RENDER USELESS

We met these dudes in 1994 (or perhaps '95?) in Minneapolis. It was summer, and the swarm of bands touring the midwest had led to a minor conflict, so instead of getting added to the ASSRASH show with SWINGIN' UTTERS (this might have been the same summer that SWINGIN' UTTERS toured with AFI and we played with them in Rapid City, but that's another story entirely and doesn't really relate to this story...even though it's a pretty good story about punk and what's right and what's wrong - someone send me a SWINGIN' UTTERS demo and I'll tell that story when I post it), FUCKFACE and RENDER USELESS played a pre-show at a house. Naturally we were both a tinge miffed at being downgraded to the 30 person house show instead of getting to strut our stuff in front of 300 later that night, but who the hell were we anyhow, and the house show was fun as shit. I distinctly remember hanging in the backyard with these fellows, trading tales of road woe and laughing our asses off. No one bought any of their records or shirts. We had no records, a shirt with a guy who had a penis for a nose and pink patches...we didn't sell anything either. But we had a good time, and we went to the ASSRASH show that night (I do not think I watched SWINGIN' UTTERS, but that's fine because I am in the crowd photo on the back of one of their LPs [true story] and I seem to remember Pignose being shithammered). In '96, RENDER USELESS set up a show for us and HICKEY in Victoria that was attended by one member of each band (also a long story, and also a pretty good one) but we heard from those two dudes that the show was really good. I still have two RENDER USELESS EPs (maybe one is a split?) and they are both pretty good - vaguely Dischord-by-way-of-Ebullition influenced emotional hardcore punk that nails what so much of that decade was about musically as much as our paths crossing so perfectly nails what '90s DIY punk truly had to offer.

RENDER USELESS