DOTS

Snotty and irreverent KBD styled punk courtesy of one of the only dudes I have ever kicked out of my kitchen. I mention this not to talk shit, but because I think that would make him proud. Sounds of DETENTION and ANGRY SAMOANS collide with SHOCK and RIP OFFS covers, bringing DOTS' vision into clear focus. The reproduction is a bit spotty, and I want to read the lyrics about as much as I want to make the singer breakfast again, but I'm quite happy to blast his new bands from time to time.

6 SONGS

UNCONSCIOUSNESS

For about a year, John and I hosted a Mix Tape Exchange in Milwaukee. Interest began to wane after a few months, but on those first couple of exchanges people really pulled out some big guns and spent some serious time putting the tapes together. This is how mix tapes are supposed to be made. Dave was a transplant from Buffalo (he has since returned) and is one of the most seriously critical music listeners I have ever known, so it came as no surprise that his submissions were consistently excellent, but Unconsciousness might be his finest work. There are bursts of hardcore that break up the 90 minute journey (LORDS OF LIGHT, G.I.S.M., KRIGSHOT), but this tape is essentially a tortured evening in a dimly lit room full of confused inward stares and sweltering doubt. From beautifully innocent female songwriters to grizzled gravel voiced songwriters, from MAN IS THE BASTARD to THIS HEAT, from the only KISS song I ever really liked (but performed by MELVINS, so it's even better) to the equally crushing and far more musically intriguing TOADLIQUOR. Unconsciousness is bookended with two tracks acid drenched distorted psych jams with soaring (and endlessly soloing) guitars from PSYCHIC PARAMOUNT, a band that I first heard through Dave. He also introduced me to PHARAOH OVERLORD who have provided the soundtrack for countless late night drives since they came into my life, and THE GIGOLOS "This Generation," which has since become one of my choicest jams - an infectious KBD tune with an undeniable mod/powerpop energy. Fortunately for you, PHARAOH OVERLORD's "Test Flight/Blackout" from III closes the first side of this tape in brilliant fashion, and "This Generation" makes an appearance as well...so you win. There is an art to making a great mix tape....and Dave is an artist.

HOW DO YOU THINK MY FATHER FELT...RESORTING FINALLY TO THE BELT

In addition to making mix tapes, Dave does time in excellent bands. Seriously. They are all good, and if you have seen them then you know I am telling the truth. CAGES. RUNNING FOR COVER. GAS CHAMBER. DEAD LANGUAGE. THEY LIVE. There are more, but that should get you started. I guess today is Dave Day.

BLACK DEATH

How many bands must have called themsleves BLACK DEATH? This one hailed from Reading, England and cranked out a super UK punk demo in 1980 before coming to a premature end. I say premature because these tracks are subtly amazing, and I would have loved to have more than just four songs to uncover on this two hour mix tape of early Reading demos and live sets. After the 5+ minute "Micro Chip" comes to an end, the bass starts hinting at the mysterious would be classic that might be right around the corner, and then "Alien Invasion" is exactly that, but "Street Fear" is among the most brilliant unknown UK punk burners I've ever heard, almost straddling the NWOBHM line, even if accidentally. If this track had made it to wax, I have no doubt that it would be an insanely sought after piece of UK punk history. This band was way more mature than most in their approach to writing, and more accomplished than most in their ability to translate those compositions to tape. One raucous and marginally in tune live number, and that's all that I can find from BLACK DEATH, except that they became ZEROX II after switching vocalists. Great fukkn stuff.

BLACK DEATH

DANISH ROCK NEWS

A mix tape in two parts from Denmark....the sticker on the cover pretty well explains what you will find inside. Perhaps it might be a little silly to listen to radio DJs blabbering on in a language I cannot even begin to understand, but it's kinda funny to hear BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN and SUBHUMANS on the same radio show with Danish KBD shots (though at the time I'm sure it was just punk rock) and UK82 burners. 30 minutes of killer early Danish punk on the flipside...apart from not listing the tracks, someone made a raging comp tape, one that is still worth blasting 29 years later.

Rock News In The Danish Radio // Danish Punk Rock From 78-82 

MORE SELF PROMOTION:

NO STATIK will be at The Morgue in Seattle tonight with WHITE WARDS and BONE SICKNESS.

THE NOT

I first heard Boston's THE NOT after I snagged their second self released record, the 1985 Kids Survive 12", on a whim and was suitably impressed. Killer hook laden punk that blurs the lines between power pop, mod, and tuneful garage punk - the vibe is laid back and chilled out but they fukkn jam. The catchy music is offset by photos of the band that seem to be as much in line with the back of an SSD record as with these rockers, shirtless teens flying through the air with Thrasher stickers on their instruments, sign me up. 1984's What's The Reason came into my life a little later, and THE NOT was placed firmly in my mental ranks of the unappreciated. Yesterday I was at Devon's place in Oakland, trying to pry out of him the years of cassettes that languish in boxes (I get a huge archive to play with, he gets them all ripped for free - what could be better?!), and I came across this gem, not the Break Free demo that I would still like to hear (Al - I know you have one, help me out?), but THE NOT live on New Jersey's WFMU in 1986. Songs from both records, a solid rendition of a BYRDS tune and a mediocre version of the oft covered "Shakin' All Over," but the energy is sky high, and the talent of this band is obvious. "I Won't Run Away" in it's live form could have been an 80s hit, the guitars are epic and the lyrical sentiment is a perfect reaction to the cold war-era fear and social frustrations than lurked silently under the surface in the 1980s.  Nine songs, half an hour, and a picture of three dudes standing up against a brick wall.

LIVE FOR THE FANS + BANDS

HATEFULS

As Luc (from the sporadic but excellent Kängnäve blog) pointed out a few weeks back, the Ancienne demo that I posted was the likely just the first from HATEFULS ("ancienne" means "older," and that tape was from 1983), and with my vast multilingual repertoire I am going to guess that this demo, seemingly titled Nouvelle, is actually just their "new" one...or at least it was the new one in 1985...and I didn't even finish college. More killer KBD styled punk shits this time, though HATEFULS have mellowed a bit on this three song recording. The combination of "Voodoo" b/w "Too Many Rules" would have made an essential slab of wax, but alas these kids were destined to remain on cassette until some bearded chump converted their lifes' work to 00s and 01s and shared it with you.

HATEFULS 1984/85 demo

FENSICS

Today's Oklahoma post comes from the same batch of tapes that I pulled last week's RANDYS record off of (cheers again for the loaner, Blake!!).  FENSICS were also from Oklahoma City, and released their lone EP in 1979. The A-side ("Full Time Job") was comped on Killed By Death #999 some years ago, but personally I prefer the flip "Tornado Warning" and the fake accent and Johnny Rotten style trills from the singer and the killer high end guitars that start the track. The tail end of "Full Time Job," where the contemptuous kid is in the argument with his mom about getting a real job, starts to get real fuzzy, like perhaps the record that this tape was made from had been partied one too many times. Or perhaps there was just a lot of dust in the room...Oklahoma does have quite a history with dust, after all. Point is, it ain't a perfect copy, but fukkn tapes ain't perfect, and that's why I love 'em.

Full Time Job // Tornado Warning

The record came with no picture sleeve, so you don't get anything pretty to look at here today. However, my wife takes excellent pictures, and they often very pretty to look at. Here is one of them:

RANDYS

As even semi-regular readers have surely gathered by now, I spent my teenage/pre-punk and formative early punk years in Oklahoma.  I hated it, and found little there to inspire me...except for the things that inspired me to leave, which I did.  While at the time I viewed the state as a cultural wasteland, in retrospect there were pockets of creativity that fueled my existence, or perhaps made my very existence possible, and these Sunday Oklahoma posts were meant to celebrate the pieces of normalcy that I clung to while I lived in that in(s)ane place. To most people, Oklahoma's hardcore/punk legacy pretty much starts and ends with N.O.T.A. (and with good reason, they released one of the best hardcore LPs of the 80s, hands down), but the only N.O.T.A. I ever saw was a second rate reformed version in '92 or so, and honestly it was just OK (pardon the pun).  My Oklahoma was bands like CONCEPT OF NONSENSE, CHAINSAW KITTENS, ILLEGITIMATE SONS OF JACKIE O and GLUE who rarely made even a blip on the radar of most US rockers.  But before the Oklahoma I knew, or the violent intensity of Tulsa in the 80s, Oklahoma was home to a small but stellar crop of freaks and weirdos...I can't pretend to be an expert, as my first exposure to a lot of this music has come in the last few weeks, but my mind is blown that these sounds came from my old home state, and it kind of excites me. I was contacted by a nice gentleman named Blake via this site a few weeks back (conveniently, he has also relocated from Oklahoma to San Francisco) and while I was recovering from surgery and mostly bed (or chair) ridden he dropped by and lent me a box of cassettes: several 80s BCT comps that will start making Friday appearances soon, and two Maxell XLII tapes that floored me.  An older punk was nice enough to make Blake these mix tapes of art/punk/hardcore/freakout bands from Oklahoma, he was nice enough to share them with me, and now I am sharing the first installment from those tapes with you.  Oklahoma City's RANDYS released only this one four song EP in 1980 and from the sultry guitar lick that opens "Aggravated," you know it's gonna be a killer.  This has all the makings of a Midwest KBD classic, and if they had been from a punk mecca (Cleveland, Chicago...hell, even Indianapolis) I imagine this would be a highly sought after gem.  The mid tempo "Crummy Town" and "Future Tense"  are rather more subdued but totally infectious, and "Extraterrestrial Environmental Blues" is a fukkn brilliant bizzaro punk gem that would have made it to every mix tape I made in high school...if only I had known it existed.  It is maddening to know that all of this music, indeed this whole other world, was just 85 miles from where I was languishing in frustrated solitude, and I had no idea. 

APPEALING TO THE MASSES EP

I snagged a cover scan (in all of it's small, low resolution glory) from Collector Scum, so I suppose these bands don't waste away in complete obscurity...at least the nerds know who they are. But then Ross was nice enough to send me a good one, so now you can see in full detail just how ridiculous the cover is. If you would like to have your very own copy, holler at Dan: drshafer12(at)gmail(dot)com. Incidentally, he did not die in a mobile home fire.

SHITTING BRICKS

THE SNAILS formed in 1980, and released one demo before this one, titled Don't Panic. The liner of this demo refers to the first one as being "remarkably bad," so it should go without saying that I would fucking LOVE to get (or at least listen to) that one. The playing here is pretty decent, but the vocals are almost always way off time, and the guitar achieves a level of shit tone that bands today spend hours and days trying to replicate. Mystery pawn shop pedals are used seemingly at random, and the result is beautiful. Insistent and mandatory anarcho punk, these tracks are among my favorite that I've posted...marvel at the magic.

Shitting Bricks

SUBTERFUGE

These gents featured the vocalist from PROBLEM CHILDREN on guitar (and vocals), and recorded this demo in 1984, perhaps during a PROBLEM CHILDREN hiatus. More raw and thrashy than most PC stuff, and the guitar reminds me of a modern day US band that attracts loads of undesirables to their shows....I don't wanna say who because then you might not check out this killer demo. The lyrics to "Fight" are so fucking PUNK: "I don't like your rules/so stick 'em up your ass!" I mean....come one dude, that is perfect! These were released as the What's It All About demo, though that song was so fucking warped and fukked up that I couldn't post it or the second track, "Outburst." Sue me.

What's It All About

BRAINLESS

SALAD FROM ATLANTIS are among my favorite tapes that I've posted here at Terminal Escape, and while it is tempting to hold on to their other tapes, keeping them under wraps, they are just too damn good. I feel compelled to share them. Everyone needs to love them.

You might remember "Brainless" from The Squat Sessions tape that was one of my first posts, and the other two tunes here are well worthy of even more praise. "What's My Future?" is not quite as fukked sounding, but it's still clear that these gents were functioning on a different plane.

What's My Future?

DISTURBING FACTS

This is seriously one of the worst things I have ever heard, fucking brilliant!! I only hear guitar and vocals, and these five songs cover such titillating subjects as (in order): government officials on drugs, drugs, employing the services of a prostitute you thought was a woman, government lies, and government ineffectiveness. That about takes care of everything, doesn't it? If horribly executed inept two chord punk is your jam...

Disturbing Facts

BURNING AMBITIONS

no cover, no information (there was a series of UK comps called Burning Ambitions, but that ain't got shit to do with these Frenchies), no history (except that they are from France), no year, no nothing. BURNING AMBITIONS, with two killer fukkn punk tracks. "Move Your Ass"/"UFO" could have been a KBD classic....shit man, maybe it is and I just don't know about it? enjoy.

Burning Ambitions demo

SALAD FROM ATLANTIS

as near as i can figure, these cats are from Brighton (it looks nice there) and they deliver some seriously damaged fuzzed out noisy punk...so punk they don't even give me song titles! late 80s is my best guess, as their lone (as far as i can tell) single came out in 90, the same year they did a week long german stint with BLYTH POWER. i haven't tracked down the EP (though after spending some time with these tunes i think that the single is now a little higher up on my list of priorities), but this and the God Peace and Greenery demo are stellar. one of these dudes went on to form FISH BROTHERS (more if you like), who are still playing today, but lack even a shred of the brilliance of these 4 pieces of trash. if you like these tunes, might i suggest visiting the nice folks at shit-fi, because there is a world of noisy garbage just waiting for you to stick yer head in!

THE SQUAT SESSIONS DEMO