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What’s up Sorry Staters?
I’m in so much pain. Not even kidding. It’s kinda funny how it happened tho. Scarecrow played a local gig the other night after what felt like a long hiatus from NC punk gigs. And I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t stretch before we played, or if it’s a symptom of how hard I was rockin’ out (yeah right 🙄), but I’m feeling rough. The muscle running down my neck and down along my shoulder is sore as all hell. And I’ll be honest, when I go through my day focusing on how much my shoulder hurts, it’s hard for me to maintain a good mood. I was pretty cranky yesterday. The soreness also made me not really feel excited about getting up off the couch and flipping records. As soon as I got home from work, I went into full lazy couch potato mode.
But wha wha, I’m sorry to be a cry baby. One thing that I’ve been experiencing lately (besides the pinched nerve in my shoulder) is a pinch of nostalgia. In part because while I was lazing away my evenings, I was binging a bunch of punk documentaries on Tubi. Have y’all checked out this streaming site before? It’s free, and the selection of music documentaries and horror movies makes me want to cancel all the streaming services I pay money for. Lately Daniel and Usman have been buzzing about skateboarding. Which is rad. Daniel got a bit thrashed the other day, which I’m sure he’s not stoked about, but I thought it was so rad because it was evidence of getting out there and shredding!! Once my shoulder heals, maybe I’ll hop back on my board and skate around a little bit. Until then, I watched the Bones Brigade documentary for like the 100th time to tide me over. I also re-watched the Descendents documentary. I don’t know why, but content like this has been making me feel cozy lately I guess.
By funny coincidence, Sorry State recently purchased this collection chock full o’ pop punk bangers that I loved in my early teenage years. The other night, I decided to throw on Screeching Weasel’s 1993 banger Anthem For A New Tomorrow. Now, I understand that Screeching Weasel is divisive—for many reasons. Some people can’t stand Ben Weasel’s voice. Some people have written off the band due to Weasel’s very publicized on-stage behavior. I totally get it. But I didn’t know about any of this when I was in my innocence, jamming bands like The Queers and The Lillingtons. So whether people are turned off by them or not, I will say that for me at least, Anthems always stuck out to me as one of the band’s better records from the 90s.
I threw this copy on the turntable as I was closing up the store, and I actually found myself wanting to stick around and listen to the whole damn thing. When I was younger, I don’t think I made the connection that a good amount of Screeching Weasel’s records came out on Lookout! and that they were connected to that whole scene. I was somewhat tempted to set this platter aside for myself, but this copy we have at the store is an original copy in nice shape with a hefty price tag. I’m trying to practice self-restraint. But it’s funny, as I was listening, there were a bunch of killer moments on this record I totally forgot about: The awesome instrumental tune “Talk To Me Summer”… the moody, jangly guitar strumming in “Inside Out”… the catchy organ (or is it like children’s piano?) passage in “Peter Brady,” which also it sounds like Fat Mike does guest vocals on? Wild. I don’t know how these little details of the production seem to be wiped from my memory. This copy sounds fucking great, so all these little decorative extras in the instrumentation were really hitting me.
I had fun revisiting this pop punk banger from my youth. I guess this is more-so directed at shop locals who read the newsletter, but if you’re into that world of melodic punk and garage, then we’ll have some cool stuff hitting the used new arrivals for you over the next couple of weeks.
Anyway, wish I had more to contribute this week, but I think this is all I can muster. As always, thanks for reading.
‘Til next week,
-Jeff