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Daniel's Staff Pick: January 27, 2025

The Zarkons: Riders in the Long Black Parade 12” (1985, Time Coast Records)

A while back I wrote a staff pick about the second album by LA’s the Alley Cats, which my friend Dave Brown of Sewercide Records and Misanthropic Minds so generously sent to me after we talked about it on an episode of What Are You Listening to? I didn’t mention it in my previous staff pick, but some time after releasing Escape from Planet Earth, the Alley Cats changed their name to the Zarkons. Eager to hear the next chapter in the Alley Cats’ story, I set out looking for a copy of the Zarkons’ first album, 1985’s Riders in the Long Black Parade, and after a few months I finally turned one up.

Riders in the Long Black Parade has been on repeat since I got it home. Not only have I been playing it a bunch, but after my wife Jet heard me play it, she’s become obsessed, too. It was too cold last week for Jet to work in her pottery studio, so she’s been doing ceramics work at the dining room table in the evenings. Several times this week I’ve been sitting on the couch in the living room, failing to get up immediately when a side of vinyl finishes. If the silence persists for more than a few minutes, Jet yells, “PUT ON THE ZARKONS ALBUM!” from the other room. I can’t help but oblige.

As much as I enjoyed Escape from Planet Earth, I think I like Riders in the Long Black Parade even better. Why? That brings up my big question about this record: why did the band change their name? The band’s lineup on Riders in the Long Black Parade is the same as the Alley Cats lineup; in fact, the photo of the band on the record’s back cover is exactly the same photo from the sleeve for their “Too Much Junk” single. The name change from the Alley Cats to the Zarkons wasn’t due a change in membership or record label, and I don’t think they really changed up their sound too much either. This sounds like an Alley Cats record. The band’s playing is still razor sharp, and they use the same dual-vocal approach with bassist Dianne Chai and guitarist Randy Stodola trading off on equally strong lead vocals. It’s the logical next step from Escape from Planet Earth in pretty much every way.

However, the Zarkons have honed their sound since their last record as the Alley Cats. One thing I really like about both iterations of the band is that their songs are growers, not showers. The melodies are subtle, but earworm-y. They’re not one of those bands whose songs you’re singing along to by the second time the chorus rolls around, but by that same token you’re not sick of them after you’ve heard them a few times. If pop music often gets described as sweet, the Zarkons / Alley Cats are savory…. hearty… nourishing. The only moment I’m not completely sold on is their cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” but I think the problem is more with me than with them. I’ve never understood why so many bands cover that song; I always thought it was kind of silly. Those eastern-sounding guitar lines sure sound good here, though.

When I wrote about Escape from Planet Earth, I mentioned how that record’s artwork was monochromatic and kind of nondescript. Riders in the Long Black Parade totally swings the other way, and I find the artwork captivating. The blood-drippy letters and grim reaper would come off as cliche if the wild fluorescent color scheme didn’t pull so hard in the other direction. Tonally, the record is a little bit new wave and a little bit death rock, and the artwork tips a hat to both worlds rather elegantly.

While Riders in the Long Black Parade seems like a logical continuation of the Alley Cats’ sound, it looks like the Zarkons changed things up when they returned with a second album in 1988, adding a full-time lead vocalist named Renté. (Going down the Discogs rabbit hole for her reveals she contributed vocals to a song by the pre-Minutemen band the Reactionaries… wild!) Reviews of that second album don’t sound promising, but the Allmusic review I found that pans it also calls Riders in the Long Black Parade “pretty dreadful,” so what the fuck do they know? As usual, I’ll keep following the breadcrumb trail and report back in a few months.

 

Daniel's Staff Pick: January 21, 2025

45 Grave: Autopsy LP (Restless, 1987)

You might remember Jeff and I, along with some other friends, did a 45 Grave cover set this past Halloween. When I’ve done other Halloween cover sets, it’s been with a band whose discography I knew backwards and forwards, but 45 Grave was a little different. I always liked them, but mostly I wanted to do the cover set because it fit the Halloween theme and because I thought my wife Jet’s singing voice sounded a lot like Dinah Cancer’s. As you might expect, learning a bunch of their songs deepened my appreciation for and understanding of 45 Grave, and my fascination has continued long past the spooky season.

Coincidentally, this past Halloween, the same day we played our cover set, the Goth 101 YouTube channel posted a detailed history of the band. While learning the songs deepened my appreciation for 45 Grave’s music, this well-researched video helped me understand the ins and outs of their complex discography. The main 45 Grave records I was familiar with were the Black Cross 7” and the Sleep in Safety LP, but there’s a lot more out there. 45 Grave formed in 1980 and didn’t release their debut full-length, Sleep in Safety, until 1983. As the YouTube video mentions several times, the members of 45 Grave feel that, by waiting so long to release their first album, they both missed a boat they could have ridden to wider popularity and failed to document the most creatively vital era of the band. Whether getting a record out earlier would have made them more successful is debatable of course, but but thankfully there is some recorded evidence from the band’s earlier era.

The album Autopsy, released in 1987 on Restless Records on CD, cassette, and LP and never reissued since, is the closest you can get to a 45 Grave album from what the band considers their prime era. Autopsy’s packaging is short on info, so it’s not clear when and where these tracks were recorded, but the songs on the a-side clearly come from an earlier era of the band when they were playing primarily at hardcore tempos. Some songs—“Anti Anti Anti” and “Consumers”—are repurposed from guitarist Paul Cutler’s old band the Consumers (whose All My Friends Are Dead collection on In the Red Records is a must-own), and drummer Don Bolles is playing with the same hyperactive power he displayed on the Germs’ album. But while the music is blisteringly fast, it has all the intricate detail and memorable melodies of their later material. In fact, these songs are even faster than contemporary SoCal classics like the Adolescents’ first album and TSOL’s first 12”, and if you’re a fan of those records, these songs are 100% essential.

I suspect the songs on Autopsy’s b-side were recorded later, as they’re notably slower and some of them feature keyboards, presumably from the Screamers’ Paul Roessler, who joined the band later (he’s not mentioned on the jacket, even though the person who played the squeaky toy on “Riboflavin” gets a credit). Later guitarist Pat Smear (Bolles’ bandmate in the Germs) is credited as guitarist, though it’s unclear which tracks on Autopsy he plays on. These b-side tracks include two of 45 Grave’s most well-known songs, “Partytime” and “Riboflavin,” and while they’re mostly a notch or two slower than the a-side tracks, they’ll still worth owning if you love Sleep in Safety.

As I mentioned, Autopsy has never been reissued, and vinyl copies are scarce. This one sat on my want list for a few months before a reasonably priced copy turned up. You can listen to it on YouTube (it’s not on streaming services either), but hopefully we see a fresh reissue at some point. Most of the other significant titles Restless released in the 80s have seen reissues (even if some of them, like the Dead Milkmen’s Big Lizard in My Backyard, are still impossible to find), so hopefully someone out there will navigate whatever rights issues stand in the way and get this one back in the world. When and if that happens, you know we’ll stock it at Sorry State.

Daniel's Staff Pick: January 13, 2025

For those of us with big record collections, it can be a challenge to dig deep into the stacks rather than just repeatedly playing the same records that are physically and/or mentally accessible. One strategy I’ve been using lately is using the “random item” function on Discogs to suggest things to listen to. I’ll hit that button a few times and make myself a stack of under-appreciated records to listen to over the next few days. Often they get one play before they get re-alphabetized, but sometimes this process gets me stuck on a record I’ve been neglecting. Such was the case with this debut LP from Brazil’s Cólera. I can’t remember the last time I listened to this record, but when I spun it last week, it blew me away. I’ve been playing it constantly since then.

São Paulo’s Cólera is one of the most well-known punk bands from Brazil, starting all the way back in 1979, their lineup coalescing around the brothers Redson (guitar and vocals) and Pierre (drums). They contributed tracks to the essential Brazilian punk compilations Grito Suburbano (1982), SUB (1983), and O Começo do Fim do Mundo (1983), but didn’t release their own record until this one, Tente Mudar o Amanhã, in 1985. While I’m sure this record’s release was a big event, Tente Mudar o Amanhã quickly got overshadowed by the band’s second album, Pela Paz Em Todo o Mundo, which came out a year later in 1986. Pela Paz Em Todo o Mundo not only became Cólera’s best-known album, but one of the best-selling Brazilian independent releases of all time. Cólera released a flood of material in the second half of the 80s, the band apparently remaining creatively vital; there are nearly forty excellent tracks just on those first two albums, and material continued to spill out generously in the years after. They were also the first Brazilian punk band to tour Europe in 1987.

Listening to Tente Mudar o Amanhã, it’s easy to understand why Cólera is so well regarded. As you might expect from a band that started in 1979, there’s a healthy dose of catchy 70s punk influence in Cólera’s sound, but they also seemed determined to match the frenetic energy of the emerging hardcore scene. They construct their songs tightly, with hooky instrumental parts and explosive dynamics, performing them precisely at near-manic tempos. Just this morning it occurred to me that Cólera reminds me a lot of D.O.A. Maybe it’s that both bands are three-pieces, but they both have this perfect interplay between the instruments and vocals. For both bands, the instrumental tracks sound like they would be explosive on their own, but the vocals come in at strategic points that always bump the energy level up a couple of notches. It’s rare to find a stand-alone vocalist with such a perfect sense of how their parts should fit in a song. For a perfect example, see Cólera’s “São Paulo,” perhaps my favorite song here with its brisk tempo, big riff, and mega catchy chorus.

I can’t remember exactly where I got this original copy of Tente Mudar o Amanhã, but I’ve had a couple of good Brazilian scores over the years. I remember in the early years of the store we got an email from someone from Brazil who wanted to buy some current releases from Sorry State and offered to trade us 80s Brazilian vinyl for them. I can’t remember why we didn’t nail down something more specific, but I remember sending him what he wanted and basically saying, “send me back something cool.” One record I remember he sent was an original copy of Sarcófago’s I.N.R.I., which I was totally unfamiliar with at the time. Then a few years ago I had another big Brazilian score when a guy emailed me to say he was a professor from Brazil who was doing research at the University of North Carolina, and he was hoping to subsidize his trip by bringing some rare vinyl from Brazil to the US. I told him Sorry State specialized in punk and metal, and he really came through for us with multiple original copies of the Sepultura / Oversplit split LP, another original I.N.R.I., and a bunch of other cool records. I picked the records up from his office at UNC, just across from a building where I used to teach when I was a grad student there. I remember he offered an original copy of the As Mercenárias LP, but I thought it was too expensive. I kinda regret that.

If you’re into tracking down original Brazilian vinyl, though, you’d best be prepared to loosen your standards on condition. Brazil is sort of like the opposite of Japan, where grading standards are strict and beater copies are few and far between. This copy of Tente Mudar o Amanhã is what I’d call “Brazilian VG+.” It looks pretty decent aside from where a previous owner has customized the band’s logo with a ballpoint pen (I’m not sure what they were going for there), but like nearly every record I’ve ever gotten from Brazil, it smells kind of musty, like it’s spent too much time in a very humid environment. Most of my other Brazilian records look like they’ve spent a chunk of their lives buried underground, been fought over by wild dogs, and otherwise used and abused. I kinda like that, though… the idea that a record has been through some real shit before it found its way into my hands.

So yeah, give it a listen. Tente Mudar o Amanhã is on all the streaming services and it’s been reissued on vinyl and CD numerous times, so it’s easy to hear and well worth your time.

 

Daniel's Best of 2024 List

So let’s jump right in with my top 10 new releases of 2024 (in no particular order, of course).

PURA MANÍA - Extraños Casos De La Vida Real 7” (Roachleg)
PUBLIC ACID - Deadly Struggle LP (Beach Impediment)
INVERTEBRATES - Sick to Survive LP (Beach Impediment)
MARCEL WAVE - Something Looming LP (Feel It)
SUBDUED - Abbatoir LP (La Vida Es Un Mus)
THE CARP - Knock Your Block Off LP (Total Punk)
TOZCOS - Infernal LP (Toxic State)
TIIKERI - Tee Se Itse 7” (self-released)
ALVILDA - C’est Déjà L’heure LP (Static Shock)
STRAW MAN ARMY - Earthworks LP (D4MT Labs / La Vida Es Un Mus)

Maximum Rocknroll asked me to contribute a year-end list again this year, so you’ll have to tune in there for my two cents about each record on my list. It looks like MRR hasn’t run their year-end lists yet, but I’ll drop a link in a future newsletter.

A couple notes about my list this year: 1. Typically I would never be so gauche as to include a release I didn’t own a physical copy of, but like a lot of you I haven’t been able to lay my hands on a copy of the Alvilda LP to call my own. We sold a lot of first and second press copies at Sorry State, but both times I was like, “eh, I’ll place my pre-order tomorrow,” and then suddenly it’s sold out. I didn’t make the same mistake with the 3rd press, but we’re still waiting on those so it’s not in my photo. 2. Last year I wrote a whole essay about my method for crafting my list, but this year it was a lot more from the hip. I looked through a few sources (Sorry State’s Record of the Week, the records I actually bought this year, and what I added to my digital library), made up a short list of around 30 releases I really liked, and pruned that list down to 10. Every year there are some things on the bubble, but I’m pretty happy with the 10 I landed on. For me, a record needs to feel “important” in some kind of way to merit a spot on the list, and I think all 10 of these clear that bar.

If you’re wondering about my shortlist, here are the artists on it. I thought all the releases these bands put out were awesome: Viscount, Nightfeeder, Tia Rosa, The Dark, Excess Blood, Savage Pleasure, Peace de Résistance, Homemade Speed, Class, Naked Roommate, Yellowcake, the Massacred, Guiding Light, Gimic, Thought Control, Paranoid Maniac, Kriegshög, Why Bother?, S.H.I.T., Muro, Bloodstains, Flower.

I also saw a lot of sick gigs this year. Some of my favorite sets were: Tiikeri, Lebenden Toten, Paranoid, KOS, Putkipommi, Meanwhile, Larma, Physique, Mob 47, Personal Damage, Paranoid, Kohti Tuhoa, Slan, Yambag, Deletär, and a bunch more I’m probably forgetting. And there are a ton of incredible bands I got to see multiple times this year, including Public Acid, Invertebrates, Destruct, Ultimate Disaster, Paranoid Maniac, Meat House, Mutant Strain, DE()T, and Vidro. I should get out to gigs more than I do (especially ones I’m not playing), but it feels like my social awkwardness is in full bloom lately.

Now let’s look at my year in record collecting. Every year, friends post pictures on Instagram of their favorite scores of the year, and it always makes me reflect on my collecting philosophy. I rarely buy records on Discogs, and I don’t aggressively pursue certain records the way many people seem to. I’ve always been more of an accumulator, happy to appreciate what the universe puts in my path. Usually that’s more than enough to keep me satisfied and my budget fully blown, and that was certainly the case this year. That being said, if anyone wants to help me get any of these into my collection in 2025, please get in touch:

La Banda Trapera Del Rio: 1st LP
Nerorgasmo 7”
Ratsia: 1st LP (I’d settle for a reissue of this one at this point!)

As for what I found this year, I’ll break it into chunks. (It is both sad and embarrassing that I have to break it into chunks.) Since I rarely go to the other record stores in Raleigh, I’ve developed a habit of splurging when I go out of town. This year Scarecrow toured Scandinavia, and I definitely went hard while we were there. Here are a few of my favorites that I picked up on the trip.

 

Krunch I’d never really spent much time with, but I played this 7” a ton once I got home. My Totalitär collection pales compared to my bandmates’, but I was stoked to fill this gap. Like Krunch, I didn’t know the Pohjalla compilation well, but it’s stayed close to my turntable. The Hilselp compilation I actually bought online once I got home, but I learned about the record on the trip when we stayed with our friends Markku and Kerttu. It’s one of many records I snapped a pic of that night and checked out online when I got home. When an original copy with the zine popped up on Discogs for a good price, I jumped right on it. Gauze is the one non-Scandinavian record here, but I got it on the trip thanks to my friend Anders. This completes my collection of Gauze OGs! Eppu Normaali… I mean, it’s just an awesome record, and finding it at a flea market in Turku is too perfect a provenance. Finally, the Huvudtvätt / Kurt I Kuvos split LP is probably my favorite record I got this year. It was so cool to find it in Sweden, and it’s even more important to me because it’s Staffan from Vidro’s old band. Every time I look at it, I think of all the great times we’ve had with our (twice!) tourmates in Vidro.

This next batch is kind of a made-up category, but it makes sense to me. These are all classic records that I knew to a degree, but this year I nabbed OG copies that significantly deepened my appreciation. I’ve loved the Feederz’ LP for decades, and we’ve had many copies of the Placebo pressing of Jesus come through over the years (and even one OG copy), but I’ve never taken one home until this year. When I blasted this one at home, it cracked my brain open… I now consider it one of the most unique and best American punk records. The Wipers… I got kinda sick of them for a long time. For a while they were name-checked and poorly imitated so much that I didn’t even want to hear the original. But I picked up this totally beat, water-damaged first pressing and couldn’t get it off the turntable. Alternative had already gotten me with Sealed’s reissue a while back, and finding this minty OG rekindled the love affair. Reagan Youth is another one we’ve had many times at the shop, but this year the invisible voice finally said, “take me home and have your mind blown.” Personality Crisis is a record I was always kinda meh on, but after a bunch of folks (including Jeff!) talked it up on What Are You Listening To?, I gave it another shot. It really clicked this time, so much so that I had to invest a pittance in this charmingly partied-on copy.

This next stack features a few heavy hitters (for me, at least) that came my way this year. Modern Warfare got me so hard it sparked a whole sub-obsession with Bemisbrain Records. Chemotherapy is a record I never thought I’d own, but after flipping out for the reissue a few years ago I couldn’t turn down this nicely priced, minty OG. I think in a previous staff pick I put it out into the universe that I really wanted the Svart Framtid 7”, and this year I finally connected on one. Wretched / Indigesti was, amazingly enough, an extremely generous gift that I’m not allowed to be weird about. And U.B.R. had been high on the want list for a long time and got a lot of play time once it was in my hands.

And now for this fourth (and thankfully final) stack, which collects a few other records that were significant to me for different reasons. It’s crazy it took me this long to find the Zounds LP. I think I’d found all their singles on previous trips to the UK (going back some 20+ years), but the album proved elusive. I swear these never pop up… after waiting for years for a reasonably priced copy I finally had to buy this one from a Japanese seller. Annie Anxiety I’d never listened to before, and it just blew me away (see my staff pick on this record here). The Alley Cats was another gift, and another one that has stayed close to the turntable. And finally, I also wrote a staff pick about this Hugh Mundell record, so you can read that for the full story.

I hope this list hasn’t been too indulgent, but it’s nice to reflect on everything I’m grateful for. Honestly, it’s been kind of a rough holiday season for me personally, so it’s good to feel the warm and fuzzy feelings I get when I think about all the friends all over the world who enhanced my life so much this year. And likewise the friends and family at home whom I get to spend my days with, including my wife Jet, my pets Patti and Tobio, my bandmates, and everyone who works at Sorry State. Cheers everyone, and happy new year!

Daniel's Staff Pick: December 16, 2024

Hates: Panacea 12” (Faceless Records, 1982)

I’ve been packing a lot of orders lately (thank you!), and I’m realizing that being on my feet, ostensibly with my mind on some routine task but with a little brain power and attention to spare, is a great opportunity for listening to music. A few times lately I’ve brought in a stack from my personal collection to listen to while I’m working, and I realized I enjoyed those records even more at work than I did at home. Usually when I’m listening to records at home, I’m sitting on the couch, and when I’m exercising at the gym or on a walk, I’m listening to music on my phone. Most of the music in my collection sounds better on vinyl, and most of the music in my collection makes you want to move, so I relished the opportunity to feel like I was matching the music’s power and energy. It definitely propelled me faster and further than I would have gone otherwise.

One record that really stuck out this week was Panacea, the 1982 12” EP from Houston’s the Hates. I picked this up at All Day Records in Carrboro a few weeks ago when I was out flyering for the Slant show. I was already familiar with the Hates and this record—we’ve had originals come through the shop from time to time, and we also carried a 2019 reissue on Italy’s Rave Up Records—but it never hit me with the impact that it did this week. A 45rpm 12” EP, this has all the energy and power I associate with the California bands that were on that bubble between 70s-style punk and hardcore: Rhino 39, the Dils, Modern Warfare… that kind of thing. I love the trade-offs between the two singers, the thin and scratchy guitar sound, and the recording’s raw, live feel. The songs are hooky and pop-oriented with hummable choruses, but played almost exclusively at hardcore tempos (the exception is “This Year’s Model,” which, according to something I read online, was usually a fast song the band decided on a whim to slow down for this session).

Panacea also opens with a cover of the song “Houston,” written by Lee Hazlewood and made famous by crooner Dean Martin. I wasn’t familiar with the song, but the chorus’s broad descending melody sounds great at the Hates’ hyper-speed. Their version reminds me of classic Dickies covers like “Eve of Destruction” and “Paranoid,” where there’s a glimmer of the original shining through, but so much of the band’s voice in the execution that you’d hardly know it was a cover if someone didn’t tell you. After listening to versions by Dean Martin and Lee Hazlewood, I appreciate the artistry of the Hates’ version even more.

In case you don’t know about the Hates, they started in 1978, so they’d been around for four years when they released Panacea in 1982. Their first EP, 1979’s No Talk in the Eighties, is well-regarded in KBD collector circles for its four strong punk songs that firmly establish the band’s style, and that the EP ran through three pressings over the years means it doesn’t carry the eye-watering price tag of some KBD rarities. For me, though, the Hates really hit their stride with 1980’s Do the Caryl Chessman EP, where they speed things up and get a little wilder and noisier, while still keeping the Wire-esque minimalism that defined their sound from the start. While Panacea reels things in a hair (there’s nothing like the chaotic guitar solo in the song “Do the Caryl Chessman”), it pretty much picks up right where Caryl Chessman left off.

From what I’ve read online, the Hates’ initial three-piece lineup dissolved shortly after recording Panacea, with the band continuing to release music consistently into the 2020s. I know I have one of their later cassette-only releases somewhere in the chaos of my tape collection (I think it’s either 1992’s New World Oi! or 1993’s Texas Insanity) and I remember liking it, but I wasn’t able to dig it out for a revisit before my deadline.

If you’re into this style, Panacea is well worth a listen. It certainly fit well with the similarly fast and minimal punk I was playing alongside it this week, like the compilation Life Is Ugly So Why Not Kill Yourself, which features a bunch of bands from California whose music has a lot of the same characteristics as Panacea. Same for the Dils compilation album I really dug when it popped up on album shuffle in my car a few days ago.

If you’re ready to jump in, Panacea is available to listen and download on what appears to be an official Hates Bandcamp page, though it only features Panacea and none of the band’s other releases. There’s a message on that site complaining about the sound on the original release and noting the band’s bass player has remastered the tracks, but I think the original record sounds great. It’s exactly the kind of minimal studio recording I love. The tones are all clear (though it’s a little fuzzy, like maybe it was recorded on used tape) and the drums are right up front and powerful. You can hear the bass better on the remastered tracks (LOL!), but I don’t think they really sound better, as the new master mutes the drums’ impact somewhat. I don’t know whether that Rave Up reissue uses that master or not, but even if I prefer the original, the digital version still captures Panacea’s many strengths.

 

Daniel's Staff Pick: November 18, 2024

Work has really been kicking my ass lately. We’ve been short-staffed at SSR for a variety of reasons, and it feels like lately I do nothing but work work work. I keep at it every night until I’m totally exhausted, and when I finally get home, I’m so shellshocked that I just want to curl up with a book and enjoy the silence. Here are a couple I’ve been spending time with recently.

Julian Cope: Head On / Repossessed (2000)

Julian Cope is probably most famous as the frontman of the post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes, though I know him mostly as a music critic and historian. I’ve since gone back and checked out Kilimanjaro and enjoyed it, but what lodged Cope’s name in my memory is his pair of books—Krautrocksampler and Japrocksampler—that, respectively, offered capsule histories and buying / listening guides for the 70s German progressive music and 70s Japanese rock scenes. The music in those books totally blew my mind and I’m forever thankful to Cope for helping me to appreciate Amon Düül II’s Yeti and Speed, Glue, & Shinki’s Eve, but his writing is strong enough to keep me interested even with subjects I’m less attached to. This book collects both of Cope’s memoirs, with Head On covering his childhood, participation in the original Liverpool punk scene, and the founding and dissolution of the Teardrop Explodes, while Repossessed picks up where Head On left off, carrying you through the rest of the eighties as Cope establishes a solo music career and grows ever more interested in the antiquarianism that seems to have occupied much of his life since. (The bits about Cope finding his inner collector of vintage toys are particularly interesting.) Cope has done his share of drugs, Herculean amounts of psychedelics in particular, and you’d be silly to take his account of the events he describes in these books as the gospel truth. But his interpretation is so hilariously cracked, so hyperactively preoccupied with a search for deeper meaning, that I couldn’t put this book down.

Tony Wilson: 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You (2002)

I put this book on my reading list years ago, apparently not realizing what it was, and a few weeks ago I finally picked up a copy and read it. I’d assumed this was an autobiography by Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, but that’s not precisely what it is. The author is Tony Wilson, but it’s actually a novelization of the 24 Hour Party People movie, which was itself based on Tony’s real life and story as the founder of Factory. So it’s not Wilson telling you his story, it’s Wilson adapting and expanding on the story someone else came up with based on their interpretation of what may or may not have actually happened. How’s that for post-modern? This one took a little while to grab me. I haven’t watched the 24 Hour Party People film in years, but I remember it well enough, and the early chapters at least hew pretty close. I kept wondering to myself, “why the fuck am I reading this?,” particularly since I find Wilson’s prose often pretentious and over-wrought. But I’m glad I stuck with it, as there were some gems and some LOL moments, and it felt a little deeper than the film, which flew through the years at an insane clip. I wouldn’t go out of my way to pick this up, but if you find a cheap used copy or something it’s an enjoyable enough read.

Mickey Leigh: I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Punk Rock Family Memoir (2010)

My friend Seth has been telling me about this book for years (and it’s been on my reading list since then), but I finally dug into this memoir by Joey Ramone’s brother Mickey Leigh. I’d also read Marky Ramone’s memoir Punk Rock Blitzkrieg a few weeks ago, so I’ve been steeped in the Ramones universe and I’m struck by how different that world looks from all its various angles. Both Marky’s and Mickey’s books focus on the band’s shifting power dynamics, and while I thought Marky’s analysis of what transpired during his era of the band was sensitive and thoughtful, Mickey’s book peels back several more layers of the onion. The 80s and 90s eras of the Ramones are much better documented, but Mickey sheds a lot of light on the band’s early days. Tommy Ramone’s story had always intrigued me; I always wondered why he left the band and how he transitioned from being a Ramone into being a producer, and I learned a lot about that from this book. Leigh also charts Joey’s mental state from childhood throughout his whole life, and his perspective on Joey’s OCD and other struggles is very three-dimensional and sensitive. Mostly, though, what stands out about I Slept with Joey Ramone is how well it’s written. Particularly coming from the more mannered prose of Julian Cope and Tony Wilson, Leigh’s writing feels crystal clear and tightly focused, with enough detail to make scenes come alive without getting bogged down in purple prose. It’s just good, journalistic-type writing, and when you pair that with a story about something I’m already interested in, you have one addictive book.

 

Daniel's Staff Pick: November 4, 2024

Last week we were in the lead-up to Halloween, and now that’s behind us. I think both the 45 Grave and Misfits cover sets went pretty well. So many people came up to me and said, “you know, I’d never heard of 45 Grave before, but I checked them out and they’re really good!” Since not as many people knew them, the crowd reaction was a little more muted for that set, but I think the band totally nailed all the tricky bits I was worried about. And then after Black Flag (who were pretty good!) came the Misfits set, and people lost their shit. It was so much fun. I don’t think I’d been to a house show in Raleigh in several years, and even though the crowd at this one was totally different from the last one I went to (whenever that was), it still felt like Raleigh… no cool guys, just a bunch of freaks out to have some fun. I hope we can do it again soon.

I had a lot of stress and anxiety leading up to Halloween. Not that I was nervous it wouldn’t go well, but just because I had so much on my plate that I felt really overwhelmed. There was about half a day on Friday when I felt myself decompress when I realized the gig was behind me, but I’ve been pretty much right back into overwhelmed mode with all the stuff going on at Sorry State. I’ll be sticking close to home for the near future, but much of the rest of the staff has time off planned in the coming weeks, so I’ll have a lot of work to cover their duties while they’re gone, and there never seems to be enough time to get my work done in the first place. That’s life, I guess.

Along with the stress of the Halloween show, I was in some negative headspace earlier in October because I read a Henry Rollins book. I heard him on a bunch of podcasts talking about his new book Stay Fanatic Vol 3, and since it sounded like something I’d find interesting, I started reading the first volume in the series. And while there was a lot of information in there I found interesting, I think it pulled me a little too effectively into Hank’s world, which seems very lonely. While I share his passion for punk’s history, the way he approaches it—at least how it comes across in Stay Fanatic—is so solipsistic that it makes me question my own love for music and why I’m so devoted to it. There are so many things that seem interesting about his life, particularly all the traveling he does and all the money he gets to spend on punk records and memorabilia, but reading about it through the texture of his day-to-day experience left me feeling really down. I’m struggling to articulate why it made me feel bad, but it definitely did.

I suppose Rollins’ book popped into my mind because of what I chose as my staff pick this week: the Fall’s very first album, Live at the Witch Trials. Of course, Rollins is a big fan of the Fall. Also, Rollins constantly revisits his favorite records, which is something I don’t do nearly often enough. The Fall are my favorite band, but it had been months since I listened to them. Another thing that made me think of the Rollins book is that he often notes October is his favorite month, and he particularly likes to revisit his favorite records every October. It was actually November 2 when I spun Live at the Witch Trials, but I get the point. While we’ve had a very warm week here in Raleigh, it still feels like fall with the leaves changing and falling and the days getting noticeably shorter (particularly after the time change this weekend). During a colder spell a couple of weeks ago I had to get the fireplace going in my living room, and I felt the pull of winter cosiness. It’ll be here before I know it, and I’ll be sitting there wishing it was over.

Anyway, it’s nice to listen to one of your favorite records during a transitional time like this. While the world is changing around you, your favorite records remind you of who you are. I kind of forgot—or at least lost touch with—how much I love the Fall until I blasted the record. But when I listen to the brilliant closing passage of “Frightened,” the sinister bass line of “Rebellious Jukebox,” the relentless clatter of “No Xmas for John Quays,” and the ethereal poetry of “Live at the Witch Trials,” it hits me somewhere deep. This is what I love. This is who I am.

 

Daniel's Staff Pick: October 28, 2024

It’s been a super busy week for me and I’ve had virtually no time for recreational music listening. It feels like October is this insanely busy time where we try to squeeze in a ton of activity in between the slower-moving months of the summer and the holidays (the invigorating fall weather helps with this), and consequently there seems to be something going on nearly every night after work. Alongside gigs and other social engagements, I was at the Sorry State warehouse until the wee hours of several mornings packing orders (thanks to everyone who picked up the new Zorn record!), and I’ve been cramming in a ton of practice for the two cover sets I’m playing on Halloween. Scarecrow is doing a full set of Misfits songs, and another group of friends is doing 45 Grave. My wife Jet is singing in the latter group and it’s her first time playing in a band like this. We’ve made a couple of practice recordings and I hear her listening to them all the time. It reminds me of when I first started playing in bands. I would tape every single rehearsal and most every gig—I probably recorded just about every note Cross Laws ever played—and I would listen to these recordings all the time, ostensibly to analyze them and think about ways to improve, but mostly just because I was so excited to be part of making this noise. Playing music with friends is still one of my favorite things to do.

I’ve done a bunch of cover sets over the years, and it’s always both socially and musically rewarding. For some of these, an existing band has learned an entire set of covers, but typically it’s an ad hoc group of people who come together just for one gig. It’s nice to play with different people every once in a while, and I’ve particularly relished the opportunity to play with incredible drummers like Eric Chubb (who played in our Adolescents cover band) and Connor Donnegan (who played in our Descendents cover band). Mostly, though, it’s the songs themselves that teach me the most. I’ve never been one to play along with records, really, and I don’t feel like I have much innate musical talent. What I learned about playing music I learned for the express purpose of being in a band, and I rarely learned more than I had to in order to reach that bar. When I started writing music—which was concurrent with starting to play music—the process was totally intuitive. While I might have had a certain sound in mind, I made songs by pushing notes and chords around until they made a kind of sense, sort of like how a sculptor takes a lump of clay and massages it into a legible shape. A lot of other people I’ve played with come to music from an analytical perspective, hearing things they like, pulling them apart to find out how they work, then tinkering with those plans to reshape them into their own vision. That’s never been me, though… I write music the same way I learned to paint, slopping it onto a canvas until it looked like something.

Playing cover songs, though, makes you realize how many ways there are to write a song. Learning a whole cover set even more so, because you really get an insight into particular songwriters’ processes, quirks, and preferences. Every band I’ve ever been in has composed the instrumental part of songs first and then added vocals and lyrics at the very end, but when you learn songs by bands like Discharge or the Misfits, you realize the vocals are in the drivers seat for much of the time. I remember reading that “Bullet” was a poem Danzig wrote as a teenager, the Misfits setting the words to music years later. Certainly, there’s no other way they would have ended up with the song’s ridiculously long bridge, where the band plays the same simple riff 17 (?!?!?!) times in a row. Playing “Hybrid Moments,” Jeff pointed out that the song is basically all chorus… three of them in a row with a brief connecting part to join them together. There’s so little to the song, but I think most people agree it’s one of the Misfits’ very best. “Halloween” is another one that blows my mind, the way the verses and choruses blend into one another, linked by this A chord so there are parts of the song where I can’t say definitively whether I’m playing the chorus, the verse, both, or neither.

Along with picking up songwriting tricks, playing in cover bands also helps develop your playing chops, and 45 Grave has been the most challenging cover set I’ve ever done from that perspective. That band could play! I remember when we did the Adolescents, I was nervous about all that downpicking, and when we did the Descendents, their melodic bass parts were a stretch for me, as I’ve always been more of a rhythmically focused player. But in both cases, with some homework, help from my more musical peers, and a lot of practice, I could eventually play, more or less note for note, what’s on the records. A lot of 45 Grave’s bass parts, though, are just over my head and beyond my playing ability. I’ve had to dumb them down to make them work for me, but I think (I hope!) I’ve done this in a way that doesn’t take away from the songs. Either way, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from getting deep inside these songs.

I always say I’m going to spend more time learning how to play other people’s songs and learning from them in this way, but I never end up making time for it unless I have the pressure of a show and its deadlines. On a long road trip this summer, I remember listening to the entire Big Boys discography in one go and thinking I should take the time to learn a bunch of their songs, as they’re a group whose bass lines I could learn a lot from. In fact, “learn a bunch of Big Boys songs” is still on my to-do list, un-crossed-off and taunting me. And then, of course, there are bands like Wire or the Fall whose bass parts I love, but whose style of playing and composition are totally different to mine, to where it seems daunting to even begin figuring it out. Taking the time to learn that music thoroughly would surely up my game as a player, but I guess there are too many orders to pack, too many books to read, and too many records to listen to at this point in my life. Maybe one day.

Daniel's Staff Pick: October 21, 2024

David Stubbs: Future Days (Faber & Faber, 2018)

I’ve had Germany on the brain lately and I’m not sure why. Given the current geopolitical situation, it’s an inconvenient time to be thinking about Germany’s cultural heritage, but my musical curiosity has been leading me in that direction. A few weeks ago I wrote about the band A+P, complaining that Germany’s language and culture remain frustratingly opaque to me, and then, mere days later, I started reading a book about Krautrock that was on my reading list.

I must have added David Stubbs’ Future Days to my reading list nearly a decade ago, when the hardcore edition first came out, but I only just now got a copy in my hands and read it. In retrospect, I’m glad I took a long time to get around to picking up the book, because when I added it to my “to read” list, I was in a stage of rabidly researching Krautrock records and trying to hear everything with that tag I could. Stubbs’ book isn’t geared toward that sort of Krautrock fanatic (a book called The Crack in the Cosmic Egg is much better for that… if you can find a copy). Stubbs isn’t a crate digger. Instead, he argues that the cultural impact and legacy of Krautrock comes down to a handful of seminal bands, the rest of the groups falling under that umbrella being also-rans with limited impact or not fitting the categorical definition precisely enough. The one bone he throws this brand of fanatics is when Stubbs asks Krautrock historian Stefan Morawietz for a deep-cut recommendation. Morawietz responds, “A band called Limbus on Ohr (…) Very, very obscure. Compared to them, even Faust sounds commercial.” Stubbs gives us a couple of pages on Limbus, but other than that, he devotes Future Days to Krautrock’s ten or so biggest names.

(Side note: Stubbs book contains, as you might expect this day and age, a lengthy discussion of the origin and continued use of the term “Krautrock.” The term is, of course, rooted in a slur. After much consideration, he finds that term the best option for labeling this historical phenomenon, and I’ll follow his lead in using it, even if it makes me cringe a bit every time I type it.)

While you might not discover many new bands to check out based on Stubbs’ book, he provides a lot of context for the bands he writes about. Aside from the one large book I read about Can (All Gates Open by Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt), I know little about the personalities behind these bands, and listening to Krautrock is largely a context-free experience for me. This isn’t a problem, really… the music is so rich that there’s plenty to feed my brain with just the sounds. Stubbs provides some insight on why the music is resistant to the usual architecture of criticism that springs up around important rock musicians, the Krautrockers’ anti-rockist ethos and lack of charismatic vocalists shielding these groups from the normal rock critics’ methodologies. Some context can be a good thing, though. For instance, I have a couple of Guru Guru albums (Hinten and Känguru), but having no sense of who the group was or how their discography fits together, I didn’t realize their first album, 1970’s UFO, is a decidedly more abrasive and out-there affair than the other two. On the “to listen” list that one goes…

Beyond discussing the bands, their members, and their music, Stubbs’ book shines as a piece of cultural history. Much of the book is about the overlapping generational and regional tensions the music grew out of. While a couple of Krautrock’s seminal groups had initial stirrings in Berlin, Stubbs’ argument is that Krautrock, as a musical and cultural phenomenon, is a product of the West German state… a state that existed only for a relatively brief and clearly defined historical moment. The anti-rockist ethos I mentioned above was largely a reaction against America and Americanization; even half a generation before, German groups mostly aped the beat and soul music that catered to the taste of American GIs. While the Krautrockers’ parents’ generation were deferential to Americans, grateful as they were for Americans’ huge role in shepherding West Germany from post-war ruin to economic prosperity, the Krautrockers born toward the end of the war and in the immediate post-war period (i.e. those in their twenties in the 1970s) were the first to ask why they couldn’t have an indigenous tradition of rock music of their very own.

Alongside contextualizing the 1970s Germany counter-culture, another area of interest for Stubbs is examining how Krautrock’s influence spread across the world. Here, that Stubbs is an English author writing in English is a strength, because (as both he and the musicians themselves note many times in Future Days), limited though Krautrock’s influence was, its influence in the Anglophone and Francophone worlds dwarfed its impact in Germany. Particularly interesting is how Stubbs charts the changing attitudes toward Krautrock (and Germany in general) in British culture. Much as the Krautrockers’ parents remained stagnant in their embrace of America post-WWII, a robust Germanophobia reigned in Britain in the 70s. Stubbs notes at one point that, in 70s Britain, the mere mention of anything German was liable to prompt mock goose-stepping and sieg heils, and UK media coverage of the Krautrock groups (and there was plenty! Can even appeared on Top of the Pops!) willfully partook. I can’t find the passage, but there’s one headline that calls Can’s music the “final solution” to rock’s stagnation, and there are countless examples to go along with that one. According to Stubbs, though, this all changed with Bowie. For Stubbs, the thread that runs through Bowie and into the post-punk era is “a new pop ice age” when the hippies’ dusty garb and musty odor were shaken off in favor of a new aesthetic that was cold, sleek, intellectual, and mechanical. Berlin was the geographic vortex of this shift, symbolizing as it did for Bowie a move from the Americanized excesses of the Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke periods to the artier, more distant, altogether more European flavor of his Berlin period.

At one point, Stubbs says outright that Krautrock is the missing link between the hippies and the punks, and his argument is compelling. In the music of Can, Kraftwerk, Faust, and Ash Ral Tempel, you can hear the dismantling of the hippie dream and the crafting of new building blocks from which, for better or worse, the 80s would be built.

Daniel's Staff Pick: October 14, 2024

A few weeks ago I was on the 185 Miles South podcast talking about Italian hardcore. The idea behind the segment was that it would be a “starter pack,” a concise introduction to the scene pitched at people who know little or nothing about it, which of course means there were plenty of killer bands and records I didn’t get to talk about. Case in point, Peggio Punx. I know little about the band’s history, other than that they were from Alessandro in the northwest part of Italy (the region where most of the best-known Italian bands were from), that they existed for at least a few years before they released their first record, and that they put out three EPs in the 80s.

Their first, 1983’s Disastro Sonoro, is a gem of 80s Italian hardcore. The most striking aspect of Disastro Sonoro is the near-total absence of distortion on the guitar, which immediately sets Peggio Punx apart from their peers in the Italian hardcore scene. Peggio Punx didn’t avoid distortion because they didn’t want to be as aggressive or as intense as the other hardcore bands; rather, the guitarist achieves that intensity by simply playing harder and faster, their right hand sounding like it’s in danger of buzzsawing right through the instrument. Rather than the strumming bleeding into a unified roar, each blistering note feels like a cut from a razor-sharp switchblade. Along with the unique guitar sound, the songwriting is memorably punky, the songs brimming with vocal hooks like the “ahh-ahh” parts in “Pubblicita” and the chanted chorus of “Scemo,” and the drummer has some tricks up is his sleeve too, with lightning-fast tom work that sticks in your head as firmly as any guitar or vocal hook. If you dig what you heard in the Italian hardcore starter pack, Disastro Sonoro is essential listening in my book.

1984’s La Città È Quieta... ...Ombre Parlano replicates Disastro Sonoro’s formula with six raging hardcore tunes, but for me it’s not quite as strong, mostly owing to a murkier mix. The drums and vocals are super loud—usually a good thing on a fast hardcore record—but the guitar is nearly inaudible in places, which is frustrating because you can hear just as many cool licks as Disastro Sonoro. The bass sound is robust, though, and reveals the bass player was just as furious as the guitarist. A standout on this EP, though, is the b-side opener “Solitudine,” which features more of the crazy tom work we heard on Disastro Sonoro, but even more over the top. Don’t get me wrong… La Città È Quieta... is still a rager, but it’s just a little less distinctive and striking when compared to its predecessor.

Peggio Punx’ last record of the 80s was the 12” EP Ci Stanno Uccidendo Al Suono Della Nostra Musica!! E.P.. Like most of their peers, Peggio Punx reworked their sound when they made the jump to big vinyl, attempting to do something more varied and musical than the flat-out assault of their earlier EPs. Ci Stanno Uccidendo features more variation in tempo, rhythm (including some funky and reggae-influenced grooves), and texture, though there are still glimmers of the manic quality that made Disastro Sonoro so great. As with La Città È Quieta…, it’s hampered by an odd mix that puts the booming drums front and center, and the more conventional distorted guitar sound isn’t as good a match for the guitarist’s riffing style. Ci Stanno Uccidendo is an OK record, and it’s still hardcore punk, but to me, Peggio Punx’s transition into their second era isn’t as successful as some of the other 80s Italian hardcore bands’. Whereas Indigesti, for instance, was able to leave their old sound behind on their debut LP, Osservati Dall’Inganno, and create something that sounded totally fresh and nearly as exciting, Ci Stanno Uccidendo just kind of waters down what made their previous records so great.

So yeah, one fucking great record, one excellent one, and one pretty good one… while perhaps not enough to get Peggio Punx into the God tier, it’s a respectable showing even in a country where the bar for hardcore was extremely high. Incidentally, until I just looked at Discogs, I did not know Peggio Punx released two full-lengths: 1990’s Cattivi Maestri and 1992’s Alterazione Della Struttura. If anyone knows about those two, please hit me up… I’d love to hear this band broke the pattern of diminishing returns and delivered a late-career ripper.

Daniel's Staff Pick: October 7, 2024

Hugh Mundell: Africa Must Be Free By 1983 LP (1978, Message Records)

I’m not well-versed in reggae’s history, but I’ve been listening to a lot of it lately, a trend sparked by discovering this Hugh Mundell LP this summer.

I may have told this story before, but reggae first hit me when I was still in high school. Aside from the Bob Marley tunes you soak up just from being an American, the first experience with reggae I can remember is buying a compilation CD called Dub Chill Out from a big store called Planet Music in Virginia Beach, the same place where I bought my first Minor Threat and Black Flag CDs. I can’t remember how I figured out that dub reggae was something I should be interested in, nor can I remember why I bought that CD. My guess is that it was cheap… as a broke teenager, I was always trying to make my music dollar stretch a little further. While I had little money to spend on music, I had a pretty bumping sound system in my car. My first car was a tiny Dodge Ram pickup, and for my birthday one year, my dad outfitted it with a powerful amp and two huge speakers that sat behind the driver’s seat. It was super loud, especially in the truck’s tiny cabin, and my parents said they could always hear my stereo from half a mile away when I was driving home. Dub Chill Out, while having nothing on the surface to distinguish it, had a phenomenal track listing, and the mastering was huge and bass-y. From the moment I popped in the CD and cranked it in my car, I was in love. I still love bathing in loud bass frequencies (something I also appreciate about Sabbath and the handful of doom metal records I really love). I got a really great dose of that a few weeks ago when legendary dub producer Scientist played in Raleigh, the colossal PA at the Lincoln Theater submerging me in pulsating low end.

After Dub Chill Out, every couple of years I’d find another reggae record to fall in love with. There was Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Return of the Super Ape, King Tubby’s The Roots of Dub, Augustus Pablo’s East of the River Nile, U-Roy’s Dread in a Babylon, Culture’s Two Sevens Clash… but it has usually been one reggae record at a time for me, each of them happened upon in an unexpected, seemingly random way. Whenever I tried to explore the genre more systematically, I’d either encounter too much stuff I don’t really like, or I’d feel like I was experiencing diminishing returns, the new releases never offering the same buzz as whatever recent discovery ignited my interest. Maybe my brain only has space for one reggae record at a time, and I need to recharge my batteries and approach the sound with fresh ears every couple of years. I can’t think of another genre where I have a similar listening pattern.

Hugh Mundell entered my life in a similarly random way. One night I was thinking about how I love so much music from the late 70s, that there’s something about the production techniques and/or technologies that were in vogue at that time that just sends me to my happy place. While I know that certain eras of music interest me more than others, I typically explore music through the framework of artists or genre, researching artists’ discographies or checking out best of lists around a certain genre. I made a deliberate choice to explore records by year, thinking maybe I’d hear something from an unexpected genre that had that late 70s patina that I seem to like so much. I remember I was looking at a list of someone’s favorite records of 1978 (I can’t seem to find this list again), and Africa Must Be Free by 1983 stood out as something I was unfamiliar with but looked interesting. I dialed it up on streaming and it blew me away from the first track.

First, there’s that voice. Mundell’s vocals on Africa Must Be Free By 1983 are thin, reedy, almost pre-pubescent. He sounds so vulnerable here, the dry, reverb-less sound revealing every little crack in his voice. He sounds so young—he was 15 or 16 when he recorded this—that I tend to compare him to a young, Jackson 5-era Michael Jackson. Generally, it’s instruments rather than vocals that pull me into a record, but there’s something special about Mundell’s voice here. The second thing that struck me about this album was its production. While this is definitely roots reggae and not dub, the sound is spacious yet heavy on the low end, rich and powerful at the bottom, but with a ton of space in the higher frequencies for the many instrumental hooks on the record (note: Augustus Pablo contributes piano and organ). As I mentioned, I’d gone looking for something to listen to that had that late 70s patina I love so much, and the slightly lo-fi production values of Africa Must Be Free are pretty much exactly what was looking for. Finally, the lyrics on the album hit me pretty hard, too. While some of the song titles seem conventional, if not cliche (“Let’s All Unite,” “Jah Will Provide”), there’s a specificity to many of the lyrics that sets my mind racing. I love the track “My Mind,” which finds Mundell (by the way, I don’t know if he’s the lyricist or not) following the stream of consciousness from family, to love, to war in a way that reminds me so much of my teenage years, when I couldn’t seem to figure out how life’s big issues and small concerns related, if at all. And of course there’s the title track, which is fascinating. Why does this 1978 album posit a precise 5-year deadline for Africa’s liberation? The verses explain a prophecy that the biblical Judgment Day will happen in that year, but listening to the album 36 years later, it’s tragic that, despite Mundell’s pleading, Africa was barely different in 1984 than it was in 1983. There was no Judgment Day, and if there were material or political gains for its oppressed peoples during that time, they were marginal at best. Things probably have improved little in the decades since either. Mundell’s earnestness reminds me of the evangelical Christian kids I rode the bus with in school, who were similarly convinced, with all the clear-eyed certainty of youth, that the Judgment Day would arrive during their own lifetime.

Reading about the record, I learned Mundell was murdered on October 14, 1983, when he was only twenty-one years old. I’m kind of glad I didn’t learn about Mundell’s story until after I heard the album, though. That story is so intense that it must be hard to hear the music through it, especially an album that is so thoroughly laced with tragedy (but also, I must say, with hope). Certainly the fact that Mundell’s was murdered in the album’s titular year is an arresting coincidence. Though the Biblical Judgment Day didn’t happen, perhaps Mundell’s personal one did.

Of course, I started looking for a vinyl copy of Africa Must Be Free by 1983 by the time I finished with my first complete play through. As with most classic reggae records, it’s been repressed many times by many labels, which I imagine is a symptom of Jamaica’s dysfunctional and corrupt music industry. Grey-market reissues of reggae records abound, and they vary widely in quality. I added a bunch of different versions to my want list and started waiting for a copy that spoke to me. I also checked the reggae section of every record store I’ve set foot in since I heard the record, where I found a few of Mundell’s other records (which are good, but lack the magic of his debut). I saw one gratuitously overpriced older pressing of Africa Must Be Free at Mills Record Company in Kansas City, literally locked in the store’s fortress-like rare bins. (It’s a tangent I don’t want to get into here… but what a weird fucking place that was.) Then, a couple of weeks ago, Usman was ordering a record from Japan and asked if I wanted to get anything from the same seller to save on shipping. Lo-and-behold, they had an older Jamaican pressing in G+ condition for a very good price, and knowing that Japanese sellers typically grade conservatively, I took the risk. This copy isn’t pretty, and I suspect the pressing didn’t sound that great in the first place (a common issue with Jamaican vinyl), but it gets the job done and, despite its shortcomings, feels more appropriate to have in my collection than a squeaky clean reissue.

Thanks for reading! I hope some of y’all enjoy this record. Until next time…

Daniel's Staff Pick: September 23, 2024

A+P: S/T 12” (Jupiter Records, 1981)

My pick for this week is the self-titled LP from the German band A+P, originally released in 1981. I picked up this LP a few years ago from the great Double Decker Records in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Given the paucity of information available about this record online, I can’t imagine I knew much of anything about it before picking it up, but I feel like I had seen it on some German punk discography or another. Maybe it was a total blind buy, but regardless of why I bought it, I think it was a pretty good score as I’ve returned to this LP many times over the years and always enjoy it when I throw it on. The music here—there 16 songs, so there’s quite a lot of it—is eclectic, but all pretty punk, ranging from snotty, post-Sex Pistols Europunk to more experimental moments that clearly take influence from Public Image, Ltd. Like a lot of music from 1981, it sits on the bubble between the initial punk explosion and the fully formed hardcore that would take over pretty much everything in the coming year or two. A+P sounds like they have all the youthful aggression and snottiness they need to be a hardcore band, but they don’t have that template available to them yet, so all those feelings come out in their music in interesting and idiosyncratic ways.

Unfortunately, I have very little information to share about A+P. Maybe a German-speaker could find more info, but about all I could find is that the band is from a town called Starnberg in Bavaria in the far southern part of Germany, south of Munich. To many Americans, Germany is just Germany, but anyone who has traveled around the country (even someone like me who’s mostly just spent time there on DIY punk tours) knows Germany is a massive country with many culturally distinct regions. Navigating those differences is daunting to a dumb, monolingual American like myself, and while Germany produced a massive amount of punk vinyl in the 80s, rarely can I connect the dots and understand how the different bands relate to one another (if they even do). Each band seems like an island, and it’s hard for me to hear common threads that run through the punk from different regions in Germany the way I can for the US, the UK, or even Sweden and Japan. Some quick research tells me Bavaria has a history of punk bands from the early band the Pack (a great band featuring, oddly, a member from Amon Düül II… their killer LP has been reissued several times and isn’t too hard to find) to full-bore hardcore like Vorkriegsphase. A+P’s LP came out in 1981, the mid-way point between the Pack’s LP in 1978 and Vorkriegsphase’s EP and LP in 1983, but I couldn’t tell you how or if they’re related.

One thing I find interesting about A+P’s LP is how well-produced it is. The recording is great for what it is, with a straightforward and unadorned sound (I think there’s only one guitar track), but rich, clear tones and a mix that gives each instrument space. Also curious is the LP’s unique gatefold sleeve. I’ve never seen anything exactly like it. Not only is it a gatefold, but also the gatefold folds out a second time to a huge 24-inch square, sort of like a poster sleeve, but there are still pockets for the vinyl and insert, the latter a half-size booklet in a classic punk cut-and-paste style. The inside of the gatefold is a classic-looking punk collage, while the fold-out reveals well-done black and white portraits of the four band members, all of whom look very young. This made me wonder if the band members were rich kids whose parents splurged for a quality studio and spared no expense on the printing, but the LP is on a label called Jupiter Records. I hadn’t heard of Jupiter before, but a quick look at their Discogs page makes me think they were a big label, starting in 1973 and releasing hundreds of records, mostly German pop music that looks like it would be of zero interest to anyone reading this. By 1981, when the A+P LP came out, they were distributed by TELDEC, a huge German label. It’s wild that an A&R person would have taken a chance on this raw, unpolished punk band, but even crazier that they apparently spared no expense on the packaging.

A+P released a 5-song follow-up EP in 1982 on a different label, Soilant Records. There’s a song on the EP called “Soilant,” so perhaps the label was connected to the band… certainly Soilant’s other releases have a punkier look to them than Jupiter’s, judging by their Discogs page. A+P’s EP has a bigger, tougher, hardcore-influenced sound, and it goes for a few bucks on Discogs, so who knows if I’ll ever connect with a physical copy of that one. The EP was bootlegged in the early 90s and A+P’s LP has been reissued many times over the years… maybe one of those reissues has liner notes that can shed more light on the band’s story? If anyone has knowledge to share, I’d love to hear it.