SHITTY DARKNESS - Demo - CD-R - 2011

    These stupid little CD-R's are not built to last and I found this one rolling around in the bottom of a filing cabinet, all scratched up but still playing perfectly. SHITTY DARKNESS barely caused a blip during a brief tenure in their hometown of Athens, GA, serving as a pit stop between the bands CARRIE NATIONS and WADE BOGGS. Ian wrote these songs after (and during) the demise of CARRIE NATIONS and brought them to his new band PILLOWFORT, which maybe kinda morphed into SHITTY DARKNESS. They recorded this demo and then (I think) Ian broke the band up, only to have all (or most) of these songs reappear as WADE BOGGS songs a short time later.
   But if we get past hazy facts and just get into emotion, these songs are sooo catchy in their raw pop presentation. It reminds me of why I (and you) was up front at CARRIE NATIONS shows, screaming the words on the verge of tears. Put these songs on your stupid digital device, walk to the top of the tallest hill in your town while listening and see if you're not walking faster and feeling like a wet hundred dollar bill once "Senior Citizen" hits your ears. (If you don't have hills in your town, just walk downtown and glare at people until someone tells you to go away. If you don't have a downtown, walk into the field and scream these songs until your voice goes hoarse, even if you don't know the words). After all that, walk yourself over to Athens, GA and ask Ian what songs he's writing now. If he comes up empty handed, tell him the world needs his music now and always. (it's true, Ian.)

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If you need more music by this guy (you do), he was also one of the responsible parties for WELCOME HOME, NEMO.

J CHURCH - "Four Track Demos" - Tape - 2011

    Years ago, I posted a link on the blog to this tape on another site, but now it's not available, so I'm reposting it here. This is a collection of Lance Hahn's (r.i.p.) four track demos for J CHURCH songs that he was making before he passed away. J CHURCH was probably one of the most prolific pop-punk bands of all time, Just a cursory glance at their Discogs page tells me that they might have released 18 albums and over 50 ep's. I can't even begin to explain the impact that Lance and J CHURCH made on the world of DIY punk that will last until the end of time. I only hung out with the guy a few times and I still think about him when I walk the streets of my neighborhood, where he lived in the 90's. Every single time it rains and I'm on Mission Street, I get "November" stuck in my head...for days. That is an impact.
    This tape has some fully formed songs, some sketches of ideas, some instrumentals and some misfires. I read somewhere that Lance treated his four track like a notebook; a place to write down his ideas as they came to him and that's how I approach this tape. It's perfect in its imperfection. If you've never heard J CHURCH, maybe you should start somewhere else, but this is also a warm, inviting place to be.

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More information about this tape here

You can still order a physical copy of the tape here. .

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. 

SNUGGLE - Lost LP Demos 2008?

Today's post is brought to you by frequent contributor and friend of the blog, Alex Turner.

   SNUGGLE is one of those bands, the bands you love that nobody else gets. I've seen them play in the basement of the FBK so many perfect times, the best times, the worst times, the drunkest times. Mad Dog 20/20 and shotgunning Sparks is what happened. A long time ago, SNUGGLE thought they might get paid to play a show or maybe they were surprised by getting paid? Regardless, they spent all that money on Mad Dog. I'm sure they got paid a few times on tour and didn't buy all their friends booze with the money, but that's the way it goes. They recorded this and lost it. like really fucking lost it. They had to re-record it because everybody they had given a copy to had also lost it. A real time and a place band. The 2000's in the basement of the FBK was SNUGGLE's time and I'm not sure why I have a copy of this lost recording, but if you'd like you can too.

     Rumor has it that Robert 'found' this at a coffee shop in Philly a year after it was considered a lost cause. I dunno. I guess this is like the demos for the LP that finally came out eventually on 1234 GO, Don't buy that, just download this.

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THE LAZER//SCENT OF HUMAN HISTORY - Split - CD - 2002

   What the fuck is up? I've been thinking about the ghosts that you see when you walk down the street and you can only look at your neighborhood through a lens of what used to be there. I'm trying to stop doing that, but it's hard when everything changes so quickly.
    One of the last times that I talked about my friend Jamie's bands, I did not use any filters and I didn't think too closely about what I was putting out into the world. Without going into detail, I was visited by different kinds of ghosts and put into sudden serious conversations with people I never thought I would encounter in my life. I don't plan on revisiting these conversations anytime in the near future and sometimes, it's better to let ghosts rest. That is why this entry will be noticeably vague and feel devoid of some kinds of obvious info.
   Both of these bands were from Long Island during the early '00's. Both of them played shows in Chattanooga when I lived there. One of them I liked. The other...not so much. When THE LAZER came into town, it was the first time I met Jamie after being his pen pal for about a year or so. I took him out for pizza even though I could barely afford it. He complained about the pizza because he is from New York and this is what New Yorkers do, but when I went to see him, he returned the favor because that's what friends do.
   THE LAZER broke up and some of the members soon started the freight train known as BENT OUTTA SHAPE. SCENT OF HUMAN HISTORY soon became extinct and did other things too. I can't tell you what those things are, but you can find more info about this release here.

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SEXY - "Por Vida" - LP - 2004

   One night, I walked over to a show in north Chattanooga at a house with a falling in kitchen (one night, that kitchen's floor fell in during a show, but not this one). I showed up because PANTY RAID was playing, but they were with these two total fuuuuucking goofballs who immediately decided that we were friends and, yes, we were all going to get wasted together. It was a dark period in my life when I lived on a weird, filthy houseboat (no shame. that boat saved my life) anchored in the stinky ass Tennessee River. I was ready to get drunk and die at the drop of a hat. So were these two guys, so we got along great. It wasn't until I saw them tuning up that I even realized that they were in a band playing that night. I thought, "These guys can barely stand. Will they be able to play?" This situation is not uncommon in Chattanooga, but is usually best executed by locals. The touring bands almost always fail and pull off one of the worst sets of their tour. SEXY did not fail. Joined by Baby Ian on bass, they played the best set of the night. The floors were so unstable that their mic stands were bouncing all over the place, but Ashley and Chris (my two new friends) just followed as best they could while wildly pounding out some of the catchiest songs I had heard in years. I didn't buy their demo tape and I still regret it.
    When I moved out to the Bay Area a year later, I hung out with these two fools when I could, at shows, on the street, getting booted out of breweries, on the waterfront, etc, I trekked up to Pacific Heights (aka Specific Whites) to see them play in a cool teen's parent's house (whassup Chloe Puke) and everything seemed wrong. They played two songs and looked at each other...."This sucks. Why do we sound so bad?" Chris pulled a huge jug of wine out of his bag and started chugging it. He passed it to Ashley, who followed suit. As they kept playing, they sounded better and better until they were (as usual) completely annihilating the show.On the bike ride home from the show, I watched Chris get sideswiped by a city bus. He sat on the ground for a second and said "Aw man..." before getting back on his bike and continuing on with us.
   I kept watching them everywhere I could: in shitty bars, in humid Florida warehouses, on the street and in the women's bathroom at Gilman. Once, I yelled "NOOOOOOOOO!!" at them for the entirety of their true-to-form cover of THE BAND'S "Up On Cripple Creek". They almost always seemed to harness that sweet spot of perfect abandon. almost-too-drunk and true freedom when it was all at it's breaking point.
   When I heard they recorded an LP, I wanted to hear it immediately, but I was skeptical. Could this band actually harness the sound of ridiculous, unhinged, drunken abandon? Yeah, they did. This record sounds exactly like SEXY live. Better, even...and to actually read the lyrics made you understand that this band was pretty funny...and fucking sad. Metaphors are few on this LP. They  talk about writing songs on the bus, smoking crack while watching the ships roll in, breaking down in Kettleman City (a shithole if there ever was one), shotgunning 50 beers in the shower to dull the pain, etc. This record also came into my life at a perfect time...when I felt terrible...when I felt okay about listening to songs about pain and heartbreak without thinking too terribly much about how my actions caused serious pain and repercussions to the people around me...when I didn't think too much about how you can write an unforgettable, classic song about someone, but that someone is actually someone, you know? They're a living, breathing human being that has to endure idiots like me blabbing on about this wonderful shit, while they're like "Great...that dude gets to be validated for the rest of his life for being a drunken guy who broke my heart and stole my SMOKING POPES record." That is a simple over-analyzation of a bigger thing, but you get where I'm coming from, right? I love this record. I always will, but I think too much.
 

There's Craig D's face. He wasn't in the band. 

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The song is called "Thank  You Dead and Gone" because the wood block and percussion used on that song was found in the trash outside of DEAD AND GONE's practice space. 

Yes, this is a record...not a tape. It was a request. 

The original press of this LP has a pressing flaw and it has skips in it. The band kept giving me copies of it when I kept telling them that my copy skipped a lot. At one point, I had 8 copies of this record. Thrillhouse Records repressed the LP and made new plates so it doesn't skip. You can still order it from them.

If I wasn't clear, this is one of the best records of the last 15 years. If you've never heard this record and like melodic punk on this blog, this is essential. 

MIX TAPE - 1995

  Besides my old friend, Heather, who I met when I was 5 years old, I only keep in touch with one other friend from the Nascar days of my youth (that reference is so vague that I'm not explaining it...just roll with it). That friend is Angie, who mailed this tape to me at my two room apartment in Huntsville, AL in 1995. No cover, no track listing...just this tape rolled up into a letter, recorded over a battered GEORGE MICHAEL cassingle. Short and to the point. I had no clue that I'd still love every song on this tape 20 years later (20 years!). I had no clue that the Floyd who is mentioned in the first line of the first song would be the same person who now assigns me CD's to review for Maximum Rock N Roll or that that house he made his phone call from (listen to the song) would catch on fire a short distance from where I live now. I didn't know that the third song would still resonate so much harder with me now than it did back then. The last band on the tape, EVERY ALICE ON EARTH, will not be a hit with many (or any) visitors to the blog, but they were a local(ish) band where I grew up and were one the first DIY (I mean this as actual "Do It Yourself", not as an empty slogan used by hardware stores and Pottery Barn) bands I ever saw in my pre-teen years, which made a big impact. In some very, very tiny circles, they are legendary.

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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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MAD SWIRL - "[Pop] [Damage]" - Tape - 2007

   Just after the new year of 2008, I was a roadie, on tour with my friends from California when I still lived in Indiana. At that point, I didn't really know what I was doing with my life, but I was almost positive that I needed a big change. For some weird reason, I figured that subjecting myself to extreme temperatures, no sleep and damp basements was a good idea. I was right. I ran around in the snow in Worcester, shot silly string all over SHELLSHAG in Brooklyn, made out with someone in the cold on the hood of a broken down car, rode in the back of a freezing truck for 14 hours, swam in the ocean in South Miami Beach and did some other stuff that should probably not be repeated. It made me want to move away from Indiana...so, I did.
   In Huntsville, AL, I got unreasonably upset over mundane things in that way that one can only get upset when returning to a disappointing town where they used to live. Overall, I don't think Huntsville is disappointing, but I had a really depressing "back in my day" moment that could have been easily avoided if I just didn't care so much about ridiculous bullshit. In short, when I lived there, we had shows in dive bars, parking lots, thrift stores, houses, ice cream shops and parks. The show that night was in a fancy bar and a lot of my old friends were missing or born again. Time marches on. It's fine. Huntsville now has an amazing resource called Lowe Mill and I'm sure there have always been teenage punk bands playing in garages consistently for the past 30 years or more.

  I spent a lot of time walking around downtown...jumped the fence and rang the incredibly loud church bell for old time's sake....ran through my favorite secret alley. It was fine. I walked back in the bar just in time to see most of the bar patrons trying to ignore MAD SWIRL, who were from Milwaukee and a pleasant sight for these eyes and ears.
   The beautiful thing about that era of Milwaukee punk is that almost all of the bands were fun, jangly melodic punk bands who kinda didn't give a fuck but were always good. The other thing is that they always traveled in packs. It seemed like all of the bands shared this one fucked up minivan  and they would somehow pile 15+ people in it for cross-country tours. MAD SWIRL was no exception. Their set was fun and kinda reminded me of ANGRY SAMOANS, but maybe that's only because they covered them, because this tape doesn't sound like ANGRY SAMOANS...but it does sound like fun.
  I should have been hanging out with MAD SWIRL all night and becoming better friends with them rather than trying to catch up with people who seemed like they wanted to get away from me. Lesson learned. I assumed we'd all be sleeping at the same house, but instead, I found myself at 5 am drinking beer and watching a dolphin documentary with my tour-mates while we all muttered "fuck yeah, this is cool."

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Tomorrow is my birthday. Send presents.

SOPORS - Demo - Tape - 2009

   I've tried to explain the genius behind SOPORS in the past in a print publication, but trying to explain something like that is like trying to convince an organic food eater that fruit roll-ups are the best. It's all about personal taste. Everyone likes what they like for a reason and that reason is their own. I like SOPORS. You may not. I don't care anymore. It's your loss.
   SOPORS are from San Francisco and (in my opinion) follow in the footsteps of a long line of local pop weirdos like 50 MILLION, HICKEY, TOMMY LASORDA, CRIMENY and many more. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they were just trying to sound like GUIDED BY VOICES and got it all fucked up, but really, I sometimes think HICKEY did the same thing (but added more drugs and a love of KISS). SOPORS sound like they're approaching songs with simple pop structures but then it all gets enveloped with a blanket of alienation, anxiety and paranoia. Some of the songs sound like everyone in the band had a different idea about how it should sound until an unforgettable melody sneaks out of the mire. I'm not going to try and convince you why this is good. That's up to you and your brain, but if you just pass this by without trying, I feel sorry for you.

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If you want to order their full length LP (you should), go to Mongo Bongo Top Ten Hits

Sorry the blog is being updated at a glacial pace, but I've been trying to upload this music for two days and I kept getting system errors. Shout out to my non-profit file hosting service!

THE MORONS - Discography - Tape - 2012

   I meant to upload some old MORONS tapes ages ago, but I held off because Once Tender Records was planning on putting out a complete discography. Now, I realized it's been out for a couple of years, so here's the whole thing.
   THE MORONS were from Chatsworth and Dalton, GA: two towns in north Georgia that have bred a stunning array of truly unforgettable people in my life. THE MORONS formed (probably) out of utter boredom and a love of substance abuse. I've never really seen a band live up to their name more than THE MORONS. From huffing copious amounts of gold spraypaint to throwing themselves down flights of stairs to their special game of "Sneaky P" to many other things that I don't feel that I can share here without clearing it with them first, THE MORONS were one of the most real bands I've ever seen. I know that punk celebrates (or "should celebrate" as far as I care) the idea of "no idols" and strives to blur the lines between audience and band, but THE MORONS were truly the same on or off the stage (or "stage"). You know that dude you were just shotgunning a beer with by the dumpster? Now, he's that dude shotgunning a beer behind the drumset, for better or worse.
   Anyway, THE MORONS came from trailer parks and shitty situations and put it all in their songs. They got drunk and then wrote classic songs about being drunk. When they said "smoke some crack and go for a beer run", they had probably just done that. They didn't waste space or deal in hyperbole. If you're from a certain time and era (like me), they wrote one of the best songs of all time, which was about living with the spirit of rock n roll inside of you, which no one could ever steal. THE MORONS were utter morons, but they were also musical geniuses.
    Here's most of everything they ever recorded, culled from self-released tapes, unreleased studio recordings and their EP's. If you want a tape of your own, follow that link above and write to Chad at Once Tender.

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MORONS in Dalton, GA. Photo by me.

This one's for Big Shank.

DISHPIT - Demo - Tape - 2012

   Minneapolis is really different from a lot of other places in the US. Today, their current temperature is 1 degree F. Tonight, it'll be negative 15. I never visit during these times, but when I see some of my friends before or after winter, they're very matter-of-fact. Short, simple answers. Busy, but happy to see you. The kind of psyche that has lived through 25-35 incredibly harsh winters. A lot of my favorite music has come from Minneapolis and most of that music can be very dark and cold. DISHPIT is neither of these things.
    My band played with DISHPIT in a dark, smokey warehouse in Minneapolis a couple of years ago. I was talking to a group of friends out front as the band was kicking into their first song. The friends were tersely discussing whether or not they should leave because they just felt tired and kind of bored. Then, one of them heard DISHPIT and smiled for the first time all night. He said "DISHPIT is playing!" and all of them ran inside. I followed and watched all of them as they danced and smiled more than I had ever seen any of them smile in my life. If you have that kind of effect on that level of detachment, you must be doing something right.
   DISHPIT, plain and simple, plays punk rock with lyrics about hopping trains, crustlords, stealing, shitty jobs and any self-respecting punks's favorite board game, Scrabble. They have some definite influences of 90's pop-punk and early 00's region rock but seen through the eyes of younger traveling punks. Their singer Gary really pulls the whole thing together with his rapid-fire, sort-of bratty approach to melodic punk. It might make your jaded heart sing once more.

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They also put out a 7", which you can order here. Might as well order the "Punks Win" comp too. It's really good. 

FUTURE ADULTS - Discography Kind Of, Sort Of - 2005

  I've been meaning to upload this one for a few years and I'm not sure what has stopped me. I think it was lack of information. FUTURE ADULTS existed largely after I moved away from San Francisco. I think I only saw them once in a backyard in the Mission during the short period when they had a bass player (Buzz). They were inspired. They were pissed. They were drunk. They had awesome, catchy, short, fast, poppy, punk songs. They have a song about listening to RANCID at Dead Rat Beach, which is an Oakland punk house that's still there. You can still go there and listen to RANCID if you want. I'm pretty sure I've done that. They have a theme song, which any self-respecting band should always have.
   Lo and behold, FUTURE ADULTS have their own Wiki page, so you don't even need my hazy, limited memories....here's what it says.....
  Future Adults was a San Francisco/Bay Area pop-punk band, most notable for the song "Oppenheimer", loosely based on the nuclear discoveries of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Their style can be categorized as bright pop-punk or melodic grindcore.
    Future Adults formed in June, 2003 during the 30th birthday party for Needles & Pens co-founder Andrew Scott at Dolores Park in San Francisco, California. Future Future Adults guitarist and singer Melissa Merin brought an acoustic guitar to the gathering, and, under the influence of friends, alcohol and euphoria, played the five chords she knew in different variations over and over throughout the afternoon (including several variations of "Dust In the Wind", which Breezy Culbertson's mother sang along to with fervor. Ben "Ditch" Taylor and Sarah "Double Ears" Sandberg were also in attendance, and gladly added to the increasingly non-sequitor songs screeching from the guitar.
    As the sun went down over Dolores Park, it was decided that the trio would head back to Melissa's house. Armed with a 12 pack of Busch beer (which they found heavily ironic, given the times), they sat in Melissa's room (in the infamous 225 house), drank all of the beer, smoked too many cigarettes (all three of them were smokers at the time), and made up ridiculous songs about punks, theory, boredom and beer.
    Only a month after Future Adults formed, Ben Ditch moved to Minneapolis, MN, with the promise that he would be back "soon". Double Ears and Melissa held onto that promise and for months the two sat in the same dingy room and wrote song after song, anticipating Ben's return. It can be said that the first ever Future Adults show was performed in the kitchen of 225. 4 songs sung, after meticulous practice to Kat Case and Arwen Curry, among others.
    In the summer of 2004 (?) Melissa took a road trip with Cinque Adams to join John Denver's Airplane and Rotten Living on a tour starting from Minneapolis. There she was reunited with Ben Ditch. One day later Double Ears surprised both of them by driving across the country with Clayton McBride and showing up at a Fleshies basement show. The following day, the three of them converged on Ditch's front lawn and proceeded to drink several beers (about 3 cases) with the help of a few friends. They borrowed a guitar, fashioned a drum kit out of buckets and cans and had the first of many epic band practices. Ben returned to the bay area a few months later and the three began to practice semi-frequently at Idaho Street in Oakland. Their first ever show on a flier was at Adobe Books in San Francisco.

DOWNLOAD at their Bandcamp page

REMOTE OUTPOSTS WEIRDO MIX VOL 2 - Tape - 2013

   This is the second in a collection of songs and random bullshit that doesn't really fit elsewhere. I make no excuses or apologies for sound fidelity. You can find the first installment of this collection right here..
    The intro is the beginning of one of the worst songs of all time. Unfortunately, it got stuck in the heads of Cinque and I when we were working on a farm, picking basil for a few weeks. We would scream out the lyrics to each other across the field at 7 am. One day, I went into town and was looking at the 45 at the record store when the clerk said, "Oh God, please take that record! Just get it out of the store."
  The second is a lost RICE HARVESTER song that never made it onto any releases or into a recording studio. By this time, I had moved from Huntsville back to Birmingham, AL, but was still driving back to Huntsville (around a 3 hour drive, round trip) once a week to practice. I think we intended for this song to be on a compilation of Alabama bands that never got off the ground. It's about a homeless man in Huntsville named Gene who, rather than simply sleeping under overpasses, would build a little shack / house under the bridge in plain view of everyone. I immediately felt weird about writing this song because after talking to him a few times and being only 20 years old, I really had no grasp of the complexities of homelessness and mental illness. It's written from a place of privilege that just embarrasses me now. Luckily, the recording quality is abysmal.
   It's followed up by one of my favorite EFS songs. They were the house band at a punk house that was allegedly above the Black & White Liquors by Ashby BART in the East Bay way back in the dark ages. Following that is a band containing members who have won Grammys and shit. I'm not saying their name because I want to avoid the fiasco of being linked to slobbering fan site messageboards (again). If you listen to melodic punk, you will probably recognize this song, but maybe not this version. Sound quality is total trash. CBDS is after them with a different mix of one of their great songs. Sound quality has deteriorated so badly that you will wonder if there has been a turd stuffed into the cassette.
    Quality takes a step up for the intro to the long lost Alabama rock band, BUCKET FULL OF HERESY. The intro is the best part of their tape. The rest is an endurance test of having to listen to teenagers try to write a song while the tape is rolling. I know that this hasn't stopped me in the past, but I'll spare you the gory details this time. SMEGMAGICIANS are next. They've been a band since 1993, but only played one show in 1994. They're mysterious and choose to stay that way. This song was recorded in 1999.
   Next up is a recording from a FORCED VENGEANCE show that took place on my birthday back in 2000 (?). Details are hazy, but I do know that Harry (guitarist) and I played this show nearly blacked out drunk. This show was also when the proverbial line in the sand was drawn between the towns of Bloomington and Chattanooga because a bunch of Bloomington residents came down to this show and decided that we were some of the worst people to ever exist because my friend Piper (who lived in Bloomington most of the time, mind you) decided to construct a 3 foot long, paper mache cock to hang from the ceiling. I'm sure I'm missing some details here, but instead of talking to us and figuring out that we were not the worst people ever, a lot of folks just decided to go with that story....some of the debris of this show still lingers around to this day (obviously). ANYWAY, This recording comes from the beginning of the set when Harry needed to borrow an amp because his was crapping out. Rather than just wait around for this to happen, Eric (other guitar) and I (drums) started fucking around. Harry, who is usually fairly quiet and shy, took this opportunity to bust out a ridiculous, entirely ad-libbed 80's style rap. When Chrissie (bass) joins in, the whole thing gels together in this way that none of us expected, I'm pretty sure we were all laughing so hard that we cried. I know that I did when re-listening to it. I vaguely remember the audience laughing and dancing.
   Now, we do a 180 and switch gears entirely. DOOMSDAY CAULDRON is the best thing on here. I was never a huge follower of their music, but got a few things passed on to me through mix tapes that blew my mind in different ways. Coming from the background that I do, their songs initially sounded overbearing and unnecessarily serious to me, but as they grew on me, I knew that they meant every word with every fiber of their being. Their song "Song for Sera" is one of my favorites to listen to in the middle of the night on long drives in the middle of nowhere. Coupled with their song "Darkness Is Falling" and THE BODY's "Just Wretched", you can almost perfectly picture the world in the moments just before it explodes and destroys every last bit of life on this planet.
   To close out the tape, I switched gears again and went back to ridiculous. If you grew up in the 80's, you may remember those weird answering machine greeting tape commercials....They advertised tapes that you could buy for your answering machine that sang ultra corny greetings to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth and bad 50's rock. Here's a whole tape of them (2 and a half whole minutes) so that you can confuse people who call your cell now...if anyone ever calls you anymore.

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THE FINAL FRONTIERS - "Pleased To Rock You" - Tape - 2013

   My friend Mike is the one who first introduced me to the simple brilliance that is FINAL FRONTIERS. Once, the two of us drove somewhere for a few hours in New England...like maybe from Worcester to Portsmouth, NH and back...and listened to nothing but their first 9 song tape the whole time. I'm pretty sure I passed out at his house that night with my mind screaming that song about a Suzuki 125.
   It was Mike who also sent me their new tape in the mail a few days ago and I was overjoyed to get it. THE FINAL FRONTIERS is two great friends from Burlington, VT. I've never been there (oddly) so I don't know what kind of musical references they enjoy, but from a purely West Coast perspective, they sound like a lost mid-90's Sacramento pop-punk band that released a cassingle on Secret Center Records. I mean that in the highest regard. Anyhow, the vocals in this band sound like they are double-tracked or run through a chorus pedal, but it is actually two voices singing exactly the same thing all the time! I still like their first tape better than this one, but this tape is new to me and growing on me more and more every day. My personal favorite is a tie between "Ethan Allen Says" and the perfect "Bullshit Boulevard", which is partially about getting chased by mall cops. As someone who is distancing themselves further and further away from pop-punk everyday, this reminded me of why I like the genre in the first place. Thanks FINAL FRONTIERS! And thanks to Mike!

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I don't know how you can order a tape of your own, but I suggest that you figure that part out. It even comes in this cool green, glowing tape case!!

You can find their first tape at the FINAL FRONTIERS Bandcamp

COPY SCAMS - Demo - Tape - 2010

   I'll be honest...when I first got this cassette a couple of years ago, I didn't exactly rush to my stereo to throw this in the tape deck tout de suite. Not unlike the piles of photocopied zines on my wooden shelves, this tape sat undisturbed and gathered an unhealthy amount of dust. I remember putting it on once while I was finishing some projects in my room and it didn't make much of an impression, but something happened between then and now. Is it my favorite shit in the world? No, but I appreciate it's jokey qualities and I like to hear good pop-punk, because there's a real lack of quality pop-punk in the Bay Area, believe it or not.
   So, who are these jokers? I don't fuckin know 'em, so here's some shit I found about them on the internet....
  "The Copy Scams are the band equivalent to a 24 hour zine! Steve was visiting Portland from the UK and thought it might be fun to start a band while he was in the US. While he was in Portland he lived in a closet in the basement of the Spiral house and tricked housemates Alex, paul and Marc to form a band in three weeks before the 2010 Portland Zine Symposium. In those three weeks they wrote, practiced, and recorded 4 songs then played a show to end the Portland Zine Symposium weekend. What we recorded was 4 songs about stealing photocopies, excuses as the why the band/zine is late and a song about the 24 hour zine challenge. Up the analog zine punks!"

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ANOTHER JUAN RIDES THE BUS - Compilation - Tape - 1999

      No long-winded stories today. I wasn't living in the Bay Area when most of these bands were active and hardly saw any of them. To my knowledge, all of these bands are local to the Bay Area and/or nearby, except DBS, who were from Vancouver, BC (I once toured all the way across Canada with them, but that's a story for another time.) . The styles, as well as sound quality, are all over the map on this tape. You've got snotty garage pop (PANTY RAID), hardcore-ish (THE JOCKS), humorous (BOBBY JOE EBOLA and YOUR MOTHER) and lots more. I'll make no excuse for how fucking warbly the sound quality can be or how drastic the volume levels can get. My friend, Morgan, put out this tape in 1999 to showcase a lot of unknown and under-represented bands. Many of them are still some of my favorites to this day, including YOGURT, LOS RABBIS and TOMMY LASORDA. Enjoy.

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This tape comes from the mysterious brown bag of Mike Wilson

DIRTY MARQUEE - Tape - 2011

 
   DIRTY MARQUEE was a band that I played drums for from 2009-2011 in San Francisco. You can read about how we started here, but this is more about how we ended. We recorded the basic tracks for this tape in our practice space just before I moved to Chattanooga for three months. I feel like I might have recorded the drums for this just a day or two before I left town and did most of it in a couple of takes. When I returned, Tony and Gaybob were still toying around with layers of guitars and vocal harmonies at their house in the Mission. By this point, we had put out a 7" EP and were beginning to plan a US tour, even though Gaybob was soon moving to NYC and Jeanette couldn't afford to go on the tour. I decided to fly in my best friend, Cinque to play bass for the tour and he learned all the songs like a champ within a week.

   The tour ended up being kind of a shit show, but it had its fine moments...like camping in the Organ Mountains outside of Las Cruces, playing in Chattanooga, getting to see THIS IS MY FIST and meeting my good friend Legs for the first time even though I was terribly, terribly hung over. For the most part though, tensions were high and we all were not in the best places in our lives. The band broke up by the time we got back to the Bay Area. We actually played our last show in Portland.
   Still, I like how these songs turned out. I like how the tape seems like a tug of war between Tony's desire to write slicker pop oriented songs and Gaybob's desire to...uh, not do that. The tape culminates in my favorite song that we ever did, "Death To America", which I feel like is close to what we would have been doing if our band continued any longer. Enjoy or don't.

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Live in San Diego. Cinque on bass and our old bass player Jeanette on back up vocals.

Gaybob now plays in EXTRA FEELER. Tony plays in 17 REASONS (I don't think they're on the internet). Jeanette plays in NASTY CHRISTMAS. Cinque is in RATS REST. I don't play music.

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..

SIGFRIED AND ROID RAGE - "Kingdom Of Pork" - Tape - 2011

   I never imagined that when I went to Dresden, Germany, I would buy a tape manufactured in Columbus, Ohio and released in Paris, France by a band from Tel Aviv, Israel starring a guy from my home state of Alabama....but that happened. David grew up, I think, in Alabama and kicked around to Worcester, Rome, Tel-Aviv and a bunch of other far flung locales. Throughout all of this, he has been singing the praises of Chattanooga, TN and Region Rock. I like to imagine that he has talked Israeli punks into shotgunning beers while listening to JACK PALANCE BAND.

    On this tape, you'll find eleven songs in about 14 minutes that scream about getting drunk and hating work and getting drunk again. Many of us like these things, so maybe this will interest you. 

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I was just wondering how these guys go over in Israel and then I remembered that it's 2013 and Youtube exists.