News

Bato: Human Cancer 12” (Not for the Weak Records) The wider world last heard from Bato on their 2019 7” Ravages of Time, but those of us who have seen the band live in the intervening five years knew they were brewing up something special for their long-planned debut LP. Now Human Cancer is out, and it’s ready to melt faces. Arriving via Norfolk’s prolific Not for the Weak Records, Bato shares a member with their label-mates Reckoning Force, and fans of that band will recognize guitarist Jordan Greenough’s lightning-fast, ultra-precise riffing right away. Also like Reckoning Force, Bato boasts a member of Socialcide (Bato has Socialcide’s drummer, while Reckoning Force features their bassist). If you’re one of the smart folks who has been snapping up every Not for the Weak Records release as it comes out, you’re going to love Bato, as the ultra-fast, musically dense hardcore punk that is that label’s trademark forms the foundation of their sound. Human Cancer can feel relentless on the first listen, riffs coming at you with overwhelming speed and ferocity, one right after the other, but the energy never drags. While Bato rides riffs just long enough to set the hook, they always have a tempo change or a cool little trade-off between instruments to keep the song moving. The songs are well-written, even subtle, feeling cooked down to where they’re as lean as they can be, all flavor and no filler. That sense of density combined with Bato’s consistently manic tempos makes Human Cancer a demanding yet exhilarating listen.

Another week, another record that I think kicks ass. Gel’s Only Constant is a punishing, angry and unforgiving record. The riffs and drumming are simple but effective and vocals are like a screeching car coming at you. I have been listening to this band since their self-titled demo came out. If you want stripped down fast and feisty, this album is for you! Favorite song - Dicey. Hardcore for the fucking freaks!

I love how we associate music to seasons or weather and how everyone’s option of what they listen to when it’s cold or hot really interests me. For me, I associate spring and summer with my teenage days playing in shitty bands with my friends and what we were listening to during that time. We would blast Screeching Weasel’s Boogadaboogadaboogada or whatever Fat Wreck or Epitaph Records band was popular that summer. Fall and winter bring out the more jazz and ambient side of me. I love playing a record like Brian Eno’s Music for Airports in the morning when it’s cold outside.

Thanks again for checking out my little blurb on this newsletter, until next week!

Whats up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone had a good weekend. Last Sunday, I travelled back to Nashville for a quick trip to go to a Billy Strings show (no shocker there). Believe it or not though, this one was different. He was playing a one-off show with Bryan Sutton at the American Legion Post 82 in Nashville, essentially a tiny dive bar, and tickets were sold in a raffle system and to be picked up at will call with a matching ID to prevent any chance of reselling. For once, I was lucky enough to win the raffle and score two tickets to the show (for reference, I heard around 15,000 people entered the raffle and only about 200 tickets were sold, take that info with a grain of salt.) This show was only announced two weeks before it happened and emails sent out if you got tickets a week before. I signed up as a Hail Mary and said I’d say what the hell and make the drive to Nashville if I got em and lo and behold. I hit up my brother who lives in Nashville and asked if I could stay with him and if he wanted my extra ticket to go to the show, which he was happy to oblige. Road tripping by yourself is pretty fun cause you can do all the stupid detours no one else would wanna do, like cruise down the Andy Griffith Parkway and visit Mayberry. I was a couple hours outside of Nashville and my brother called me up and informed me the venue the show was at was around the corner a block away from his apartment. Everything was falling into place. He planned to go pick up some beers and pizza for my arrival before the show. I got in about 6PM, doors were at 7 and the show was at 8, so we hung out for about an hour and we decided since I’d come so far for a show we might as well get there early at the doors. A quick cut through the Cookout and Popeyes parking lot and we were at the show. We had to go through about three separate sets of people with a list and show our IDs. We get inside and pass thru the bar to a back room where we’re greeted by a tiny stage with a few rows of foldout chairs mere feet from the stage. Holy shit. I’m used to seeing Billy in arenas full of thousands of people, so to be in a tiny back room of a dive bar sitting probably about 10 feet away from my favorite musician just pickin on the guitar felt like a fever dream. My brother turned to me and I could tell he realized the absurdity of this historical show we were about to witness. Since we got there early, we had some time before the show, so I went over to the bar to grab us some beers. Getting asked to start a tab while at a Billy show also felt otherworldly, since I’m used to getting hawked for $16 beers at arenas. Everyone who was there was so happy to be there. I kept hearing people saying they couldn’t believe they were actually there. A lady I talked to was a school teacher who said she started crying in the middle of class when she got the email that she won the tickets and her students had to ask what was wrong. She was telling me she brought her dad with her and I told her I brought my brother with me and another guy chimed in and said he brought his brother with him as well, It just felt like a real family affair and everyone had a smile from ear to ear. I sat back down and shortly after, Billy and Bryan came walking in thru the side door, right thru the crowd basically and walked right on to that tiny stage and took a seat and we were off to the races. This show was completely made up of just timeless bluegrass and folk staples which, if you know me, is my ideal set list. I got to hear more Doc Watson tunes than you could shake a stick at, including my favorite song of all time, Shady Grove. I loved every single song. It was just classic after classic after classic. I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing. Like I said, I could only compare the feeling to being in a fever dream.

Getting to hear/be a part of the banter in between the songs felt like I was placed smack dab into one of my old live bluegrass records from the 60s that I’m always writing about. One of my favorite songs from the evening is when they played the Norman Blake song Randall Collins. I wasn’t familiar with it before, but I sure as hell am now. It was an instant earworm, and I probably listened to it about 20 times on my drive home. Just a cool as hell song. After probably what were two of the greatest hours I’ve spent on this earth, they closed the show with Let the Cocaine Be, a song I’d wanted to hear live since I first got sucked down the bluegrass rabbit hole. After the show, Billy just took a step down off the stage and took the time to say hello and take a picture and talk to everyone that was lucky enough to be in attendance, a real class act. I’m terrible in these situations and never know what to say, but I shook his hand and told him thanks for all the music and everything, and also gave him a copy of that cassette I wrote about months ago, Who’s This Living in My Soul?, a compilation of old rare folk and gospel songs from across the south. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll get to hear Billy play a cover from that? Afterwards, me and my brother went to Dino’s to end the evening with some fries and a few more cold ones. While sitting there, there was only one word we could come up with to sum up the night: legendary. Getting to experience this intimate performance made me realize how thankful for music I am and how powerful it can be. I know this is a memory I’ll get to carry on for the rest of my life of seeing my favorite artist with my brother in the backroom of a bar in Nashville and for that I’d like to say, thank you Bill, it’s been a thrill.

Hi Sorry State fam! How’s it going? Things are pretty tame on my end. Although I’m still suffering with air conditioning problems so I’m sweating my ass off! And I missed last week’s staff pick, so I’m a week behind in formally welcoming Danny to the Sorry State team. So a big welcome to Danny! And with that, it’s time to rewind the clock over 40 years and get excited about records!

Recently my esteemed colleagues and I were discussing our top five 7” records, whether it be singles or EPs. A daunting task indeed. And somehow, I completely forgot about one of my favorite and most important 45’s. Important not only for the music itself and its contribution to punk, but as a physical record in my collection.

It’s Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown EP. Released in 1979, the title is easily in my top 10 favorite punk tracks, and still gets me going to this day. What a song. I like that the band put only that song on the first side and the other three on the second. The track is a show stealer that you should sit with and digest for a few more seconds. And it’s also almost as long as the whole second side!

This is one of those records that is overwhelming to talk about because all the words have been said, all the adjectives have been used, and it’s more than clear how lauded and important this release was for punk. The year 1979 was a pretty big one for punk music. From the Clash to the Buzzcocks, to post-punk trailblazers like Joy Division. And on the west coast, in LA, a band called Black Flag would drop this five minute record that brought a new style and sound to the punk genre. It was a grittier, messier, and more manic breed of punk music.

Keith’s vocals play a large part in characterizing Black Flag’s unique sound on this EP. He sounds angry, sarcastic, helpless, frustrated, and completely unhinged. I’m a big fan of frantic, unpredictable vocals. It’s not all about how he sings, but the unique tone of his voice that grabs me. The title track really sets the tone for the second side and gives it a flexible foundation. They could express themselves however they wanted and it probably wouldn’t sound like too much of a departure from Nervous Breakdown.

This record as a piece of physical media has always been a little confusing but interesting to me, with the multiple different covers and jackets and labels. By the way, if I get any facts wrong, they’re probably just typos. Anyway, they started out with about 2,000 copies of the first pressing, and they quickly pressed another thousand copies, known as V2. The second version is distinguished by its blue versus the original black artwork. Version 3 (this one) is nearly identical to V2 but with a red cover. Although we don’t know for sure, they printed no more than a thousand for V3, and the remaining copies (est. at 2,000) would be used for V4. They used red artwork for V3 and V4, but starting with V4, they changed the shape of the outer cover.

The first three versions have an arc like shape at the top, said to be for easier access. Version 4 and subsequent reissues would use the standard outer cover cut straight across. It doesn’t stop there. Between 1980 and 1989, SST released six versions, each distinguished by aesthetic changes but no changes to the music or the recording. Actually, it is very easy to tell which version you have, as the Discogs notes section describes the differences very well. At the same time, this is the kind of stuff that makes record collecting exciting, and super fun to talk about.

Ok I’m gonna wrap this up and wish everyone a great week! Thanks for reading and nerding out with me. Until next time!

-Angela

Hello and thanks for reading. This week I will write about the recent LEGION OF PARASITES reissue on General Speech. This record was released forty years ago, and this is the first time it has ever been reissued! It was originally released by Fight Back in 1984. If you don’t know, Fight Back was a side label of Mortarhate Records. I’m not sure what the intention behind the sub-label was, but I know Mortarhate was operated by members of CONFLICT. Somewhere along the way, Cherry Red picked up the rights to this record, cos I can see this pressing is licensed from them. I think the actual record sounds excellent, and the packaging is nice and proper. The photos were printed perfectly on the back, and often photos print fucked up unless the person doing the formatting/layout knows exactly what they are doing. This pressing was slightly enhanced by including an insert, as the original did not come with on (...at least that is what I thought until I just checked Discogs, fuck.) Someone recently uploaded a picture of an insert and they said you could get it by writing the band. I have never seen a copy with one, damn. While the insert inside this reissue is a bit different than the one I saw in Discogs, it does still include lyrics. When listening to political bands I think it’s especially important to get a lyrics insert. I feel a bit silly saying political bands, but you know what I mean? I mean those bands who really take the time to write thought provoking lyrics and use their music as a weapon. Not like those bands whose lyrics are about petty things like social ridicule. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for criticizing your peers, but more often than not, I don’t find those lyrics very entertaining. (The perfect exception to what I’ve just said is SHAVED APE.)

Anyway, LEGION OF PARASITES certainly has elements of that early anarcho sound, but there is a bit more to it than the traditional Crass Records formula. On this EP specifically, they kind of remind me of SUBHUMANS actually, but overall they have more of an aggressive sound. They really lean into that on their LP that followed the year after. Overall, they really remind of ANTI-SYSTEM (one of my favorite English bands.) Funny enough, ANTI-SYSTEM also started out with more of a traditional anarcho sound and evolved into a pummeling monster on their LP.

Alongside General Speech’s recent reissues, we also got some other releases he is handling distribution for in the US. I didn’t know this band existed until I saw these LPs. DEAD ENDS was from the Philippines, and it’s safe to say this is the first band I have ever heard from there. They pumped out three cassettes from 1985 to 1987 and this is the first time they have ever been reissued. Naturally, this really increased my interest, and after checking them each out just once, I grabbed a copy of them all for myself. I haven’t spent much time at all with them outside of work, so I have only been able to take the music in. After a brief look at them, the packaging seems nice. Each includes a sticker and double-sided insert filled with text. I will have to spend some time outside work to really explore the releases, but I think I already favor their third LP the most, Damned Nation. Coming from an uncultured noob, I am guessing the opinion is probably not common, haha. That one stuck out to me the most though, but probably cos it sounds the most hardcore.

I can’t leave without mentioning that the KRIEGSHOG LP is back in print! I realize that there are probably a whole crop of younger kids who may not be familiar with the band since they disappeared for a long time. I know they had peppered out those EPs way after the first few 7"s and LP, and I remember one being a posthumous release? Maybe I am totally mistaken. LVEUM has put the LP back in print, and it’s coming alongside a brand new LP I have a lot of anticipation for. If you haven’t heard them before, immediately check out their debut LP that is now back in print. I think it is safe to say this is a modern masterpiece, and a copy belongs in every single record collection. Alright that’s all I got for today. Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone for your support.

Hiya Sorry Staters. Nice to have you join us for this week’s newsletter. It’s been one hell of a week here and across the country. Basketball, eclipse, nut job Magas enacting horrendous one hundred plus year old laws controlling the rights of women to have autonomy over their own bodies, you name it. It’s all going on. Wacky stuff.

Last week, as Jeff spoke about in the newsletter, we received a visit from Zander Schloss, bass player in the Circle Jerks, who kindly hooked us up with tickets for the show. I was looking forward to going, but left the shop that night to find my car with a flat tire, and by the time I had the donut on I was in no mood or shape to deal with everything that seeing a show at The Ritz involves. All reports back were that it was a killer time.

Then, to cap the weekend off for me, I woke up Sunday morning with a swollen eyelid, which got progressively worse all day. By Monday morning, I looked like a wasp and a bee had a stinging competition on my eye. I think it is getting better now and hopefully by the weekend I’ll be back to normal. Ha!. Normal. What is that?

Tons of cool shit coming through the store again this week. We got new stuff, used stuff and reissues of old stuff. We’ve all been digging the three albums by Dead Ends. My favorite is the first, but read Jeff’s deeper dive into how these records sound and the story behind these guys.

For my pick this week, I would like to recommend a cool reissue we got in from General Speech. It’s the short-lived band Puncture and their 1977 one-off single for Small Wonder (the label’s first release) called Mucky Pup b/w Can’t Rock & Roll (In A Council Flat).

The other day Usman was talking to us about the song Mucky Pup and how he had thought it was an Exploited song, only to learn it was a cover. Indeed, the tune was covered by The Exploited for their Punks Not Dead album. In Usman’s defense, the song is probably best known from this version and because it wasn’t stuck at the end of the record, why would you think it was a cover? My exposure to the song came via the B-side, which I can recall hearing on a John Peel show back in the day. That was confirmed just the other week when I pulled up Peel shows on YouTube for something to listen to and I heard that song. I’ve always wanted a copy of the 45, but even though Small Wonder pressed at least three thousand copies, it has been in demand and commands a decent price. I’ve got both sides of the 45 on two different compilations, though. A Small Wonder singles collection and a KBD type boot called Neighbor Annoyer.

I like Mucky Pup, but for me it is the B-side that is the winner. I like the humor of it, perhaps. Also, the use of a wonky keyboard and the synth sounds that are on both tracks add a little something extra. Both songs are great and a classic example of what the kids in Islington were up to in the late 70s. Good stuff. Small Wonder, the label and shop based in Walthamstow, East London, was like Chiswick Records and the shop Rock On. Along with Stiff Records, these three independents released countless seminal early punk singles. But I don’t need to tell you guys that.

There’s not too much to say about the band. They only put out this one single, but gigged regularly for the year or so that they were together. Guitarist Jack Stafford changed his name to Jak Airport and played with X-Ray Spex and enjoyed some success with them. On the Bored Teenagers website, bass player and vocalist Steve Councel talks a little about what the others in the band got up to post Puncture. Click here to read that brief piece.

We have a few copies of the reissue here in stock. I’m not sure how limited they are, but as with all these things my advice is to snag one sooner than later.

Cheers - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

Not a whole lot to report on the personal front this week. I’m feeling the tingles of being busy with band activities just around the corner. I was reminded that Public Acid’s 2 shows in New York are only a month away! And then from there, we fly out of New York to go tour the West Coast with KOS on the way down to Lie Detector fest in LA (dizzy guy emoji). All of which I’m thoroughly looking forward to, but always have a little anxiety about. It’ll be rad though.

Last week, I jumped the gun and talked about Record Store Day a couple weeks early. Now I’m back to talking about punk. The new reissues we just stocked from General Speech are killer! Legion of Parasites and Puncture were long overdue for a proper, nicely executed reissue. Along with these new General Speech titles, while GS was not directly involved, Tom was also nice enough to include these new reissues from Dead Ends. Dead Ends were a band based out of the Philippines during the mid-to-late 80s. The 3 LP’s Sorry State just stocked were originally released on cassette during the time the band was active. Thanks to this label Merciless Records, the Dead Ends recordings are finally given a long overdue and well-deserved vinyl treatment.

Weirdly, I was actually made aware of Dead Ends many years ago. My old buddy Ace, who has played in many bands I’m sure all you Sorry State readers are familiar with, first introduced me to Dead Ends back when he still lived in North Carolina. Come to think of it, I don’t even know how Ace found out about them way back when. For me, Dead Ends were relatively obscure, especially 10 years ago and considering they only released their albums on cassette. But I do recall Ace told me that he wanted to take a deep dive and learn about 80s Filipino hardcore. I remember him even rocking a Dead Ends snapback baseball hat at one point? You can check my sources on that detail. Back then, Ace probably played me a song or two. I remember thinking it was cool at the time, but after that, I surely didn’t know where to hunt down recordings online or anything. And I certainly had no idea that Dead Ends had 3 full-lengths worth of recorded material.

I can’t remember exactly what my initial impression of Dead Ends was when I first listened to them like over 10 years ago. I wanna say I remember it not being super aggressive or heavy. Maybe I was expecting them to sound more metallic, as one might think in the mid-to-late 80s, like Death Side or Final Conflict or something. But now, listening to these records with fresh ears, these feel like long-lost gems of an overseas hardcore scene. I’m sure Dead Ends made a huge impact in the Philippines where they’re from. Which also makes me wonder how much the band was aware of what going on in hardcore punk in the 80s. So, the band was a 3-piece. And one sort of legendary piece of the narrative I heard is that the 2 brothers in the band, Al and Jay Dimalanta, visited in New York in the early 80s, absorbed everything that was going in punk while they were there, and then returned home to the Philippines and started a scene from scratch. That could be totally untrue. But if it is true, it makes for an interesting development of the band’s story.

Listening to these records now, it seems very clear that Dead Ends took influence from punk and hardcore in the US (and also maybe a bit from the UK). I guess you could say that Dead Ends’ sound is fairly westernized. All the lyrics are sung in English as well. What’s funny though, is that to me it seems like each LP is sonically about 4 or 5 years behind what was happening in the US. And I don’t mean that disparagingly at all! Dead Ends’ first record Complaints came out in 1985, and really sounds a lot like California punk circa 1980 or ’81. And then with each record, the band gets slightly faster and more aggressive. Al’s vocals really are a huge aspect of the band’s sound. He’s super quirky and charismatic with his delivery. I’ve heard many people compare his inflection to Jello Biafra, which I totally hear, and would imagine Jello was a big influence. But I hear a bit of John Lydon in there too. I think the influence of UK punk shouldn’t be underestimated. Complaints will get you raging with faster-paced rippers, but then there are occasional uber-melodic, sort of anthemic tunes that sound like The Clash. I mean, dude, there’s even a few ill-fated reggae sections in some songs, which gives me a little smirk. Of course, a punk band incorporating a reggae groove in their song was par for the course if they were in the UK in 1978. If only someone was there to warn Dead Ends that not only would this not age well for bands in the late 70s, but it was DEFINITELY not a cool move in 1985 haha.

The next record, Second Coming, has its moments as well, but I found myself gravitating most strongly to the 3rd record, Damned Nation, probably the most instantly raging and urgent record out of all of them. When you listen to the riffs and fast, in-the-pocket groove of the drums, you could draw comparisons to like Battalion of Saints or even Poison Idea. That said, I think this record is where Dead Ends really comes into their own. And even with all of what I’ve said previously, I don’t think Dead Ends sound purely derivative on any of their records. I think the band shows strong songwriting and intense conviction on every single one of these records. Damned Nation in particular, though, has some super intricate musicianship, shredding guitar leads, clever song construction with some neck-breaking punches and tempo changes, and big sing-along hooks. The speed of the drums almost gets into blast beat territory on a few songs, but not in a metallic/power violence way. This still feels like classic, tuneful, albeit RAGING hardcore. But then along the way, in the middle of the record, you get songs like “Lights Are Out,” which breaks into an unexpected, super melodic refrain of “Teenage lust!” Or a song like “Johnny Loves Hardcore” is almost like Dead Ends’ answer to “Richard Hung Himself.” Big chanted chorus. It rules. So killer.

Another thing I want to point out is that Merciless Records did a really great job with these reissues. The packaging looks great. Most importantly, these records sound great! I’ve heard rough sounding rips of the Dead Ends cassettes on Youtube. And not unlike many other hardcore reissues I’ve heard, I half expected these LPs to have hiss or audible EQ dropouts. I’m not sure what the label’s sound source was for this new pressing, but I was thoroughly pleased how clear and punchy they sound. These sound like classic records, certainly deserving of having a proper release back in the 80s. Kind of a shame they didn’t from one point of view. From another, I’m stoked I get to listen to them on vinyl now in the year 2024. Dead Ends broke up in 1996 after the death of Jay Dimalanta. RIP. His brother Al, who was the chief songwriter in Dead Ends, has continued to play in bands even as recently as the mid-to-late 2010s. On each of the LPs, Al provides some history and insight in the liner notes. Pretty cool to read.

We only got a handful of copies, so I really hope Sorry State isn’t sold out of these Dead Ends by the time the newsletter comes out. If we are, I think there might a handful of distros still carrying them. Hopefully, Merciless will do a repress if these records become totally unavailable. Show some love for Dead Ends.

That’s all I’ve got. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Note: While this story is based on actual events, it has been lightly fictionalized / exaggerated for your entertainment benefit. Except the parts about records… I would never, ever lie to you about records.

It’s Saturday and I’m having a lazy day, my morning routine of coffee and reading the news stretching into the early afternoon. I open my email and there’s a message from a woman who says she has a closet full of records she’s never going to listen to again. She wants to know if I’d like to have a look at them. She’s attached a file which lists all the artists in the collection, each one preceded by a number, presumably the number of records by that artist. At the top, separated from the rest of the list, are a bunch of well-known classic rock artists. 16 Grateful Dead records… cool, we can always use Dead records, and 16 is quite a run. There are also 8 Beatles, 6 stones, 7 Zeppelin… all stuff that sells. But as I dig into the list, I see things that look more interesting. 4 Clash records. A Buzzcocks LP. 1 Devo. 3 Captain Beefheart. A Fall record. A Saints record. Even a T.S.O.L. record. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it won’t be Hit and Run. After some back and forth, we decide I’ll drive out to her place to have a look at the records this afternoon. She seems very nice, and particularly appreciative that I’m willing to drive out to her home in Louisburg. She even sends a bunch of smiley face emojis when I tell her I don’t mind making the drive. I can see from her email signature that she works near downtown Raleigh, about 2 miles from the store, but I can understand not wanting to lug around a couple hundred records.

As I drive out toward Louisburg, I’m in a good mood. It’s a lovely spring day. I notice the thermometer on my car reads 72 degrees. The weather is literally perfect. I imagine the person with these records is some cool, late-middle-aged woman who was deep into music in the 70s and 80s. Who knows why she lives in Louisburg? Maybe she’s a librarian or a teacher, or maybe there’s a community of cool hippie-ish folks there I don’t know about. It’s not uncommon for me to drive out into the woods around tiny central North Carolina towns like Saxapahaw or Pittsboro and come back with an armload of Talking Heads and Brian Eno LPs. And, of course, it’s a maxim in the record-buying world that cool people are the easiest to deal with. If you’re smart enough to get into cool music, you’re usually smart enough to set reasonable expectations as to their value. Often, people are pleasantly surprised when I offer them any money for something they thought they’d have to just throw out. I imagine I’ll look over the records, give this person a few hundred bucks, and I’ll make her day and get a few cool records for the store.

I stop by the SSR warehouse and grab some boxes, then put the address in my GPS. I thought I’d be heading north out of Raleigh. There’s a road called Louisburg Road that branches off from Capital Boulevard, the main road that runs from downtown Raleigh north to a town called Wake Forest, an exurb of Raleigh with huge country homes and smaller developments full of retirees. I assumed Louisburg was just east of there, but the GPS took me straight east out of Raleigh, into the creepy, sparsely inhabited lowlands that stretch from Raleigh to the coast. Eventually I get off the highway, passing through the town of Bunn. Bunn had a population of 327 as of the 2020 census, and it still has a small historic downtown with some character. I even see what looks like a hip coffee shop. Before I know it, though, Bunn is in my rear-view mirror and I’m heading into the sticks.

When I reach the house and pull in, it isn’t what I expected. It’s one of those 3-bedroom prefab houses—basically an upmarket double-wide trailer—sitting in the middle of a big empty lot. There are no trees and there are fallow fields on all sides, the house like a strange growth protruding from the flat, empty landscape. There’s also an enormous truck in the driveway, the kind typically adorned with Punisher logos and thin blue line flags. When I approach the door, I see a Ring doorbell, which seems strange. Plenty of people have Ring doorbells, but usually it’s tech workers who have a thing for gadgets or rich people who live in McMansions that have all the most up-to-date everything. A Ring doorbell in the country, though, on a house in the middle of a bunch of fields where you can see clearly for a mile in every direction, strikes me as odd.

I ring the bell and it’s not a woman who answers, but a thick-necked bro with a tight t-shirt and product in his hair. I introduce myself. He shakes my hand, and he introduces his wife, the person I’ve been speaking to, who comes in from the kitchen. The woman is thin, looks like she works out a lot, and has bleached blonde hair. My mind drifts to an article I’d read that morning in the New York Times about how the new, Trump-era evangelical Christians aren’t as stuffy and uptight as previous generations of religious conservatives. A key piece of evidence was this “Conservative Dad” pin-up calendar, which has pictures of women from the world of right-wing punditry wearing bikinis and doing things like holding assault rifles and reading the Bible. I think to myself that this dude looks like someone who would buy that calendar. His wife looks like someone who would pose for it.

The records are sitting on the floor in the living room, spread across a few boxes. We chit-chat for a second and I start flipping, beginning with the box on the coffee table. The woman tells me that’s the stuff she thought no one would want, and based on the classical records and Time magazine box sets I can see poking out, she’s probably right. But I flip through them anyway, and a few records in I find an original pressing of Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi. Then a few records after that, a copy of Let Them Eat Jellybeans. That’s a good start, though both are pretty beat. They look like they’ve been stored outside for at least part of their lives, the jackets dry-rotted, seams split, and the vinyl itself scuffy.

Next I move to the stack of Beatles records lying on the coffee table. As I pick them up, the guy says, “yeah, it’s so hard to figure out what records are worth. You look up one Beatles record and it’s selling for $10, and then another one that looks exactly the same is selling for $2,000.” I ease into my spiel, developed over many years, about how the Beatles records that sell for a lot of money are very rare, and they’re probably not the ones you have. I also point out these copies are trashed. They have the same signs of dry-rot as the previous box, but the vinyl is in considerably worse shape. I explain to him that the titles he has are primarily the less-desirable pre-Rubber Soul albums, and that in the condition they’re in, the most we’d sell them for would be $5, and it’s more likely that Dominic wouldn’t want something that junky clogging up his bargain bin.

If the Ring doorbell was red flag number one, throwing out a figure like $2,000 was red flag number two. When you’re negotiating, the first number thrown out is important because it sets the anchor point for the rest of the discussion. I know records, and I have a pretty good idea how much money I can generate from most collections I look at. When a person throws out a number that’s way more than that, it tells me I’m going to have to do a lot of work to adjust their expectations. Often, these are frustrating transactions, because I feel like I’m stretching to meet their expectations, yet in the end I feel like the person still walks away disappointed. As I mentioned, though, cool people with cool records are very easy to deal with. They respect my expertise and understand that we need to sell records for more than we buy them for in order to stay in business. On the other hand, situations like this, where the person enters the discussion convinced they’re being ripped off, almost always revolve around beat-up classic rock records. These people convince themselves their records are worth significantly more than they are, selectively looking at online listings that confirm their assumptions. When I try to explain my position, they assume I don’t know what I’m talking about or that I’m trying to rip them off. Fortunately, these interactions are usually easy to walk away from, because if I don’t buy some jerk’s Led Zeppelin records, it won’t be long before a much nicer person with a bunch of Led Zeppelin records walks through the door.

I move to the next box, which contains the classic rock titles that were bracketed off on the list the woman had emailed me. There are indeed a lot of Grateful Dead LPs. Most of the studio albums are there, plus a few old 70s, Trademark of Quality-type bootlegs with mimeographed covers pasted onto blank white jackets. The first record I look at is Europe ’72, because it’s probably the most valuable. The seams are split and there’s heavy ring wear, but all 3 LPs are there. They are covered in scuffs, but still playable. We’d charge good money for a nice copy of Europe ’72, but I imagine we could still get $20 for a beater like this. The rest of the Dead LPs are in similar shape. As I flip, we’re still chit-chatting, and the guy tells me he’s already put the entire Grateful Dead collection up on eBay, as a lot, for a Buy It Now price of $2000. I chuckled and told him that was way too much money, and he quickly got defensive, telling me the listing had 14 watchers. I let it drop. If this guy sells online, surely he knows there’s a wide gulf between someone clicking the “watch” button and someone forking over two grand.

As I get past the Dead and Zeppelin, the records get cooler. I knew there was some Beefheart, but I hadn’t expected an original Trout Mask Replica. The cover has so much ring wear the cover art is barely visible, but the vinyl wasn’t nearly as trashed as the Dead records. There’s also an OG Safe as Milk, again not in great condition, but with a thorough cleaning someone would certainly want it. A few records after that was a cool-looking psychedelic cover I didn’t recognize. I look more closely and it’s Tyrannosaurus Rex’s first LP, My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair... But Now They’re Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows. I can’t recall the last time I saw one of those. The vinyl on this record is a lot nicer, and after that is a solid copy of their 3rd album, Unicorn, and then a blank black jacket that turns out to be a copy of A Beard of Stars with the front panel of the unipak gatefold ripped off.

Somewhere around this point, the guy tells me where he got the records. I had figured out by now that they didn’t belong to the woman I’d been speaking to… she was absent-mindedly shuffling them around at one point and said, “Jerry Garcia… where do I know that name?” This clearly wasn’t a person who owned 16 Dead albums. There was a weird moment when the guy asks, “did I tell you where I got these records?” and the woman and I both say “no” at the same time. He explains that he’s a contractor who works for one of those companies that buys “ugly houses,” and that sometimes—his example was someone who dies and has no relatives—the houses are still full of stuff when his company takes possession of them. He found these records in a house his company had bought in downtown Durham, and his boss said it was fine if he took them. Then he started telling me about other things he’s found in houses and sold. He was particularly proud of some silverware from colonial America. He said a complete set of this silverware would have been worth $20k, but he was missing 4 pieces, so he sold what he had for $2k. By this point I’m realizing this person is both full of shit and an asshole, bragging (and, I’m sure, wildly exaggerating) about how he’s profited off other people’s suffering and bad fortune.

As he tells these tall tales, I continue going through the boxes. If it wasn’t already apparent from the Beefheart records, whoever amassed this collection had seriously cool, forward-thinking taste in music. When I looked at the list in the original email, I assumed the Saints record would be one of the crummy, post-Ed Kuepper albums you see all the time, but it was an EMI pressing of I’m Stranded. The Devo LP was Q: Are We Not Men?. There were cool 60s and 70s albums like Soft Machine’s 3rd and the Small Faces’ Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake with the die-cut cover. A copy of the Cramps’ Gravest Hits. And there were a bunch of hardcore records to go with Let Them Eat Jellybeans… T.S.O.L.’s first 12” EP, This Is Boston Not LA, and, best of all, a nice copy of (GI) on Slash.

After I flipped through everything, I gave the guy my honest assessment. He had some very cool records, and fortunately those cool records were, on average, in better condition than the trashed classic rock records he’d assumed were his most valuable items. I told him that, while he’d thrown out a bunch of very high numbers earlier in our conversation, my offer for the whole collection would probably be a few hundred dollars, not several thousand dollars. I hoped he’d see this as found money—after all, he’d gotten these records for free—and would be happy with $500. He replied he had planned to put the entire collection on Facebook Marketplace with an asking price of $1500. I asked him if I could pay him $500 to cherry-pick the titles I wanted from the collection, leaving him all the Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, and Grateful Dead. He hemmed and hawed, so I told him I’d go back through, inspect the more valuable items more thoroughly, and try to give him a better offer.

I made a second pass and tallied everything up. I felt like I could make about a thousand dollars on the rarer titles in the collection, which was about 40 LPs. I was really hoping that, when I added in all the classic rock records, they’d add up to enough that I could offer him the $1500 he mentioned as his asking price. However, when I spent more time looking at the classic rock titles, they really were trashed. Adding those in, I thought the collection was probably worth around $1500 retail. It would cost us a few hundred dollars in labor to clean everything up and prepare it for sale, plus I’d likely get an earful from Dominic for bringing him more dirty, scratched up records. I’d already gotten one of those earfuls the day before about a collection in much better shape than this one, and I wasn’t eager for round two. I gave the guy another offer, which wasn’t that much different from my first offer: $500 for the 40 or so records I really wanted, or $800 for the lot. He was visibly disappointed. He told me he needed a few days to think about it. I told him that was fine, and I left.

As I drove back to Raleigh, a few things about this interaction got to me. I remembered how I thought I’d be dealing with a cool older woman who wanted to clear up some space in her house, but when I got to the door, instead I meet this douchebag and his aggressive negotiating tactics. I felt like I’d been catfished, like this guy has his wife correspond with potential buyers, acting all nice and sending emojis and shit, but then you show up and you’re dealing with some Pawn Stars knockoff. I also thought about how this guy basically found $800 in the trash, but he’s so paranoid of getting ripped off that he can’t just take the win… he has to maximize his return (on $0!), and he’s haunted by the idea someone else will make a few hundred dollars that won’t go to him. Maybe it’s ridiculous for me to think about it that way. There’s no reason I deserve those records just because I know what they are. But at the same time, it kills me that these records are being held hostage by someone who can’t and won’t appreciate them, just because he has some dim idea they are worth money.

Then I think about whoever originally owned these records. I know nothing about them other than that they lived in Durham. But the person who owned these records was one of my people. They wouldn’t have these records if they weren’t. And based on the state of these records and how this guy found them, I don’t think things ended well for these records’ original owner(s). I doubt they abandoned their house in downtown Durham and all their possessions to live out their days on a private Caribbean island. Maybe the records belonged to an old hipster whose health declined. Maybe it was someone whose addictions got the better of them. At the very least, they never got the chance to cash in on their good taste. This dickhead in Louisburg, though… he’s gonna squeeze every cent he can out of them.

Twelve Cubic Feet: Straight Out the Fridge 12” (Sealed Records) Sealed Records reissues this obscure and brilliant 10” from 1982, sizing it up to a 12” and including the same 16-page booklet that came with the original. Twelve Cubic Feet’s sound sits at the intersection of virtually all the interesting underground music movements happening in the early 80s UK. I hear elements of poppy anarcho punk like Zounds and Hagar the Womb, a lot of UKDIY (dig that total Television Personalities-style walking bass line on “Hello Howard”), touches of minimal synth (the to-die-for synth sound reminds me of Solid Space, with whom Twelve Cubic Feet shared a member), and the then-nascent indie-pop sound. On songs like the brilliant opener “Blob” and “Mary’s Got the Bug,” where the bass is up front and carrying the rhythm, Twelve Cubic Feet reminds me of Delta 5, but poppy tracks like “Evercare” and “Escaping Again” are more in the vein of Cleaners from Venus or the Times, rough-hewn takes on classic pop formulas. “The Almshouse,” on the other hand, employs the three R’s (repetition, repetition, repetition…), its circular, zoned-out sound evoking Can’s groovy meditations. There’s isn’t a dull moment on the record, and if (like so many of us), you have a taste for early 80s UK underground sounds from across the musical spectrum, you should get this right away.

Hello fellow Sorry Staters! Just a quick introduction. My name is Danny and I am the new guy at Sorry State Records. Just a little bit about me: I have lived in eastern North Carolina most of my life and call Raleigh my home. I have a beautiful wife, Molly, two cats (Keeks and Chloe) and a new pug puppy named Prudence. I have played drums in a few bands when I was younger and I am learning guitar and bass. Enough about me, let’s get into what I have been listening to this past week!

I have quickly come to find out that working at a record store puts you in contact with so many bands that you would have otherwise never heard of. I have a few picks that caught my eye my first week at Sorry State. First, we have Canada’s Home Front—Games of Power. This record is a post punk listener’s wet dream. This record combines synth and post punk with some gang vocals, like on the track, “Nation,” which features The Chisel front man, Cal. Currently, you can catch Home Front on tour with the Chisel in the U.S.—Check them out!

Another band that I have started listening to this week is Prison Affair. Egg punk at its finest. This band is fast, catchy and most importantly you can shake your ass to it. I recommend jumping up and down while doing a spazzy robot while listening. Egg punk is a new genre for me and I am starting to consume all that I can in the genre.

Thanks for reading! Go outside and run in circles or play a board game inside! Who cares!