CRINGER

It's ironic that it took me until I was an adult to appreciate the eternal teenage enthusiasm and energy of Lance Hahn's music. It was never angry enough for me, it never made me want to break stuff, so I dismissed it as sappy bullshit. Then, sometime after I passed 30, it just clicked. The music wasn't sappy - it was just honest - and I started devouring J CHURCH and Lance's band that came before them, CRINGER. Knowing the man certainly helped, the pure and youthful energy that was always present in the songs (even, or especially, the sad ones) was always front and center with Lance, and you could feel it from the moment you met him. The guitar and the heart can indeed be worn proudly on the sleeve, and Lance proved it over twenty years of writing, playing and recording. Oh yeah, he also started (and almost completed) the definitive book on UK anarcho bands - just in case you felt like dismissing him as a pop punk hack (like I did). This isn't an anniversary or a special day or anything, I just came across this tape and spent my afternoon listening to CRINGER and J CHURCH, and I wish that Lance was still around. This demo is from 1986, just after CRINGER relocated to Los Angeles from Hawaii, and I think that I'll just lift a phrase from the first sentence to describe it: eternal teenage enthusiasm. Something to strive for, I suppose.

WE'RE ALL A-OK