Popped into Thrillhouse the other day just to see what was cooking and somehow walked out with a bag of heat. I broke the seal with PISSGRAVE's Malignant Worthlessness (which is a mind bending sonic journey of the highest order, highly recommended) and then....well, you know once you commit to buying something then it's kinda game on, you know? A few more LPs that were on my 'to-get' list and then I predictably meandered over to the tape wall...where I struck gold. In addition to a handwritten demo copy of the 1995 self titled SPILTH *!% EP (with one unreleased cut) and a grip of random noise, A grabbed a hard swinging ALEX BUENO tape that you'll see next week and.....this. Tough to describe THE BAR FEEDERS to folks who weren't around at the time, but if you were active in late 1990s San Francisco punk, then you saw THE BAR FEEDERS. Bar shows, warehouse shows, pop punk shows, hardcore shows; The Haight, Dogpatch, The Mission; killer shows you had to see to believe (FUN PEOPLE, HICKEY at Rocker Studios, painful shows you had to drink to justify (most Mondays at Nightbreak). They were the band who sang about beer and made jokes ("Outhouse Of Doom," "Hail Hail The Beers All Here," "Sierra Nevada" and of course their eponymous track "Bar Feeders"), their drummer directed a horror flick about zombie meter maids and they were just.....they were just fukkn good guys. Three dudes (always the same three) who were fully locked in and while they were ripping you always got the impression that they didn't really care if you were on their side or not because at the end of the day it was always them against the world. This was the energy that made so many of the bands from that time and place so appealing - and I swear you can still feel it three decades later listening to their 1997 debut Scotto El Blotto. You're going to hear pop punk riffs and harmonies played at breakneck hardcore speed, you're going to hear hardcore songs that sound like they were made to be played to a drunk bar crowd in a beach town, you will hear a few ska breakdowns and you'll hear dick jokes and honest missives about their friends. All of the cerebral and nostalgic observations aside, THE BAR FEEDERS played their fucking asses off - they played fukkn fast and they were tight as hell even when they were drunk as shit. All of that translates here....I was stoked when I grabbed these tapes (did I also get the alternate cover self-released demo version? yes of course I did), but I didn't think I was going to be this stoked. Enjoy.
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