The San Francisco Bay Area was a really good place to see punk and hardcore bands in the late 80s and early 90s (it is now as well, but that fact doesn't relate to the point I am trying to make regarding the scene here 17 or so years ago and that scene's relationship to the tape I am posting this evening/morning). ECONOCHRIST, BOMB, GRIMPLE, SPITBOY, FUCKBOYZ and the list goes on...I wish I had been here, but I didn't make it out until 1995ish. I saw the PAXTON QUIGGLY shirts long before I ever heard the band. In fact, before I ever heard them I played a show in Santa Fe, New Mexico that got iced over (as in everyone at the show had to stay in Santa Fe that night because every road out of town was closed and my band stayed with a load of people cooking crack, it was awesome) in 1997 with I SORE, featuring a member of PAXTON QUIGGLY. I SORE was good, but PAXTON QUIGGLY is fucking brilliant. This demo is East Bay punk in a nutshell...melodic but never poppy, aggressive but never macho, just perfect hardcore. It's Wednesday, why not do yourself a favor?
30 September 2009
29 September 2009
SECOND AUSCHWITZ
Noise, noise, noise!! According to legend, these Dutch punks never practiced or wrote any songs, or even played their instruments before they started recording their bursts of magic. A full 90 minutes of complete nonsensical chaos, with tracks like "You Stink," "New Hitler Arrives," "Fat Jesus Laughing," and almost 30 others. Songs range in length from 25 second eruptions to a couple of painful 9+ minute messes. This is seriously trying, but incredible all the same, I believe that their earlier releases (this tape from 1985, is the sixth SECOND AUSCHWITZ outburst) are even more chaotic...so of course I would love to hear those if anyone has access. Put on your patience caps, and congratulations if you can endure the whole hour and a half...this one is is pretty amazing!
28 September 2009
LIZARDS
Andy, Chris and Big Al from Weymouth made this brilliant demo in 1989, and called themselves LIZARDS. I was completely sold mere moments into the first track "I Believe," which is a midtempo dark and gloomy number that would have fit in perfectly with All The Madmen releases that came years earlier. Eight songs on the We Want To Be American demo, and they are all superb, even when the vocals get all weird and almost BUTTHOLE SURFERS-esque on "Foetus" and even when they start "Pig Out" with a really odd wah-wah on the guitar and then launch into a disco beat. As always with the more random UK bands, if anyone reading this has any more information on these chaps, feel free to drop a line in the comments and share your wisdom with us commoners!
27 September 2009
LIFE TRAP
Five songs in six minutes, this is my kind of hardcore! I could drop loads of early '80s references and claim them as influences on LIFE TRAP, but this is just killer hardcore punk with a guitarist who was clearly weaned on all the classics. This makes my want to punch holes in the wall like I did the first time I heard BAD BRAINS (this doesn't sound anything like BAD BRAINS, I'm just saying that when I was 14 living in Oklahoma and I heard I Against I, I wanted to punch holes in my wall). This shit rules, enjoy.
26 September 2009
DOOR MARKED SUMMER

Another complete mystery to me. I didn't like this demo from DOOR MARKED SUMMER on first listen, but as I was ripping it it got more interesting, and then it just got better and better. A reverb drenched recording and repetitive songs that drone on and remind me of BAUHAUS from time to time (methinks the first song sounds like BAUHAUS and mid era NEUROSIS combined). The vocals are definitely the weakest element, and the demo creeps too far into "rock" territory (after all, it is called Psychic Surfing), but the good far outweighs the bad here and even the seven plus minute "Put Me Down" is a total winner in my book. If anyone knows anything about DOOR MARKED SUMMER, let me know, even though I have no doubt that later recordings (if there were any) were likely pretty awful...this is a band that doesn't need to "mature" any more than they already have!
PSYCHIC SURFING
***UPDATE: was just handed a great fkkn link in the comments section to the Kent Band Archive. Cheers, balbulus, and please check out the site, it's a time vacuum in the best possible way (in other words, you can write off the rest of your afternoon!).
***Also, ANTI-STATE CONTROL post updated today with more of the rehearsal demo. After you are done getting all Psychic with DOOR MARKED SUMMER, you can tuck into that shit.
25 September 2009
RINGI-RANGA PER NOI Oi! GURE AUKERA RINGI-RANGA OEEE!!

24 September 2009
ELECTRIC CITY FUCK YOU!

23 September 2009
INSTIGATORS

22 September 2009
FLIPOUT A.A

21 September 2009
YOU CAN"T IGNORE IT FOREVER

20 September 2009
ICON GALLERY

19 September 2009
ANTI-STATE CONTROL

ANTI STATE CONTROL REHEARSAL
Mark was also kind enough to share some ANTI STATE CONTROL photos like this one from 1982:
And there are loads more on his myspace that you should check out. And, it turns out that Mark's current band THE CANNIBALS is pretty fucking ace as well!
18 September 2009
PUNK INVASION!

11 September 2009
BASTARDIZER

BLISS THE POCKET OPERA

SALTED CITY

ANARKA AND POPPY

AS GOOD AS DEAD
STATEMENT

STATEMENTS

10 September 2009
DIE TROTTEL

09 September 2009
TONE DEAF
08 September 2009
ADMASS

I've got two ADMASS tapes. One of them (this one) is titled ADMASS DEMO 1, while the other is titled (rather geniusly) ADMASS DEMO 2. Those crazy punks, who knows what they will think of next! This rehearsal tape comes from 1982, and is an ultra raw anarcho punk gem. Eight tracks in all (though it's possible after further research that "Cunts" and "Gary Bushell" are parts of the same song, making the total number of tunes seven instead of eight? It's hard to tell, and after scouring the World Wide Web for info for a few drunken hours, I'm rather inclined to declare that I'm not really all that bothered either way), and this basic and rough practice punk makes me feel fucking fantastic, especially as I listen to this after spending hours in band practice earlier this evening. ADMASS play totally out of tune and awkward sounding punk that was recorded when I was 10 years old...there's something insanely cool about listening to this now. Perhaps it's that I just went to see a live electronic "band" (after punk practice was over), and I need to remind myself that punk is awesome before I go to sleep? Or perhaps it's that no matter how sloppy and wonderful, punk is simply awesome.
07 September 2009
CHEST PAIN


A couple of weeks ago, I went to see the SF band PUNCH play a show, the first time I'd seen them in several months. I knew nothing about any of the other bands playing the show, which makes show-going a new and exciting experience, right? First band was pretty good, I was looking forward to listening to their EP that I was gonna buy, but after hanging out by the merch table for 30 minutes waiting for someone to sell it to me, I figured it was time to either steal it or go without...and like I said, they were pretty good, but not good enough to steal a record. That's money I spent on 2 extra beers kids, your loss. The next two bands were pretty terrible, it was like a tough hardcore dude singing for MUDHONEY first, and the next one sounded like the shitty bands that played the frat bar down the street from my house in Oklahoma (bands like THE NIXONS, BLEMISH and WAKE, truly some ass awful shit) and I couldn't believe that I was at a hardcore show in the Bay Area, circa 2009. Then CHEST PAIN came and saved my fucking night! Crushing powerviolence from Texas, and they delivered a set in about 13 minutes that was honest, to the point and had no frills whatsoever. They played fast, they played hard, and when they were done I was grinning from ear to ear. So I bought a demo, and it would seem that these kids might even be better than I thought..just as fast and just as heavy as I remembered, but add intelligence and wit to the mix, and I'm fucking sold! Extra points from me for the two color screen on the cassette case, in addition to the nice artwork on the tape cover...spend a little time, and people will surely take notice. And, in case you were wondering, PUNCH was amazing. But they are honestly so damned great that it's hardly worth mentioning. It's like saying "apple pie tastes good with ice cream," or "being hungover is not fun," we all know these things, right?
CHEST PAIN
Cheers to Matt from CHEST PAIN for writing, and especially for sharing the CHEST PAIN side of their split with fellow Texans NAW DUDE, available right here:
06 September 2009
CONTEMPT

(tracks labels A1-A4 are the 1987 recording, B1-B4 are 1989)
05 September 2009
HASRAT

04 September 2009
NEW ZEALAND MIX

As you can read on the cover, this was a tape that someone ("S.C.") made to highlight the bands from his/her area, and expose them to someone else halfway around the world. Far be it for me to wax nostalgic for the "old" days (though the days on this tape are way before my time in punk), but there was something more exciting about "finding" or "sharing" a band that you love, as opposed to the modern version of trading URLs. That said, this tape can be downloaded by going to:
03 September 2009
DEVIATED INSTINCT

02 September 2009
GET KILLED

01 September 2009
HEX

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