasn't been more than one foot away from my stereo since their singer August placed it in my hands on a 2 AM 24th street a few months ago.
    I previously saw August singing for WALLS a few years ago and I honestly thought he was singing about different kinds of knots. More recently, I saw him losing his shit as he co-fronted PIG HEART TRANSPLANT to a largely vacant room. VX GAS ATTACK is a different beast altogether. Throughout the ten songs on this tape, the band is unrelenting. No breakdowns. No "mosh parts". Plenty of nearly cheesy divebombs and guitar solos that cross the border of ridiculous (note: I'm 100% fully in support of this). August is completely unhinged in a way that actually sounds dangerous. You know how there's those people who say that if they didn't find music, they might've just killed people instead? That's what this sounds like to me. Plus, it sticks in my head.

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BUY A TAPE HERE

I picture this band using BC Rich guitars exclusively.

Members of  PHT, WALLS, PLEASURE CROSS, LORDS OF LIGHT and more. 

VARIOUS ARTISTS - "2846 Chapman St" - Comp - Tape - 2002

   Today, I went to a yard sale in Oakland and ran into a tiny boatload of cassettes. Of course, I was drawn to them like a moth to a flame.  The pile was full of Burger Records stuff and since I've made a decision to try and keep this blog mostly positive, I'll just leave that statement there. There were a few gems hidden beneath and I mostly left them hidden beneath because I live in a tiny room now and I could already build a small house out of the tapes  that I currently own. I even found my old band's discography. Unlike many people I know, I love seeing my band's stuff in a yard sale or a dollar bin.
   I walked away from the sale with three tapes. One of them was the SEXY demo tape. I have been looking for this tape for fucking YEARS and I was so happy to have it in my hands. When I got it home and found that it had been dubbed over with super fucking shitty metal, I can't even find the words to convey my disappointment to you right now. Another tape was a home dubbed Japanese garage band who mostly covered SF garage bands from the 90's. The third tape was this one right here.
   I only visited the Chapman Street warehouse a couple of times because it was way out in Fruitvale.. Some people called it the S.P.A.M. warehouse. They put on a ton of shows back in the early 00's, had a beer vending machine and was inhabited by at least 30 people at all times. (That beer vending machine lives on in a current Oakland punk house). One of the only things I remember about visiting there was that I saw a great BANANAS show there. It was packed and the band was in that perfect form of being drunk enough to be really fun but not too wasted to play. I remember that a teenager kept jumping on the stage, grabbing the mic and screaming the words louder than anyone in the band. It sounded terrible and everyone kept dragging her off the stage. For their last song they played the (at that point) new and incredible song "Nautical Theme" and -Oh My God - it sounded so good. When the whole band was about to kick in at the end, we looked and the teenage girl was mounting the stage again to scream the last lyrics with the band. I'm a firm believer in a lack of divisions between band and audience, but there has to be a line drawn sometimes. Someone has to take action. That was the moment when my friend Janelle shouted "NOOOOOOO!!", downed the rest of her beer, threw the empty can as hard as she could, hit the girl in the head, knocked her offstage and the girl was gently crowd-surfed back into the throng. The band sounded great and the girl was wasted and unharmed. I've been hit in the head with empty cans many many times and that shit does not hurt.
   I've already written about almost half of these bands here, here, here, here, here AND here. That was TOMMY LASORDA, FLESHIES, LOS RABBIS, POSER POSSE and SEXY. The other bands (CIVIL DYSENTERY, BOZAKS, SCORPION DEATH ROCK, DISMEMBERS and WEAK LEADS) are part of a scene that I know almost nothing about. You can listen for yourself and make up your own stories.

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The sound quality ranges from pretty bad to "holy shit"

Still looking for that SEXY demo. 

STERILE MIND - Demo - Tape - 2014

    Two friends named Andrew and Travis got together and wrote some 100% no-shit-sick-ass hardcore riffs. Then, they hauled all of their gear into the legendary Dub Master Avery's Atomic Spliff Bunker (okay, it's a windowless hut on Dore Alley in San Francisco...or space...I think) and the two of them played all the instruments to make this incredible demo. As soon as they put it into the world, punks were banging down their door (or more likely, politely texting them) to get the band to play some shows, but the only problem is that there was no band to speak of.
   Originally, they got Michelle to play bass. She's a woman who has never been in a hardcore band and once played on a record that got rejected from Maximum Rock N Roll for being "not punk", but she has more attitude and anger than most of the tourists who have clumsily tried to attach a stud to a leather jacket. They asked me to play drums, even though my history with hardcore is spotty at best. We both lasted one whole practice before they hastily replaced us with more suitable candidates. Robert is now their bass player. If you have even a passing interest in excellent DIY hardcore, there's a good chance he played on a number of records in your collection. Motherfucker has a really good idea about what he's doing. Ben is now their drummer and, unlike me, probably tunes his drums and can play a mosh breakdown beat that will ruin you. They sound fucking tight,
   I've liked this tape since the day I heard it, but yesterday I pointlessly drove to Oakland so that I could sit in traffic (long story. I'll spare you) and listen to this thing over and over again. I might have listened to it 20 times in a row and it was good every fucking time. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that STERILE MIND is breaking any kind of mold or going out on limbs, but I will tell you that they play compact, blazing, pissed-off, insanely memorable hardcore better than most.
 Also, this band has turned down more jaw-dropping shows than most bands have played in their existence.

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The tape is sold out from the band. They've got some new shit on the way "soon".

Totally unrelated: I put out a tape by one of my favorite Oakland bands, SBSM. I love them. I think what they're doing is magical and loud and confusing and weird and haunting and cacophonous and destructive. Sometimes, I have no clue what they're doing and that is part of their beauty. I feel lucky to have a part in putting their music out in the world. Please look for them on their upcoming US tour and you can buy a tape here.  

BIG BLEACH / BAGHEAD - "It's The Big Bag Split" - Tape - 2015

   Stardate: 1998. The location was Maxie, MS. The whole town consists of a mobile home, a house, a church and a graveyard. Some drunks lived in the trailer and didn't seem to give a shit about anything. The house was inhabited by three or four punks who invited touring bands to play in their living room. The other neighbors were dead or only around during church services. Even though the only punks in town lived in that house, the shows were always good and people flocked to them from around the state of Mississippi. Some bands that played there were THE GRUMPIES (Starkville, MS), ONE REASON (Cleveland, MS I think they played their first show ever in Maxie), SUDDENLY SUBHAN (Starkville), LES TURDZ (Biloxi), FYP (San Pedro, CA), OPERATION CLIFF CLAVIN (Bloomington, IN) and many, many more. The people who lived in that house were dedicated to making a scene happen in their town, even if they were 4 of the 9 people who lived in the town. Some of the best shows I ever played in my life were in that house...even the show where someone smacked me in the face with a full beer while I played drums, giving me my first black eye.
   At one of these shows, I was breaking down my drumset on the front porch while making small talk with a member of the (kind of bad) funk/punk band from Hattiesburg, a town 30 miles north with a population of almost 46,000. At the time, all I knew about Hattiesburg is that it was a town that had a really stupid speed trap on the interstate where police had pulled me over at least three times and searched our tour vehicles, looking for any remnants of the pounds of illegal drugs we were sure to have. I asked the dude, "Where do you guys have shows in Hattiesburg?" He said, "Aw man, we don't have nothing like this in Hattiesburg! They've got it made down here." I looked down the street to the graveyard and the empty streets as the crows cawed and the crickets chirped. "Yeah, this is excellent, but surely you've something going on...house shows, bar shows, local bands....something?!" "Naw man. We like to jam out down here. It's all set up."
   I didn't really feel like it was my place to explain DIY to the guy, so we both walked back in as another rowdy band started their set. Fast forward seventeen fucking years and this tape is sitting in my post office box. It's really the first time I've heard of or even thought of Hattiesburg since then, even though I've lived more than half of my life in the south. BIG BLEACH and BAGHEAD are two bands from that town. Both bands are basically all of the same people, but sound different from each other. BIG BLEACH is fun, straightforward punk with female vocals. It sounds like exactly what you want to hear in a moldy ass living room. (I wish the vocals were louder). BAGHEAD is uglier, rawer sounding hardcore punk with male vocals that is lurchy and mean. I'm sure that there's been a rich history of punk and hardcore in the south Mississippi scene between that bad funk / punk band and these two bands, but if you're looking for that history here, you're in the wrong place. Big shout out to BAGHEAD and BIG BLEACH for making (and sending) these tapes, putting on house shows in their town and keeping it real.

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BIG BLEACH

BAGHEAD has another demo too. Follow that link to get it.

BIG ZIT - "International Player's Club #1 - Tape - 2013

   "Sounds like BAD BRAINS"
  "Internet hype band"
  "I don't listen to hype bands"
   A copy of their tape sold for $75 dollars on Discogs. $75. A demo tape. This stupid demo tape. What fan of BIG ZIT has that kind of money to throw around on a little piece of plastic that is bound to break?
    Whatever. This tape is great. I spent almost nothing on it. It has a homemade cover by the band that is too difficult to scan. If you like completely frenetic, lo fi hardcore, you should already be downloading this...or already have it. I don't care about hype. I just like good music.

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BIG ZIT / OOZE double pack cover art added for the benefit of anon commenter tumblr blogger pack 2015-2017

KARP - "Live At Yo Yo A Go Go" - Tape - 1994

Today's tape and write-up is brought to you by Alex Turner.

This show happened in 1994. 21 years ago, RANCID and KARP played together at an indie rock fest in Olympia. What the fuck? KARP is Olympia's best band. Enjoy.

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(ed. note: Sorry if it's misleading that I used the cover of their demo tape for the art.)

ATERPE - Demo - CD-R - 2012

   I think when I first heard this, I described it as "grindcore", a sub-genre I know almost nothing about. Now, I don't know what to call it. It has elements of grindcore, but it's also kind of catchy (I swear one of the guitar hooks could be easily translated to a pop-punk song). It's also just fucking weird. The singer sounds like he recorded his part without even considering the rest of the band...like he was in another room...or another counbtry..or another world. Honestly, it almost sounds like he recorded them over the phone in an echo chamber. Add in the fact that the singer recorded the vocals in the ancestral language of the Basque people, Euskara and I am throroughly confused. Did I mention that this band is from Thailand? No. Did I mention that I kinda love this? I do.

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I know you're curious. It's 3 minutes long.

2X4 - Demo - Tape - 2014

   So, this tape will sail right by the folks who look here to find the lowest fidelity melodic punk on the internet and that's their loss. 2X4 is from Boston. They play hardcore. No hyphens. No bullshit. It's what is blasting out of the back door of my room right now to annoy my neighbors. Fuck everything.

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"Society's a mess

Survive the mess

It's yours to deal with too"

REMOTE OUTPOSTS MIX #2 - 2014

    It's 6 am. I've been awake for 20 hours and I won't get a chance to sleep for another few hours. I'm not complaining. I've got a box of old tapes sitting on my floor that are waiting to be digitized. I'm bugging some other people to write about them so you don't have to only hear my opinion all the time. I think they're good tapes. You might disagree.
   In the meantime, I made this mix for you...just for you. If you download it, you can imagine that I made it specifically with your tastes in mind....and then decide if I succeeded or failed in making a mixtape that you would enjoy. Big surprise: It's mostly punk. There's also some not-punk on it. The years span from 1961 to the last couple of months. Enjoy or don't.

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DARK LION - Demo - Tape - 2003

   DARK LION almost didn't happen. The way I was told, Zak and Sean got together to play some music while they had both dropped anchor in Pensacola, FL. The two of them had never played music together and both were trying to cater to each others backgrounds with disastrous results. Zak had come up playing pop and noise freak out shit with PUPPY VS DYSLEXIA. Sean had already toured the world playing drums in GOOD CLEAN FUN. Adding those things together came out sounding like half a turd, as it was reported to me. Zak was about to give up and then he started playing off-the-cuff riffs. Sean left his comfort zone and decided to "go off." The results became the groundwork for DARK LION. Adding jailbird dreamboat, Sarah Derelict on vocals was the icing on the cake. Her lyrics were (are) incisive, direct and blunt. Pure hate was directed towards the cops, not because we're punks and we're supposed to hate the cops, but because she'd get fucked with by the cops over total bullshit. DARK LION existed during the reign of George W. Bush and that was evident in their output. The future and the present felt bleak as fuck, but I'm not gonna lie...it feels worse now.

   Vinyl Rites released this demo a couple of years ago on a 7" (you might as well click over and order it right now) along with a booklet of fawning praise (all deserved). Initially, I thought the praise was a little overblown but then I thought back to how bad 2003 felt...and I thought about how real DARK LION was at a time when bands weren't speaking directly about how fucked up everything felt. I only saw DARK LION a couple of times. Once was after playing a couple of shows on tour, performing in front of people I'd rather ignore than entertain. Those shows led me to seriously question what the fuck I was doing with my life. Leaving that realm and delving back into my comfort zone of dilapidated warehouses produced of dubious craftmanship gave me a sigh of relief. Seeing DARK LION play a 10-12 minute set to a room full of obvious freaks of society made me feel right at home again. Watching Sarah with her fist raised high and screaming "I try to work and I keep thinking of killing cops! I'm trying to talk to girls and I keep thinking of killing cops!" felt like victory. I didn't question anything and felt at home, even though I was 3000 miles away from where I lived. 

   Like any good band, DARK LION was too volatile to have any sort of longevity. The members went their separate ways, each still being genuine lifers.

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This tape is from the collection of Caroline Paquita

DICK VAN DYKES - "Rear Entry Recordings" - Tape - 2000

   THE DICK VAN DYKES started abruptly in the north Alabama bedroom of a teenage boy who went by the name of Bob. Bob started showing up at punk shows when he was nine years old, sporting a 3 foot mohawk and a dress shirt that had the names of punk bands scrawled all over it in Sharpie. Bob was kind of a jerk then, but we all wanted to be his friend and soon, we were.
   By the time this band formed, Bob was 14 or 15. The other members were Blair Menace and myself. We were both in our 20's and being around Bob made us feel ancient. We just formed a band on the spot and wrote all the songs in about 5 minutes, with subjects ranging from receiving postcards about tackling cacti n the desert to the band BLACK DICE to the comedy duo of Don Knotts and Tim Conway. It was bad. We recorded it and went our separate ways.
  Later, I kinda lost my shit and moved away from Chattanooga and into Bob's mom's windowless basement in Huntsville, AL. Our good friend, Chrissie had also kinda lost her shit and moved home to her dad's place in Pulaski, Tennessee, 45 miles away. One night, I drank too much coffee and lost my shit a little more and decided to walk to Pulaski to hang out with Chrissie. When I got there, 8 hours later, my feet were bleeding and I didn't make any sense. Soon, we were both back in Huntsville and Chrissie was in our newly revived band. We decided to spend a little longer writing the songs this time and were happier with the results. Bob was (and still is) the fastest drummer I've ever played with, which was awesome because I only want to play hardcore if it sounds out of control. Oh yeah, we were a hardcore band once Chrissie joined us and began talking about AUS ROTTEN and DS-13. She played bass and sang, I played guitar and tried to yell.

   We never thought we'd play outside of Bob's basement, but we did eventually. We even went on a very short, ill-advised tour in a primer grey, early 80's clunker car that was bought at a police auction. At one of the shows, someone who lived at the house decided that they didn't want a show there, so they locked all the doors and left. The promoter simply broke in and had the show anyway. We recorded this tape back in Chattanooga at Rear Entry (a practice space in the Highland Park neighborhood) with our friend, Ryan. It was recorded live on 2 tracks, mostly in one take and very sloppily. Some songs are good. Some are bad. You can decide which is which. I will point out that our cover of the HIGHLANDS "Changes Pt 1" is just awful. If you don't know who the HIGHLANDS are (and I'm betting that you don't), please check back tomorrow.

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Photo above is by Brontez, live in Huntsville, AL at Stokes St Warehouse. We really were not trying to pose for this pic. It just happened. 

Top drawing by Janelle Hessig

Cellphone hatred pic by Chrissie.

Rüz - Demo - Tape - 2014

   Sometimes you drink coffee...sometimes you don't....maybe you get that feeling in your head that you want to listen to something short, fast and loud. No pretense. No bullshit. You might wish that every song would be over in less than a minute because your attention span starts wandering after 40 seconds. Maybe you want to hear a singer who sounds just as pissed as you feel every day when you walk down the street and you see another fucking condo being built where your friend's beautiful warehouse used to stand (and then you get more pissed as you think about how you and your friends are just as complicit in the act of gentrification in your neighborhood anyway). Maybe you want to rip your teeth out and throw them at people wearing Google Glass. Maybe you wanna press a cop's fucking nose directly into your asshole as you shit out a giant turd into his stupid fucking nostrils. Maybe you just wanna listen to hardcore. Here it is. 3 songs in less than 3 minutes.

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This tape was put out by Lumpy Rex, I think. The tape is gone, but if you're dumb enough to buy a flexi, you can get a one by this band from Spotted Race. 

You can hear the songs from the flexi here. It rules.

"I got a grudge against society, so I started stealing everything"

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Mix Tape - 2001

   The fun thing about making a mix tape for yourself is that you don't have to give a fuck. You can jump to different genres and not worry about the continuity. You can put on "songs for your crush" without feeling all weird and self-conscious about putting on a "song for your crush". You can pitch-shift the whole thing up a notch so the songs are faster, because that's how you want to hear everything. You can put on songs that might be embarrassing.
  I made this mix sometime in 2001 when I was traveling a lot by myself. It's a lot of my favorite songs from that time in my life and I think it still holds up today. I still like every song on here. I'm not gonna tell you who any of the bands are. You'll just have to figure it out when you download it. If you're into hardcore, you'll like this tape. Also, if you're into hardcore, you might not like this tape. Here's what I will tell you: The RSS song is one of my favorite songs of all time. There have been numerous times when I've screamed along to every word of the song that starts with "Sing it again..." and then looked down to realize that I'm driving over 80 MPH. Same thing with the S.R. songs. Luckily, the songs that follow those songs will jolt one out of their speed demon stupor. Just go for it...or don't.

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As always, no apologies for sound quality or volume changes.

TREMARCHE//MOTEL MATTRESS - Tour Split - Tape - 2013

   TREMARCHE and MOTEL MATTRESS are two bands from the great state of Massachusetts. The former is from Worcester and the latter is from Boston. TREMARCHE lives in my favorite house in Worcester: Distant Castle. That's about the point where my familiarity with these bands end. I've never seen either band and had never heard either one until receiving this tape, although I briefly met one of the dudes in TREMARCHE and he was super friendly. I was out of my mind while wearing a dress and bird mask. 

  MOTEL MATTRESS plays one, long seven minute, proggy, vocal-less super jam that dissolves into tape loops at the end. There's some hints of USAISAMONSTER or KING CRIMSON in there somewhere or maybe I'm way off the mark. Maybe they're just a jazz fusion band. Either way, if you had given me a tape by them ten years ago, I might have smashed it into bits with a hammer and let monster trucks run over it in the street, but now I'm really into it. Now, I want a 21 minute loop of it, which just means I'll let it play three times in a row and be happy as hell. 

  On the flip, TREMARCHE throws out three hardcore blasts in less time than it took MM to play their one song. "Hardcore" might be too simple of a term for this band. There's a lot more going on. There's some noodly bits. There's some parts that sound like they might have been really into FUGAZI when they were 16 or 17, but actually haven't put on "Repeater" since they turned 19. There's some parts that show that they live in a heavily creative environment and it would just be too easy to write a simple verse//chorus song. Basically, I don't know how to easily tell you what they're playing, but I can tell you that I like it. 

   

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Also, I was surprised when I looked up these two bands online and saw the "official" cover of their split. Even though both bands live about 990 miles from my old home of Chattanooga, TN, the cover features a nice photo of Parkway Towers, which is an abandoned building on the south side of downtown Chattanooga. I once tried to squat that building with two friends of mine. We spent a couple of nights there, but the building was too fucked up to safely and comfortably spend a winter. That was in 1998. The building is still abandoned, as far as I know. 

More from TREMARCHE

More from MOTEL MATTRESS

VACCUUM - Demo - Tape - 2009

   The one time that I saw VACCUUM, it kinda went like this:
Show up at venue
Pay money to get in
Walk up to the front to see VACCUUM already playing.
Watch them play for about 45 more seconds
When the song ended, their singer Robert said, "Thanks! Goodnight!"
Walk out of the venue and go home.
I never saw them again and then they broke up.
 
   Luckily, they left behind this demo tape and a smattering of fucked up remixes to remember them by. VACCUUM plays noisy raw-punk in the vein of those fucking shoestring heads who like to makes their amps sound like a headache on Monday morning, but I don't think any of these folks ever used their shoestrings for anything other than their intended purpose. They shit out 9 songs that sound like hate and more hate. Since you didn't ask, my favorite song on here is their theme. Features members of NO STATIK, PEDESTRIANS, MORPHEME, RITUAL CONTROL and many, many more.

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Truthfully, I prefer this tape and their collaboration EP with PIG HEART TRANSPLANT, but this is still pretty great. 

Not to be confused with the old band from Holland, VACUUM, who only had one "C" in their name. Totally different...different spelling. You know, like when VANILLA ICE tried to explain how "Ice Ice Baby" was nothing like "Under Pressure".(go to 1:50) 

MINEFIELD - "Отъебись!" - Tape - 2012

   Possibly one or two people noticed, but I took a week off to go to a different part of the country, see snow, hang out with some of the best people, tweak out at a 24 hour movie marathon, pet a bunch of cats and get tied up in other projects. Now, I'm back at home unloading more tapes and wondering if people even read this. When I mention the blog to friends, they usually say "oh, I thought that whole thing got deleted." Nope, still here.
    MINEFIELD is one of many bands who have sent their demo tape to MRR and caught my attention. In MINEFIELD's case, they sent their 5 and a half minute tape all the way from Russia. They probably draw their hardcore influences from somewhere obvious, but I'll leave the naming of those influences up to people who actually listen to a lot of hardcore. They blast out a stellar RAW POWER cover, so I think it's safe to say that they're one of the influences. I like it because it reminds me of the best parts of 80's hardcore and the early 00's fastcore scene without drowning in nostalgia or hyperbole. It's direct and to the point, like a punch to the face. Like saying "fuck you" to a cop. Like throwing a misogynist psychopath down a flight of stairs.

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DOWNLOAD in higher quality and directly from the band

SANDAL STOMP - "No Fun Intended" - Tape - 2013

   I want to start this off by just taking a minute to tell you about one SANDAL STOMP member named Danny. I met Danny in 1998 when he showed up to our house in the Highland Park neighborhood of Chattanooga. Danny was born in Peru and made his way to Miami as a teenager. I don't know much about his background, but I don't think life had been easy in Peru. When he showed up at our house driving a hatchback completely covered in spray-painted slogans, bearing a cow skull bolted to the hood and a ladder from a pool welded to the back, I had to admit that I wanted to know the guy. When he told us he didn't have a license and he had stolen all of the gas to get from south Florida to Tennessee, I was even more intrigued. At that time in Chattanooga, my friends and I would walk down the streets in ripped clothes and dyed hair while people yelled insults at us on a daily basis. I watched Danny walk around with even more fucked up hair, knee pads sewn into his patched camo pants, and a bow and arrow strapped to his back. Most people were too afraid or confused to say anything. Danny constantly made fun of me for not eating meat, calling me a spoiled ass white kid (correct!) and once brought home a squirrel he killed with his bow and arrow. I think he gutted it and ate it in our backyard, but I didn't stick around to find out.
  Through the years, Danny stayed in Chattanooga, became more legal than most of the people I know, had a couple of great kids and fell in love with OI. Even though he introduced me to a lot of great South American punk bands and has always been a solid supporter of the Chattanooga punk scene, I don't think he's ever played in any bands, so it's cool to see him playing bass in SANDAL STOMP.

   SANDAL STOMP comes from a town that is well known for having a lot of great bands who play a jangly style of melodic punk. On the underside of that exterior, there's a ton of bands who are screaming and clawing their way deeper into the slimy basement of a punk house called Anarchtica. SANDAL STOMP plays gruff-voiced, falling apart hardcore and judging from their lyrics, they want to fight you...and skinhead cops. I can imagine that they're awesome to see when you're feeling fucked up, a little hazy and wanting to fight something...anything...at 3 am. Get into it.

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You can also order a tape or download this from the band right here.

Sorry I spent all that time talking about one member of the band, but everyone has their story. I could have talked about how I met their drummer at a DEERHOOF show when he played in an ambient noise band, but it's just not as interesting. 

Features members of RAG RAGE, TURD HUNGRY CHRIST and TWAT SAUCE.