B.G.K.

 

DEAD KENNEDYS were my first real starter band. I followed the 1985 PMRC hearings as a new teenager and avid TWISTED SISTER fan, and heard DK mentioned here and there as an example of a band to be feared (their name often mentioned alongside BUTTHOLE SURFERS, of course). But there was no internet, so it was name and notoriety only for a while until a visiting cousin gifted me a copy of Give Me Convenience... and it was fukkn over. I devoured the lyrics and the visuals, but the music? Fukk dude, I had simply never heard anything that raw and that fast before - I knew some punk by then, but this was different. On top of that, you could straight up send them money and Alternative Tentacles would send you more records from different bands - I got KLAUS FLOURIDE's solo platters like this, more DK records, heard TSOL and MDC for the first time and I also got my first real taste of '80 European hardcore when I traded a paltry $6 for a copy of Nothing Can Go Wrogn! that I still own today. I didn't have the context, but I knew the shit ripped and I drove the damn grooves off of that record...I often wonder what it might have been like if I have been able to put the pieces together then, in real time, but everything just seemed so completely foreign and impossible to reach so I focused intently on the magic that was in my hands and in front of my face. Funny that BGK were one of my first 'real' underground hardcore discoveries, but when WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? covered "Action Man" fifteen years later I had still not heard the White Male Dumbinance EP - good that didn't (still don't) feel like I have anything to prove, I suppose. But this tape is a much more recent acquisition - a relic from the '90s tape traders that compiles both the EP and both LPs...a flawless discography. Fitting that fan club tape label Poison Planet named this release Best Of and then included essentially every song BGK recorded. I kinda feel like BGK were the European NOTA, which I guess brings the whole Oklahoma thing full circle, right?

BEST OF B.G.K.

Also, Poison Planet popped singles from MORNING CRESCENT and ULTRA VIOLENT on the end of the tape, and we are all grateful.