Schenectady, New York has the distinguished and unfortunate nickname "Electric City" due to it's long and storied relationship with General Electric, that stalwart of the military industrial complex (they make refrigerators and light bulbs as well). Just outside of Albany, Schenectady shares few of Albany's perks as a state capital, and instead suffers from the same doldrums as scores of smaller rust belt cities across the Northeastern/Midwestern US. Schenectady is, however, a fantastic place to stop off the NY State Thruway and pick up some delicious greasy pizza. I miss the NE tour route (it's been over two years now), because chances were always good that Ron would be working when I called, and we would take that exit, and right in the middle of the historic and dilapidated downtown was a dilapidated pizza joint. It was always free, and therefore delicious, but breaking up a drive by spending 15 minutes with one of the funniest and most honest dudes I've come across was the real point of the detour. Ron sang for ECFU, who I first came across while on tour in some other upstate NY city in 2004. If memory serves, we arrived late, and heard them play a few songs from outside the venue. Our loss, as this is pure, raw and simple hardcore, frustrated and pissed, the kind of hardcore that comes from living in a dead end place like Schenectady. 9 tracks in just under 7 minutes, with songs like "My Dad Sucks," "You Suck," "Ruiners," and "New York Shitty." Just about every one of these gems follows the terribly predictable verse/chorus/verse/chorus/end formula, which just means that by the second listen, you don't need to follow along with the hand scrawled lyrics sheet, you can rage all over your bedroom screaming along instead. No frills on this tape, just pure thrills.
Schenectady, New York has the distinguished and unfortunate nickname "Electric City" due to it's long and storied relationship with General Electric, that stalwart of the military industrial complex (they make refrigerators and light bulbs as well). Just outside of Albany, Schenectady shares few of Albany's perks as a state capital, and instead suffers from the same doldrums as scores of smaller rust belt cities across the Northeastern/Midwestern US. Schenectady is, however, a fantastic place to stop off the NY State Thruway and pick up some delicious greasy pizza. I miss the NE tour route (it's been over two years now), because chances were always good that Ron would be working when I called, and we would take that exit, and right in the middle of the historic and dilapidated downtown was a dilapidated pizza joint. It was always free, and therefore delicious, but breaking up a drive by spending 15 minutes with one of the funniest and most honest dudes I've come across was the real point of the detour. Ron sang for ECFU, who I first came across while on tour in some other upstate NY city in 2004. If memory serves, we arrived late, and heard them play a few songs from outside the venue. Our loss, as this is pure, raw and simple hardcore, frustrated and pissed, the kind of hardcore that comes from living in a dead end place like Schenectady. 9 tracks in just under 7 minutes, with songs like "My Dad Sucks," "You Suck," "Ruiners," and "New York Shitty." Just about every one of these gems follows the terribly predictable verse/chorus/verse/chorus/end formula, which just means that by the second listen, you don't need to follow along with the hand scrawled lyrics sheet, you can rage all over your bedroom screaming along instead. No frills on this tape, just pure thrills.
So, as promised, I went to see DEEP SLEEP from Baltimore last night. So Fucking Good! Every ingredient was there for the perfect hardcore experience: a guitar that has spent years honing it's tone on early HUSKER DU and perhaps a few ARTICLES OF FAITH singles, a singer that is snotty, energetic and charismatic, a bass player who simply fucking FLIES over the instrument, I mean good like like early C.O.C. kinda good, and of course a drummer that is solid meat and taters backbeat. They totally killed, but they did not have any tapes. Go buy their records.
