VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Audio Annihilation" - Tape - 2004

   There are very little details that I know about this tape. I do know that it showed up in my P.O. box years ago with an accompanying zine, but that informative document has been lost after moving between no less than 8 houses, 6 states and 3 time zones. What I can tell you is that this was produced by some stellar folks from San Pedro, CA and was probably meant to document a certain time in their scene, but I'm really fucking it up now. Most of the songs on here are shoddy, lo-fi, live recordings that sound like a really fun time. I can't tell you who any of these bands are because I don't know. LIPSTICK PICKUPS? KILLER DREAMER? You tell me! No, really! I wanna know who sings track 14 because it's my favorite! Also, interspersed between some of the songs are some pretty funny ads for records that were coming out at the time, which is something I wish that happened more often in punk.

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VIAL - Demo - Tape - 2014

   There's a bar/venue in San Francisco on Polk Street called The Hemlock. Polk Street has a long history of being a cruising spot for hustlers, drag queens (and kings), entertainers of all kinds and much more. A friend of mine who grew up here said he used to drink at Kimo's Bar when he was underage, and he was funded by older men who were trying to fuck him. Years later, I would hang out with him when he worked the door there during bad metal shows and we both drank for free. These days, most of that era of Polk is long gone. Kimo's was sold. My friend moved away. You can probably still find some old men who want to fuck teenagers (easily), but I'm not sure which bar they frequent. What was my point? Oh yeah, the Hemlock.
  They're a few blocks down from where Kimo's used to be. They've gone through this phenomena that many businesses in the city have gone through: When they opened in 2001, they were considered to be kind of fancy,  evil gentrifiers. Now that Polk Street is even more of a hot spot for white partiers and fuck heads, the neighborhood has built up around the Hemlock, making them look, honestly, a little dumpy. I'm not meaning to cast a sympathetic eye on the place because, even though I know almost every single person who works there (and consider most of them a friend), I don't care much for it. And even though I've seen many, many good bands there (from RADIOACTIVITY to YI to BLACK PUS to FLESH WORLD to THE GIZMOS to everything in between), I never actually expect to see good bands who I've never heard of. Much less DIY bands who sell tapes for $2-3.
    So, yeah, I was surprised and excited to see VIAL when they came up from Los Angeles. I was in the back of the room when they started, but I knew within the first song that I needed to be in the front of the room watching them....but I remained in the back of the room because it was fuckin' packed and I'm not one of those dudes who pushes himself up to the front of the room because their experience is more important than anyone else's trip. I mean, if everyone was throbbing and foaming to the music in that fun way where everyone gravitates toward the stage at some point, sure, go for it....but let's be real...it was a bar show in SF and everyone was standing there bobbing their heads and hoping no one would bump into their $5 micro-brew. More simply, VIAL was ruling. They play fierce, direct punk that is equal parts Dangerhouse Records and everything you already love about DIY punk in 2014 with no hint of professionalism or ego. I could have left as soon as their near-20 minute set ended....but I was actually there to see FLESH WORLD, so I figured I should stay. They were really good too.

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Ask VIAL if they have any tapes left. 

MINUTEMEN - "Double Nickels On The Dime" - 2xLP - 1984

   I was never a fan of new, popular music on the radio. Even as a little kid, I kinda liked Michael Jackson and Van Halen, but still thought it was boring. In the 4th grade, due to having a cool older sister, my favorite bands were VIOLENT FEMMES, THE CURE and METALLICA. In the 6th grade, I stumbled across an amazing mix tape that contained my first exposure to THE STOOGES, VELVET UNDERGROUND and a little band from southern California called THE MINUTEMEN. When my prepubescent brain first heard the opening warbly chords of "This Ain't No Picnic" something clicked. The hair on my neck stood up. Hearing D Boon's voice scream out a mantra against shitty jobs in a voice that wasn't shaped by mass media or sales charts was truly inspiring. I had never heard punk before, even though it had been sitting there and waiting for me for my entire life. I tracked down "Double Nickels on the Dime" and dubbed a tape of it on a shitty stereo...well, I dubbed as much of it as I could onto one tape. I listened to that tape hundreds and hundreds of times before I ever tracked down my own copy of the record. Their ideas, commitment, politics and drive has inspired me more than any other punk band in history. There's not really much I can tell you about this record that hasn't been said before (ad nauseam), but I'm bringing it up for a reason.

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   Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. When I first heard NIRVANA on the radio, it was a little bit of a magical feeling because the airwaves were populated by music that was, in my opinion, horrible, trite bullshit. It wasn't a life changer for me though. I was already listening to the MINUTEMEN every fucking day. I had already taught myself "Blitzkrieg Bop" on guitar. But, to hear the opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the radio was welcome after hearing BEL BIV DEVOE. That feeling was soon squashed after every single radio station in the world, as well as MTV, played that fucking song into the fucking ground. Seriously. Sometimes, DJ's would just play that song on the radio for an hour straight. It sucked. "Bleach" was a mediocre album. "Nevermind" was pretty good, but "Drain You" should have been the hit. "In Utero" owed too much to THE MELVINS (uncredited) and had some seriously weak songs. BUT, I always appreciated how real the people in NIRVANA seemed to be. It seemed like they were just some doofuses who got thrown into the limelight and didn't know how to handle it. I like that they publicly fucked with Axl Rose. I fucking love that they told people to not buy their albums if they were fucked up rapists. I've always been utterly confused about the amount of praise that they've gotten, but I also completely understand why. 

    I found out that Kurt Cobain killed himself on the night of my junior prom. I thought it was sad because he had a lot of potential to do interesting things and use his fame for cool shit. There won't be another rock star like him, which is fine. Would he even enjoy this future we've found ourselves in? 

SPOKENEST - ""Destroy, Gone, Listen, Lose" - Tape - 2013

    I live in the same state as SPOKENEST, but I couldn't feel further away from them. When I was out of the country and told people that I lived in California, many people wanted to talk to me about Los Angeles...about Hollywood Boulevard and the sunny, warm beaches. I can't tell you a thing about them. I can talk to you about Mission-style burritos or the redwood forests or foggy towns by the ocean, but once we get south of Santa Cruz, I'm clueless and lost. Increasingly, more of my friends in the Bay Area have positive things to say about Southern California and I believe them, but my experiences there have led me into strip malls, endless traffic (I once watched the entirety of Top Gun in LA traffic), bands with homophobic lyrics,racist drug dealers, playing shows to almost no one in record stores, losing myself on pills in Mexico and watching people do heroin in a shitty Hollywood apartment. I want to go to Tom Of Finland's house, see the Tarpits, play a show in that boxing ring and see the other things that make Southern California so great.
   I don't think Southern California is bad though. Connecticut and Omaha are bad. Southern California is not. SPOKENEST comes from the Los Angeles area and will prove to you that there's good things happening there. They put out a great self-released 12" last year and followed it up with this tape from this past December. The band is a two-piece with a man and woman splitting the duties of vocals, guitar and drums. They recall the essence of scrappy DIY punk, like THE BANANAS (but waayy less drunk), post-punk and whatever style of punk one would call STREET EATERS, but SPOKENEST doesn't fully subscribe to any of those sub-genres....which is one of my favorite styles of punk. Enjoy their four song tape and go order one for yourself because you can't actually get a screen-printed cover and the physical lyric sheet in a download, fool.

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FULL BLAST - "Tight Sweats" - Tape - 2000

    I'm not even gonna pretend like I know shit about rap, hip-hop or anything resembling that genre of music. Besides some short stints with ICE CUBE and PUBLIC ENEMY (I saw them live in the 90's and it was fucking awesome), the only group I really even marginally pay attention to is THREE SIX MAFIA and some random super local people that show up from time to time.
    ...And then there's FULL BLAST. Fuck. I don't even know what's happening here. It's a trainwreck. It's awful and genius at the same time. Can you legitimately make fun of music if it's stuck in your head constantly? Well, yes...but who is the joke on? I'm just gonna leave it at that.

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GLUE WILL NOT BE SOLD TO CHILDREN - A San Pedro Compilation - Tape - 1998

                                             
    Most of the time, when punks think of San Pedro, CA, the first bands to come to mind are THE MINUTEMEN, FYP or maybe TOYS THAT KILL. Maybe even CAN OF BEANS or NIP DRIVERS (even though they were from Torrance). Did you know that there was a crazy, burgeoning scene laying just below your radar in the late 90's in Pedro? Well, of course you did, but you probably never heard them because most of those bands never played outside of town and never released anything besides the songs on this compilation. The scene revolved around an unnamed record store where the punks hung out and caused trouble. Once, they even built a pyramid out of empty 40 bottles in front of the shitty tattoo parlor next door to them. When the rockabilly dude who ran the place walked out to yell at them, the entire thing collapsed, causing shards of broken glass to slice the dude's vintage suit and eyebrows. This was the beginning of the end for this little local scene and the record store was soon defunct. Many of the bands broke up soon afterwards.

    So this tape is your only exposure to the small geniuses that leaked into the Pedro scene for a short little while. There's the sleaziness of THE MOISTMAKERS, hardcore punk by CARBONATED GENOCIDE, the creepy dudes in CREEP ALERT and the sketchy drug-dealers of Sunken City who played in THE VANS. SWEATS AND TIGHTS kept playing as their acoustic duo at open mic nights for a few years until they moved to Goleta. THE DRIVEBYS were one of the first of these bands to break up after their singer Matt "One Lung" was arrested for first degree murder (Too long of a story for this venue). NOBODY LOVES ME kicked around Pedro playing their brand of low-fi pop until the couple in the band broke up. BACKYARD PARTY played wild, teenage, fucked up skate thrash and refused to play any 21+ venues...until Dan turned 21 and became a barfly. Their best line is "Hop on my board, can't land a trick. Let's see how many times WE CAN FLIP IT!!" JON BENET AND THE COVERGIRLS were fucking awesome and spent most of their time trying to get old men to buy them beers at the liquor store. They had a line up change and became THE JAG OFFS. Their best line is "Don't try to impress us! I think you'd rather undress us!" HATE MY JOB was some sad sack who always came into the record store and played guitar in the corner, so they let him be on the comp. PRIEST SLAPPER was a group of Black Metal dudes who played satanic thrash. I remember seeing them around town when I visited and they seemed really out of place wearing all black and corpse paint among the palm trees and 95 degree weather. THE WAKE UP LATES played kinda shitty street punk. They were cool people though. FLAME RETARDED sucked. THE PINK MC'S were a gay rap group who hung out with the punks because no one else liked them (San Pedro is pretty fucked up).
   Most of the people in these bands became squares and dropped out of punk. Lots of them got jobs at the tattoo shop they used to make fun of. You can still find the guys from BACKYARD PARTY hanging out at Harold's Bar on any given night. HATE MY JOB still plays open mic nights on Tuesdays. PRIEST SLAPPER moved to LA and fizzled out due to drugs...
   I hope you enjoy this tape. It's a brief time capsule into a forgotten part of San Pedro punk history.

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    Wait....are you just gonna believe me? You are, aren't you?  Okay, here's the real story: Back in 1998, my old band THE GRUMPIES were on tour with FYP. At some point, we were driving from like, London, Ontario to Winnepeg, Manitoba...which is about 25 hours of absolutely nothing but beautiful vastness, moose, bears, tiny towns and two lane freeways. Sean (from FYP) and I got on one of our long rambling talks about music and we soon started discussing plans to construct an entire fake punk scene, complete with a record store, back story and compilation tape. I had found a Polaroid on the ground in NYC and wrote CREEP ALERT on it. Thus, that became the first band....

   Tour continued and we kept discussing the plan and constructing bands in our heads. When tour ended, Sean stayed in Pedro and I went home to Chattanooga. A few short months later, this tape and zine showed up in my P.O. Box. He had actually done it! I had forgotten about it, but he had gotten together punks in Pedro to carry out the plan....and a lot of the songs are really good! I even covered the JON BENET song in a band I played with...which begs the question, "Does that make them a real band?" Real or not, I think most of this compilation is great. 

Features members of FYP, TOYS THAT KILL, THE JAG OFFS, THE LEECHES and more..

X - Live at Klub Foot - Tape - 1982

   There was a time in my life when X didn't mean that much to me. I remember first hearing them as a teenager and thinking that they sounded kinda dated and classic rock-y. It wasn't until I started living their songs that they became relevant to me. My whole fucking life was a wreck. Last night everything broke. I felt desperate. X was there and told me to get used to it. When I visited LA for the first time, I could feel a tinge of where they were coming from. Like almost everyone else ever in punk, X became my daily soundtrack. Not just Los Angeles and Wild Gift, but everything else too (I even have a cassette of "Hey Zeus" and think "Country At War" is pretty great).
   I was sure that I missed my chance to ever see the band live, but then they re-formed and I was ecstatic. They came to Indianapolis when I lived 45 short miles away and I jumped at the chance to go see them. I am just as skeptical of reunion shows as any other DIY punk, but I also needed to see X. Days before the event, a friend called from an X show in Atlanta so we could hear them. I put in on speakerphone and danced with my roommates in the living room. It was great! Anyhow, we went to the show and it was awesome. Of course, they played all the hits and I left a happy person. Then, they just never broke up again! They play all the time!! They're kinda always around. Billy Zoom is a creep and hit on my friend. John Doe puts my friends on guest lists for shows. I got to tell DJ Bonebrake that his drumming blows my mind. My girlfriend took Exene some painkillers for her Multiple Sclerosis. Exene opened a show for my band in a bowling alley, wants to make a documentary about my friend Ivy and shopped for tchotchkes at Jimmy Shotwell's street sale. They're cool people (well, besides Zoom) and I sorta just wish they were my friends. I don't need to see X ever again though.
    Oh yeah, there's a tape. It says this was recorded at "Klub Foot" in Houston in 1982, but I can't find any record of a place called that in Houston. There was one in SF and my friend still lives in the building. Who knows? I was 6 years old. Since it was '82, you get to hear them play a lot of really great songs and don't have to be subjected to "Love Shack" or "True Love Pt 2". Also, they play for over an hour! Jeez! There's 2 encores! (some weird sound shit happened on the 2nd encore of "Real Child of Hell" and it's almost inaudible, so I hope that's not your favorite song or anything) The last six songs are from a live broadcast on KBFH NY in 1984. It's all really good...except maybe "Nausea". Bonebrake must've been tired or something, but I'll give him a break. It's hard to play slow songs on drums.

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TURTLE - Demo - Tape - 2012

   I reviewed this band's demo earlier this year for Maximum Rock N Roll and I still think my feelings are exactly the same regarding this recording. Someone even wrote in a letter to the mag that mentioned my review. It was one of those typical letters where folks write in and complain about how everything related to the rag has turned into some "PC pussy ass bullshit" besides George Tabb's column or some such nonsense. Maybe it has? I don't think so. I also don't have a problem with political correctness, pussies, asses or bullshit, but I think George Tabb's column is pretty awful sometimes. Anyhow, the writer said that they were sick in bed one day and read the magazine cover to cover. He complained about the usual stuff (see above), but said that my demo review of this band was touching and even brought a tear to his jaded eye. (I was really trying to steer this entry more in the direction of talking about the band rather than talking about myself, but everyone can see I am failing miserably.) Anyway, here is the review:

   "it's bands like these that make me happy to do demo reviews. The first 3-4 minutes of this tape is chock full of samples that relate to turtles... like, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song and news clips about turtles. When it finally gets to the music, the listener is greeted by a super lo-fi (like it was recorded on a dumpstered boombox) recording of a teenage (?) punk band playing their scrappy, poorly executed, falling apart songs in a garage in Southern California. There is no pretense, no bullshit attitude, and absolutely nothing fancy about this. It’s just some kids banging out their songs in a room to the best of their abilities and putting it out on a a tape. They sound like three people who just picked up their instruments, learned three chords and went with it. Even though I’m not really into these songs, this is exactly the reason why I love punk. Please keep it up TURTLE, and thank you for sending your tape to MRR."

      I still stand by that. This is the reason I love punk. Anyone can do this. I don't think that it means that anyone should do this, but anyone can. Also, I would like to say that my favorite part of the tape is during the last strains of their song, "Of Money, Stocks, Etc" as the whole song is falling apart (was it ever together?), the singer mutters, almost as an afterthought, "People are crazy..." Thanks TURTLE. People are fucking crazy. 

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GENERACION SUICIDA - Tape - 2011

    The folks over at MRR have been raving about the Raw Ponx crew since they first graced the Bay Area's presence a few years ago. For those of you who don't know about these punx, they are a loose crew of Latino punk kids from the East L.A. area who put on shows (just about anywhere from a backyard to under bridges) and play in a slew of great bands like RAYOS X, TUBERCULOSIS, and DRAPETOMANIA to name a few. I've always thought "yeah, those bands are pretty fucking good", but none of them ever blew me away until just recently. I went to see RAYOS X, LA VOZ and GENERACION SUICIDA at El Rio in SF a few weeks ago and it was a fucking great show. RAYOS X took forever to set up, but once they started I forgave them. Totally blazing, driving punk. You can find more praises of them (as well as their demos) here. LA VOZ didn't really do it for me, but GENERACION SUICIDA made me jump up and down and made this fucking Gringo wish that he knew Spanish. They are playing some total LOST KIDS/MASSHYSTERI/GORILLA ANGREB style of punk and they do it well. I wish that the tape was as good as their live performance though.
                   Download tape here