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Cluster: Grosses Wasser LP (1979, Sky Records)

It’s been a week of ups and downs for me. On Monday, Scarecrow played with Subhumans, which was awesome. It was my third time seeing Subhumans (the first was way back in 1998), and they were great as always. They’ve always been a huge band for me as their music is so powerful and unique, and it’s really special that they still do such great gigs and they bring them around to all corners of the world. Very cool. Unfortunately, though, it was a rough night for me physically. I’ve mentioned my recent skateboarding injury in the newsletter; I was grinding a parking block two weeks ago and fell hard right onto the block, taking it directly to my ribcage. I felt like it was getting better, but Monday was a long day with a full day’s work, playing a set, standing around a lot at the gig, and moving more equipment than I should have (though Jeff and Usman kindly handled all the speaker cabinets). By the end, I was in a lot of pain, so on Tuesday I broke down and went to the doctor. I’d avoided that because I read they couldn’t do much about a rib injury, but I got x-rays confirming I didn’t fracture any ribs, and they prescribed me some kind of medication. I’m not sure what the medication was, but two days later I’m feeling way, way better. Maybe it’s a coincidence or a placebo effect, or maybe I should have just gone to the doctor two weeks ago. Either way, it’s nice to feel like there’s some positive movement.

Between the gig, doctor’s appointments, and driving around my wife, whose car broke down on the way back from the Subhumans gig, I have had little time for listening to records. I got in a good listening session Tuesday night, when I spun the Die Letzten Ecken LP (this week’s Record of the Week!) a few more times and got to soak in the new Fairytale LP, which is phenomenal. I’ll write about those for other sections of the newsletter, so what to write about for my staff pick? I scanned my pile of recent acquisitions and landed on this 1979 album from Germany’s Cluster, which I took home a month or so ago. I was at the store one day and it was sitting at the front of a bin, unclaimed after a few weeks in the stacks. I commented that I hadn’t heard it and was interested, and Jeff was like, “you should just take it.” So I did!

Grosses Wasser is the seventh album by Cluster… well, the seventh if you don’t count the two albums they recorded as Kluster before Conrad Schnitzler left the group and they changed the “K” to a “C,” but you do count the two collaborative albums the group did with Brian Eno, 1977’s Cluster & Eno and 1978’s After the Heat. That sentence alone hints at how deeply embedded Cluster’s two official members, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, were in the 70s German progressive music scene, so I won’t go too deeply into that here. Trust me, these two guys are super important. Grosses Wasser, though, I don’t think is seen as a crucial part of their discography… which is weird because many bands’ seventh albums are their most popular, right?

Besides coming rather late in their discography, perhaps Grosses Wasser lacks the sense of discovery of Cluster’s classic periods. Their first two albums are out there on the fringes ambient music, while 1974’s Zuckerziet and 1976’s Sowiesoso found them condensing their compositions into compact instrumental nuggets that had all the impact and melody of the best pop and classical music. The two Eno collaborations came next, which were front page news for weird music heads. Grosses Wasser, though, has weak branding. Peter Baumann’s production is a new wrinkle, giving the group a polished, crystalline sound that’s less organic, but very cool and modern (much like the cover artwork). Grosses Wasser splits the difference between the two early eras of Cluster’s work, with a bunch of compact tracks on the a-side and a more progressive, multi-movement piece taking up the entire second side.

I didn’t know any of this when I first dropped the needle on Grosses Wasser. All I knew was that it was a Cluster album I hadn’t heard, and it just delighted me. Each shorter piece has a different musical character, but they’re all beautiful, combining rich textures with a strong sense of composition and structure that many synth and progressive artists lack. The long piece is also interesting. It’s not droney like the longer pieces in Cluster’s early catalog, more like a short symphony with discrete sections that link together. As a whole, the album is like an anthology of tight, readable short stories with a longer story at the end, and it works well.

I’m not sure if Grosses Wasser is the place I’d start with Cluster, but if you enjoy their first six albums, there’s no reason to stop here. Cluster made one more album, 1981’s Curiosa, before disbanding for the first time that year. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one and see if it maintains the same level of quality as this.

Honor Role: Rictus LP (Homestead Records, 1989)

My nephew Brody just spent a few weeks staying with my wife Jet and I. The original plan was to hang out for a bit in Raleigh and then go on a mini-vacation on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina for Memorial Day weekend, but a big storm came in, the ferries weren’t running to the island, and we had to cancel our trip. That was a bummer, but it was fun to hang out with Brody for an extended amount of time. He’s 19, a student at Ohio State, and he’s super into music and skateboarding, so we get along like a house on fire. It was nice to have a buddy to skate with, and while he was here we spent most evenings playing music for one another.

Something I realized about myself during these listening sessions with Brody is that I have a strong bias against music from the 90s. Brody played a lot of stuff from the 90s, and it made me realize I almost never listen to music from that entire decade, no matter the style. There’s probably a deep psychological reason for that… like I see the 70s and 80s as some sort of unspoiled golden age, but the 90s make me think of real life, being in high school and feeling like I didn’t belong, being stuck in a rural Virginia backwater while the interesting stuff happened somewhere else. Most recordings from the 90s have a distinctive sound, and while a lot of things about that sound are pretty good—it was an era known for big-sounding, polished recordings, even for underground bands—the sound doesn’t take me to a place I want to go. Even when Brody brought up punk and hardcore bands, I realized I hardly ever listened to them. He told me he’s been into Orchid’s Chaos Is Me, and I told him about how I bought that record when it came out and how Orchid’s guitarist, Will Killingsworth, masters like 50% of the music we sell at Sorry State (including several releases on our label), but I realized I haven’t listened to Orchid in 20 years. He also texted me the other day to tell me he’d been listening to His Hero Is Gone’s Monuments to Thieves. Again, a record I loved when it came out, but I haven’t listened to it in many, many years. So many of our conversations went like this, Brody bringing up something from the 90s and me driving the conversation back into the 80s and earlier or forward into the present millennium.

Having this realization about myself, I was particularly excited when a copy of Honor Role’s second and final album, Rictus, came through the shop. Brody, like most young people it seems, has broad tastes, but I think his favorite style of music is the post-hardcore math rock of the early 90s… he loves Slint, US Maple, Don Caballero, and stuff like that. So I was excited to bring home this Honor Role record because I know they were a big influence on that sound. I think he liked Rictus, but the first thing he said was “this sounds like Tweez,” Slint’s first album, which actually came out in 1989, the same year as Rictus.

I feel weird writing about Honor Role because I’ve heard so much about them from older people in NC, all of whom insist they were one of the best bands they ever saw, way better than their studio recordings. Honor Role played Raleigh a lot… people tell me they came down from Richmond so often they were pretty much considered a local band. Since they broke up in 1989, though, I never got to see them play, and for years I never even checked out the records because of how vocal everyone was about how they didn’t live up to the live experience. However, at some point their 1985 single “Judgement Day” came into the shop, and noticing it was on the legendary Raleigh label No Core Records, I checked it out. I listened to that 7” so much… I even ripped mp3s of my copy so I could put it on my phone… I was so addicted to it I needed the ability to hear it any time I wanted. Contrary to my expectations, “Judgement Day” has a great, powerful recording, raw in the manner of low-budget 80s recordings, but clear with good separation between the instruments and a big drum sound. And the songs, “Judgement Day” in particular, are just so good. They’re a long way from pop, but still so memorable. “Look around me, all I see, waves and waves of… MEDIOCRITY!” Classic.

Converted, I started picking up Honor Role’s records when I saw them. Rictus, though, proved elusive, sitting on my want list for years before this copy came in. It was worth the wait, though! When I first popped it on I was digging it so hard… it had everything I loved about the “Judgement Day” single, namely the catchy vocals and dense, poetic lyrics and the powerful, punk-informed rhythm section, but so much more than that too. Honor Role is lauded for their ability to play in odd time signatures and the relentless riffage of guitarist Pen Rollings, and both are in full effect on Rictus. Some timings on these tracks are just wild. And beyond just being quirky, they’re executed with so much fluidity. I love complex, proggy rhythms, but often bands who play like that can feel overly tight, like the music is laid out on a grid and everyone is playing to the grid rather than with one another. But Honor Role sounds like a band who has abandoned the grid, locking into rhythms that are more organic and human than any math equation. And the riffs… fuck! A lot of them sound like they’re grounded in the big classic rock riffs of bands like AC/DC and Thin Lizzy, but skewed and bent into something subtler and more interesting. Like Greg Ginn, Pen Rollings’ style is instantly identifiable and I could listen to him shred forever.

It’s a shame I never got to see Honor Role play live, because if they were exponentially better than these records, they must have been something truly great, which everyone insists they were. There are a couple of gigs on YouTube, and these sets from CBGB in 1987, DC in 1988, and Chapel Hill in 1989 (the band’s final show) are indeed powerful. I’m not much for watching video footage of bands playing live, but all three hold my attention. If you want to check out Honor Role’s studio recordings, Merge Records collected everything from their post-punk era (I can’t believe I didn’t even mention the band’s hardcore years above… oh well) on a CD called Album, which is available on streaming services. That CD starts with Rictus and then proceeds in reverse chronological order through the rest of the band’s catalog, ending with the “Judgement Day” single. While it’s a lot of this very dense music to absorb in one sitting, at least it’s out there and accessible. If you want to follow my path into their discography, keep an eye out for used copies of the “Judgement Day” single and Rictus in your local used bins… it might take a while for them to turn up, but they shouldn’t cost you much when they do.

Egg: The Polite Force LP (1971, Deram)

I have now succumbed to one of the ultimate record collector cliches: I’m into Canterbury. This has been brewing for a while—I chose Caravan’s album In the Land of Grey and Pink as my staff pick way back in July 2020 and I had been checking out Gong and Steve Hillage before that, but the world of Canterbury has sucked me in over the past few months as I’ve spent more time with Canterbury mainstays like Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, and Quiet Sun. I’d been exploring this scene on my own time, but the process got sped up thanks to a couple of folks who sold records to Sorry State. One guy was so attached to his Canterbury records that he kept all those, but sold us several thousand others, and on my house calls I spent a lot of time talking with him about his favorite records. Then, coincidentally, another prog aficionado sold us his record collection. This guy was willing to part with his Canterbury gems, so I scored original copies of several of the records the first guy was raving about. Synchronicity!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Canterbury refers to the city in Kent, England (famous as the setting of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales), and Canterbury music refers to the explosion of music that happened there in the late 60s and early 70s. For me, what’s interesting about Canterbury music is its unique set of influences. The musicians in that scene were interested in the then-current psychedelic and progressive rock movements happening in the UK, but they were also engaged with jazz (including the contemporary jazz-rock fusion movement Miles Davis was pioneering), avant-garde and experimental classical music by composers like Stockhausen and Edgard Varèse, and early modern English folk music. These aren’t influences that lend themselves to a natural fusion, and a lot of Canterbury albums can feel eclectic, with jarring shifts in tone and style from one track from the next, or sometimes even within a single track.

I’m not sure when I happened upon Egg’s second album, The Polite Force—it may have just been in reading about the Canterbury scene—but when I first listened to it, the monstrous organ riff that opens the record knocked me on my ass. While Egg didn’t employ a guitarist, organist Dave Stewart lays down a riff as dense and sludgy as anything Black Sabbath or Deep Purple did in their heyday. While nothing else on The Polite Force is like that, it’s a great introduction because it demands your full attention, which Egg subsequently tests over the course of the album. In researching the critical reaction to The Polite Force, I found many people were put off by the album’s experimental elements. The Polite Force certainly leans more toward that end of the Canterbury spectrum, with much of its runtime given over to Stockhausen-influenced tape manipulation and freewheeling jazz experimentation. I guess I can see how it’s too much for some people, but for me Egg keeps the ideas coming fast and furious, and even if I like some moments more than others, wondering what they’re going to do next keeps me engaged throughout the record.

Last night, as I was playing The Polite Force, I was pondering why Canterbury music appeals to such a particular breed of nerdy record collector. Can you appreciate this music if you have less than two thousand albums in your collection? Perhaps you can, but having a voracious appetite for music seems to help. Maybe that’s because the Canterbury scene is so embedded in its context that you need some knowledge of the influences they were working with to appreciate what they were doing. Or maybe it’s because the way these bands combined the different elements of their respective sounds was often surprising, even jarring. Maybe it’s perfect for an old head who craves that sense of discovery, but has kind of heard it all before.

Another way the Canterbury scene whets the collector nerd’s appetite is how interconnected everything is. As I was reading about Egg last night, for instance, I learned that guitarist Steve Hillage had played in a group called Uriel, which was basically Egg plus Steve Hillage. While Uriel never released anything, the group reformed in 1969 and released a self-titled album as Arzachel, which streaming service recommendation algorithms really think I’ll like, but I’ve never checked out. Even more enticing is Khan’s album Space Shanty, which came out in 1972. Khan featured most of the personnel from Uriel / Arzachel, and the songs on their LP were intended for the follow-up to Steve Hillage’s solo album Fish Rising, another ye olde staffe picke para moi. The vibe on that one is supposed to be more space rock than prog, and I can’t wait to dive in and learn more.

Claire Dederer: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (2023, Knopf)

One of my least favorite duties at Sorry State is managing our “banned list,” the list of albums and artists we refuse to carry. This is not a task I am well equipped for. While I think of myself as a morally upstanding person, I don’t have a strong sense of justice. I tend to look at the world more analytically, examining situations from multiple perspectives, and as someone who loves music and art, my curiosity and love for art is apt to outweigh my sense of right and wrong. So, I rely on my colleagues for guidance here, and when they’re offended by something we carry, I trust that it’s the right decision to remove it from the racks. It’s often a difficult decision, though. Some things, such as music that explicltly promotes hateful ideologies, are beyond the pale. However, what about work by artists with stains on their legacy? When I was younger, many people thought it was OK to listen to the first few Skrewdriver records, which they made before they became an explicitly racist and nationalist band. Nowadays, all the band’s releases are taboo, and they’re all banned from sale on mainstream sites like eBay and Discogs. But what about the country singer David Allan Coe, who made at least one album full of slurs and other reprehensible ideas, which he seems to have intended as a joke. Do we remove all his records from the shelves? What about people who have done bad things which don’t show up in in their work? We didn’t have to decide to stop carrying Bill Cosby’s records because people just stopped buying them. But what about Michael Jackson? Morrissey? Miles Davis? Our customers are still eager to buy those artists’ records. Where is the line, and how do you determine what side of it things are on? That is the question Claire Dederer addresses in this book.

Once I started reading reviews of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma this spring I was eager to read it, because I realized this is an issue I think about all the time, and I desperately wanted to read an analysis that’s smart, or even (fingers crossed) wise. The problem is that most sane writers don’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole (in fact, I find myself nervous to write this staff pick), because the stakes are high and the dangers of missteps are real. Sympathizing with a monster can get you branded an apologist, putting your own politics and ethics in question. Thus, the discourse around this topic is dominated by people with the most extreme views. Shouts of “burn the witch” play well on social media—I click on them despite my better judgment—and the only people who stand up against the zealots tend to be reactionary dummies. If someone uses the terms “cancel culture” or “woke,” that’s an immediate red flag for me, a signal that they’re an asshole, someone who thinks it’s acceptable to trample on other people’s feelings to protect the “freedoms” enjoyed by the privileged. As someone who cares about art and culture, it often seems impossible to find the middle path that respects the feelings of victims, marginalized groups, and other stakeholders while reserving space for artists to do what artists do… what we love them for doing.

Dederer’s book starts by examining the reputations of Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. These filmmakers make excellent test cases. Both made art that, at least at some point, was acknowledged as great, and both men have done bad things (though, as becomes apparent, there’s much more to be said than that). Dederer analyzes both cases at length, examining the work for evidence of the darkness we see in the bad things the artists did and tracking the discourse around these artists and their work, from the people who think they should be resigned to the dustbin of history to the people who think we should “separate the art from the artist,” and everyone in between. Consistency and easy answers are in short supply. The metaphor Dederer lands on to describe the situation is that of a stain. I find this metaphor apt because it’s so flexible. Stains can be larger or smaller, darker or lighter. Some people can live with stains and keep wearing clothes even after their stained, while others find themselves unable to unsee the stain, or rather to see past it. Whatever your attitude toward the stain, it’s still there.

Along the way, Dederer pulls a bunch of threads related to this central line of inquiry. There’s a fascinating chapter about women monsters, who are rare, but they exist. Unsurprisingly, what constitutes an unforgivable transgression is very different for a woman than it is for a man, as are our attitudes about the women who cross those boundaries. There’s also a great chapter about alcoholics and addicts, who present a more complicated case because the monsters aren’t just monsters; they’re also victims. And what of the addict in recovery? What happens to the stain when the artist commits to mending their ways? Is there any hope of redemption? Dederer also a fascinating reading of Lolita, a book I’ve never read because I am frightened of it. But I am always interested in what people have to say about it, and Dederer’s chapter on Nabokov and Lolita is gripping, a masterpiece of literary criticism. For Dederer, Nabokov is the anti-monster… unlike the bad men who made great art, Nabokov is (by all accounts) a decent person who made a monstrous piece of art, which both illustrates and complicates our feelings about the relationship between art and monstrosity.

If you’re looking for Dederer to provide a list of which artists are and are not beyond the pale, or even a stable rubric you can apply on your own, then you’re going to be disappointed. However, the book still has some substantial takeaways. A big one for me is that capitalism is a big part of the problem. Under capitalism, art is a commodity and the consumption of art-as-commodity is inherently politicized. Viewing art as a commodity complicates the picture in all kinds of ways, in no small part because of the system of celebrity that has built up around the culture industry. Appreciating a Woody Allen film—even if you don’t pay money for it—feels like an endorsement of Woody Allen, one that Allen and the people and businesses who associate with him profit from, if only indirectly. Try as we might, though, we can’t opt out of capitalism, and these problems are likely to remain with us for the foreseeable future. And even if Dederer doesn’t offer a solution to the fan’s dilemma, her book brings the issue into much clearer focus and does a great deal of work to carve out critical space for those of who value art’s ability to question, antagonize, and even offend.

Punk rules.

This m̶o̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ afternoon I’m riding high after an excellent gig last night. It was the first night of Lasso’s US tour. Not only did I get to see the band but also they’ve been staying at my house and hanging around at Sorry State for the past two days, so we’ve had some time to get to know one another. Then last night we got to introduce them to our NC punk friends and have an epic show and hang. And better yet, we get to do it again in Norfolk tomorrow, where we’ll add all our Norfolk homies to the mix. It’s going to be epic.

Sorry State has put out 3 of Lasso’s 7”s now. Their most recent EP, Ordem Imaginada, arrived at Sorry State HQ a few days ago, just in time for them to bring copies along on their tour. Lasso is one of a handful of bands whose records I put out based on an unsolicited email. As you might expect, we get lots of messages from bands asking Sorry State to release their music. Much of it we don’t even consider… I think sometimes people just google something like “North Carolina record label” and email every search result, not even taking the time to realize we only release punk rock. It’s easy to ignore those messages, but it’s tougher when a band submits something and there’s a connection there, whether it’s that they’re fans of Sorry State, we know the members, or their music is just good. A band being “good enough” isn’t the only factor in deciding whether we want to release something, though. That’s one thing I learned being on this side of running a record label, and it sunk in even more when we started hiring employees at Sorry State and I had to conduct job interviews and decide between competing candidates. Those decisions are less about being “good enough,” because plenty of people are “good enough,” and often way more than that. It’s more about whether the timing is right and the fit works in other respects. I know rejection can sting, though, and whenever I can, I try to write polite rejection letters that explain all this.

Back to Lasso, though. When I first clicked the link to listen to their music, it blew me away. As I do when I hear something I like, the first thing I did was show it to Jeff and Usman, who confirmed that my response wasn’t idiosyncratic… this band is really good. I can’t remember what other factors I was weighing, but I knew right away I wanted to put out their record. I felt even better about the decision when I saw their friend Carlos Casotti’s illustrations, which they’ve used for the artwork on all their records so far. Lasso had the total package… great music, great performances, great sound, and great artwork. And across their second and third EPs they’ve only gotten better.

Seeing Lasso live, though, gave me an even deeper appreciation for their music. Not having met the members before they arrived at my house on Tuesday afternoon, I didn’t know what to expect from them. I don’t think I’ve even hosted a band from Brazil before, so I didn’t know what to expect from them as people. I could tell right away, though, that they take their music seriously. Raleigh was the first stop on their tour and they had all their gear shipped to Sorry State ahead of time, so the first thing they did when they arrived was check everything to make sure it was in good shape. I could tell by the way they plucked the snare drum’s head or checked the intonation on their guitars that they are meticulous. They confirmed that impression when they rehearsed at the Sorry State warehouse later that evening. I was working in my office down the hall while they played, but it sounded more like someone was playing their records than a band playing live, which is impressive given they’d just endured two and a half days of exhausting travel and were using unfamiliar gear.

The sound I heard carrying down the hall at the warehouse, though, paled compared to what I saw and heard at the gig last night. The vibe last night was great. I love going to shows at the Fruit… even though it’s in Durham, the next city over from Raleigh, the club feels like home. It was my wife Jet’s birthday, so there was a lot of love in the air. Overgrown Throne got the night off to a great start, playing the best set I’ve seen them play and setting the crowd off. Then it was time for Lasso, and it was transcendent. That spark I felt when I first heard their music returned in force as I experienced the band’s power live in front of me. Just like at their rehearsal the day before, their performances were totally locked in. Lasso’s songs are mazes of subtle rhythmic shifts and accents, and the band seemed to execute them with one body, each note as precise and visceral as a hammer hitting a nail right on the head. They moved like a massive bird of prey, their grace difficult to reconcile with their heaviness and power. They were fucking great.

Scarecrow wrapped up the show, then the two bands and some of our friends went out for late-night burritos, hanging out until 2AM on the patio at Cosmic Cantina, our go-to spot for a late night meal after gigs at the Fruit. The vibes were great, everyone having taken a deep swig from punk’s goblet, and even though it was super late and I knew I had a newsletter to write today, I was reluctant to leave.

How amazing is punk, that we have this community where we can all share in this incredible music, and that the music creates a bond that can transcend differences in language, culture, education, class, and every other way humans can differ from one another? When we stand together in front of roaring amps and pounding drums, we taste something profound and elemental. Perhaps not every time, but often enough to keep me coming to every gig I can. I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow night. Viva Lasso! Viva punk!

The Fall: Live 1977 LP (2023, Cherry Red Records)

A few years ago, when Castle Face Records released The Fall’s Live at St. Helens Technical College 1981, I wrote about that record and toyed with doing a series of staff picks dedicated to live records by the Fall. You can consider today’s installment the second entry in the series, and maybe one day I’ll get to Live in London / The Legendary Chaos Tape, Fall in a Hole, A Part of America Therein, and then to the scores of releases that have come out in recent years. For now, though, let’s turn our attention to Live 1977, which Cherry Red Records released as a Record Store Day exclusive this year.

These tracks (well, most of them… we’ll get to that later) first appeared on 2022’s 8 CD box set called [1970s]. That box set purported to compile all the band’s 1970s studio recordings along with several live sets. Honestly, that box set seems like a mess. What person who wants to hear eight different early live sets by the Fall, but also still needs copies of Live at the Witch Trials and Dragnet on CD? I can’t imagine it’s many. Mercifully, though, Cherry Red put the entire box up on streaming services. I spent a couple of days with the set playing in the background when it came out last fall, but my friend Rich pointed me toward the May 23, 1977 gig, specifically the songs “Race Hatred” and “Sten Gun Rock” that (unless I’m mistaken) don’t exist on any other recording, live or in the studio. I wouldn’t say either is a lost classic, but it’s cool to hear early songs by the Fall that I’d never heard before.

Live 1977 is basically a vinyl version of the full May 23, 1977 gig that appeared in the [1970s] box. I’m glad to have this as a stand-alone release rather than buried on disc 5 of an 8-disc set, because it’s a brilliant gig and historically significant to boot. The band is on fire here, ripping through great early tracks like “Repetition,” “Industrial Estate,” and “Frightened,” all of which sound remarkably similar to the versions the band recorded in the studio. For a group that had just started, the Fall sounds so confident here. The closeness of the arrangements to the recorded versions shows they were well-rehearsed, and they play with power and confidence. I don’t think it’s in appropriate to say they’re on fire. The fidelity is also pretty good… noisy, but with every instrument present and accounted for. It can get a bit blown out during the loudest parts, but the power comes across even if some of the subtlety gets lost.

While the music on Live 1977 is great, the packaging is a massive disappointment. The front and back covers are pictures of (presumably) the box the tape was stored in, and it is as uninspired as it is aesthetically unpleasing. There is a printed inner sleeve, but it’s all but worthless. One side features a grainy photograph of the building where the gig took place and the other side has two newspaper clippings, one of which doesn’t even mention the Fall and the other of which is so poorly scanned that it is illegible. On the evening of Record Store Day, when I first put the record on, I was grooving out to the music, excited by the strength of the performance and the quality of sound, when I picked up the packaging to learn more about the gig. I quickly grew frustrated that Cherry Red gave us essentially no information about the gig.

Thankfully, though, there is an active community of Fall nerds online, so I could glean a little information from other sources. Live 1977’s credits refer off-handedly to this being the Fall’s first gig, but that isn’t the case. While the Fall’s first gig was at the same venue and also in May 1977, keyboardist Una Baines didn’t play the first gig because she hadn’t yet saved up the money to buy her instrument. This recording has clearly audible keyboards, leading one to the conclusion that it’s the Fall’s second gig and Una’s live debut. At least that’s what guitarist Martin Bramah said on Twitter… it would have been nice if Cherry Red had gotten the details straight so the people who bought this record could understand what they’re listening to.

The other big mystery with Live 1977 is the last track. It’s an instrumental tune that doesn’t appear on the 1970s box set, which means it’s exclusive to this Record Store Day vinyl release. The first time I listened I suspected something was amiss, because it doesn’t sound like the Fall at all and has no vocals, hence no Mark E. Smith. (Perhaps your granny is there on bongos somewhere low in the mix.) Maybe members of the Fall play on this jam (but then again, maybe not), but there’s nothing musically that indicates it’s part of the Fall canon. You can hear the musicians chatting before and after the jam, and folks on the Fall message board note the accents don’t sound Mancunian. Of course, the packaging for the record doesn’t even mention the track, so I’m at a loss what to make of it. Is it something unrelated that happened to be on the same tape? Who knows?

While the above details are still cloudy, it seems to be the case that Live 1977 is the earliest known recording of the Fall. With so many books, articles, and podcasts devoted to the band, you’d think Cherry Red could have found someone to put this recording into its proper context, but I’m glad that at least the music made it into the world.

185 Miles South Podcast

This is probably old news to many people since, as of this writing, the podcast has 204 episodes under its belt, but a couple of months ago I discovered the 185 Miles South podcast, and I’ve come to really look forward to seeing new episodes in my feed. Maybe this is arrogant of me to think because 185 is so well-produced, but when I first listened, I felt like their podcast was doing something very similar to the Sorry State newsletter, engaging with punk rock’s past and present in a thoughtful, enthusiastic way.

The first thing I like about 185 Miles South is its format. While there are frequent special episodes devoted to a single topic, the standard format is magazine-style, with each two hour-ish episode featuring a mix of shorter segments. Taking inspiration from the classic punk zine format, typically there’s at least one band interview and a record review segment where the hosts discuss new music. There are also segments that pop up less frequently, some of which are more light-hearted. My favorite one that I’ve heard is 25 Ta Life lyric trivia, where they play a segment of a 25 Ta Life song and the contestants have to guess what the actual lyrics are. They play the clip and it sounds like Rick is spitting incomprehensible gibberish, and then when they reveal the lyrics it’s like “yeah, I guess that is what he’s singing.” It makes me laugh every time. We’ve been too busy to even think about it for several years now, but we spent a lot of time talking about launching a Sorry State podcast. My idea for how we should do the podcast was essentially what 185 Miles South is doing… I imagined it as an audio version of the newsletter, and hearing 185 confirms that format can work well if it’s done properly. I’m sure it’s a crushing amount of work for Zack and the crew, though.

Aside from its format, 185’s other strength is how smart and thoughtful the hosts are. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about music (including just about every one I can find about punk and hardcore), but I’ve found very few of them that are worth my time. A big part of this is that I’m a tough audience. I’ve been obsessed with punk rock since I was a teenager, and I’m almost 44 years old. I’ve heard a lot of records in that time and I’ve read a lot of books, zines, and other ephemera, so I have little time for intro-level stuff. I hate to say anything bad about them because they did a great job, but a good example of what I don’t like is the punk season of the No Dogs in Space podcast. The podcast is well-produced (by the same team that does the popular podcast Last Podcast on the Left), but it rarely told me anything I didn’t already know, and I often found myself yelling at the podcast when they spouted incorrect information or off-base opinions. Maybe I’m just an asshole? While I can forgive someone for not knowing something, I’ll turn a podcast off and never go back if I feel like it’s intellectually lazy. A lot of podcast hosts are just windbags who don’t take the time to understand what they’re talking about and, well, fuck that. At 185 Miles South, though, they know their shit. Not only are they well versed in punk and hardcore history, but even when they’re approaching something they’re not familiar with, they do it with open, honest, and attentive ears. Just based on the handful of episodes I’ve listened to, they’ve built up a lot of credibility with me, and I respect their knowledge and perspectives. And like we are at Sorry State, the crew at 185 Miles South is passionate about the current scene. They’ve already introduced me to a bunch of cool music I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.

While I love everything about how they produce 185 Miles South, they focus on a different, though overlapping, part of the scene than Sorry State. The hosts come from the more hardcore end of the spectrum; in fact, I think I remember checking out 185 some time ago when they mentioned it on the Revelation Records podcast Where It Went, but when I tuned in, they were going on and on about how great Earth Crisis or something was and I decided it wasn’t for me. While the podcast features plenty of coverage of the 70s and 80s punk I love (the most recent episode has a segment on the No Future Records band Attak, which illustrates how deep they go), the hosts and most of their guests hold straight edge hardcore in high regard. If you look at their Top 100 Records of the 1980s, for instance, you’ll see that Revelation Records released 5 of their top 15 records of the decade. They also find a lot more to like in the 90s punk scene than I do. Honestly, though, I think the problem here is me, not them. I was a teenager in the 90s and the straight edge scene was huge where I grew up in Virginia, so I’m familiar with almost all the music they talk about; in fact, I liked a lot of it in my younger years. However, in the early 2000s, I disavowed straight edge and post-straight edge hardcore and never looked back. For me, that has less to do with the music and more to do with the scene politics in my part of the world. I always found the straight edge scene (and most everything that sprang from it) snobby, cliqueish, and way too clean cut (but also violent and sketchy), whereas the punks more steeped in 80s music tended to be more open and welcoming, just wanting to rage out and party. Like I said, though, that’s just me being an old, closed-minded curmudgeon, and I think most sane people will appreciate 185’s broader focus.

So, yeah, if you’re as much of a fan of the way we talk about music in the Sorry State newsletter as you are of what we cover, I encourage you to give 185 Miles South a listen. I recommend starting with the latest episode, #204, which even features a glowing review of the new Illiterates LP on Sorry State. Enjoy!

The Bonniwell Music Machine: S/T LP (1968, Warner Bros. Records)

My connection with the Music Machine begins with Rocket from the Crypt. I should write at length about my feelings on RFTC at some point. I loved them when I was a teenager, even though they never achieved the level of success many people think they deserved. They were such a great band, but their campy aesthetic and their James Brown-influenced, “hard working entertainers” schtick were just so out of sync with the times, the total opposite of the earnest slacker vibes that dominated the radio in the post-grunge era. RFTC’s songs were so damn great that to check them out was to fall in love with them, and every time I have revisited their music in the two and a half decades since (!!!), their greatness is confirmed. But that’s an argument for another day.

Camp Zama Records in Norfolk, Virginia was the first independent record store I frequented. There are a handful of records I remember seeing there, some of which I bought, and some I didn’t. One of them was a minty first pressing of the Teen Idles EP on the wall for $100. At the time I made $4.15 an hour, so $100 was an inconceivable amount to pay for a record… most new 7”s were about three bucks. But I think seeing that record on the wall planted a seed in me that’s still sprouting today. Other records I remember buying there include the Cap’n Jazz LP, Converge’s Halo in a Haystack, and Redemption 87’s self-titled LP, all of them seeming to my sheltered teenage brain like messages beamed from some kind of youth culture promised land. Another one I remember seeing on the wall was Rocket from the Crypt’s 1996 single featuring two cover songs by the Music Machine. The artwork for that 7” was a straight rip of the cover of the Music Machine album, and I remember being so intrigued by it. I can’t remember if I bought that single or not, but the tracks hit home with me when I (re?) discovered them on the CD version of RFTC’s 1995 10” EP, The State Of Art Is On Fire, which added the two Music Machine songs to the end of the original 10”. The State Of Art Is On Fire is kind of the ultimate RFTC record, catching them right on the bubble between their earlier, rawer records and the more anthemic material they moved toward during their major label period. I played that CD to death, and the two Music Machine covers were a big part of why I loved it, a perfect pop chaser after the heady psychedelia the band dips into on the EP.

(A short aside: RFTC connects to another significant moment in my life as a music lover / record collector. Their third album, 1995’s Hot Charity was only available on vinyl… I think I remember reading that the band promised the record would never appear on CD. Not only was one of one of my favorite bands repping for vinyl by refusing to release their new album on the dominant format of the day, but it also taught me an important lesson… a lot of great music only exists on vinyl.)

So, with the cover of the Music Machine’s album burned into my brain via seeing RFTC’s homage on the wall at Camp Zama, the next stop on my journey with the Music Machine is when I picked up their album for a dollar. Every year at Richmond’s Strawberry Festival, Plan 9 would have a giant outdoor booth filled with LPs, and everything cost a dollar. Every year I would spend $50-$75 and buy a giant armload of LPs, and I got loads of great stuff. My first copy of the Circle Jerks’ Group Sex came from one of these sales, a beater copy with split seams. The original 1966 pressing of Turn on the Music Machine I bought, however, didn’t have any major condition issues. I’m amazed the record ended up at the dollar sale, because Plan 9 was one of the few stores in the area that dealt in collectible records, and they knew their shit. Maybe someone was dropping a golden ticket in the pile of dross. However it ended up there, I was stoked.

Even though I didn’t know much about 60s garage, I played Turn on the Music Machine for years. It just ripped. It turns out that RFTC’s covers of “Trouble” and “Masculine Intuition” were faithful to the originals, and those weren’t the only killer tracks on the record. “Talk Talk” might be the band’s shining moment, and their cover of the Beatles’ “Taxman” is scorching. They hew pretty close to the Beatles’ arrangement, but it makes sense since the song is suited to the Music Machine’s strengths. There’s also a great version of ? and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears,” and as I don’t think I’d heard the original by that point, the Music Machine also pointed the way toward another 60s garage classic.

I think I was dimly aware there was a second Music Machine album under the name the Bonniwell Music Machine, but I’d never taken the time to check it out until I picked up Rhino’s 1984 Music Machine compilation Best Of The Music Machine. I picked up the LP hoping it would gather some cool non-album sides I wasn’t familiar with, and I found myself intrigued by the tracks “Double Yellow Line” and “The Eagle Never Hunts the Fly,” which are the two singles from the Bonniwell Music Machine album. The album went on my want list, but it’s not an easy grip… it sold poorly at the time, so original copies are scarce, and in the intervening decades, the Music Machine has been canonized as a titan of 60s garage, so the supply and demand see-saw slams down right on your wallet. Luckily, though, when I was in LA for the Lie Detector Fest in December 2021, I found an original pressing during my wanderings around LA’s record stores. It wasn’t a cheap copy, but it was reasonably priced and in nice shape.

So yeah, that’s the long story of how I discovered and acquired this record. As for the music… it’s pretty cool. Leaning more toward psychedelic rock than the more ferocious, punkier Turn On, The Bonniwell Music Machine is still full of great songs, though I think the band chose the strongest two as the singles. The production is somewhat baroque, and it reminds me of Love’s Forever Changes… actually, Love’s trajectory as a band resembles the Music Machine's, starting with searing garage rock and moving toward baroque pop. I even played this LP once when my family was visiting, and my dad and my brother-in-law commented on how much they liked the music. I don’t think they’ve EVER done that before or since.

B.G.K.: Jonestown Aloha LP (1983, Vögelspin Records / R Radical Records)

This week we’ve been experiencing our annual brief but glorious glimpse of California weather here in North Carolina. Living in the South my whole life, I’ve learned to savor this fleeting moment between winter (which, to be fair, usually isn’t too bad for us) and the scorching summer heat that will make existing outdoors all but impossible until October. I’ve been sleeping with the windows open, drinking my morning coffee on the back porch and, for the first time in many years, dusting off my skateboard.

I’ve been thinking about skateboarding for a while. I skated regularly until my early 30s, when I drifted away from it, for fear of injuring myself and not being able to play music. Lately, though, a few of my friends have been getting back into skating, and I felt jealous. Then I was at the Zorn show in Richmond the other day and I ended up talking to my friend Justin about skating for a while… I met Justin in high school at my first DIY punk show and he’s about the same age as me (it was his first DIY punk show too), so I figured if he could do it, then I could too. It took me a minute to get going because the only shoes I owned were boots and running shoes, but last week I scooped a new pair of Vans and rolled into an empty parking lot to fuck around. It took about 2 minutes to realize how much I missed it. I keep thinking about this sample on Spazz’s La Revancha LP, when someone asks this kid, “What do you love about skateboarding?” And he answers, “the motherfucking god damn freedom.”

Skating has made me want to listen to hardcore, because those two things go together like peanut butter and jelly. I’ve listened to a bunch of rad records since the first time I went out, but one I hadn’t touched in a while is B.G.K.’s first album, Jonestown Aloha. For a band whose discography consists of three fucking killer records, B.G.K. doesn’t get the love they should. Jonestown Aloha is a scorcher, though. It’s B.G.K.’s catchiest record, smoothing out some of the rough edges of the more blistering White Male Dumbinance EP and more streamlined than the more ambitious Nothing Can Go Wrogn. The songs are lean and mean, most of them around a minute and a half long, making their way from a catchy main riff to a chanted chorus and back with no room for fiddly bits. “Race Riot,” “Arms Race,” “Pray for Peace and Kill for Christ…” classics abound.

I have little information on B.G.K. Maybe that’s why they don’t get talked about as much today, because there isn’t too much information about them on the internet and their members aren’t making fools of themselves on social media, selling busted ass merch, and doing lifeless reunion tours (at least as far as I know). But every B.G.K. record rules. Hardcore rules. Skateboarding rules. Get out there and have some fun if you can, because the clock is ticking.

Today is one of those days when it feels like there isn’t much gas in the tank for my staff pick. As I mentioned in my Record of the Week description, I haven’t been able to get the Salvaje Punk record off my turntable, and I’ve had an exhausting week in which I’ve driven to Richmond twice. Both gigs I saw were excellent, and it was energizing to connect with so many people and see so many stellar bands, but it has left little time for sitting around with records. As we were driving back from Richmond last night, Jeff asked me what I planned to write about for my staff pick. I told him I had no plan, but I spitballed a few ideas that have been floating around in my head. Which brings us to my pick for this week, the Oppressed’s first single, 1983’s Never Say Die.

I think the Oppressed came on my radar via Captain Oi!’s CD collection Oi! The Singles Collection Vol 1, which I picked up in the early 00s and played to death. Bringing together the A and B-sides from 10 essential early oi! 7” singles and EPs, this CD did much to spark my interest and shape my taste in oi!, and to this day the records on that compilation form a big part of my list of favorite oi! records. When I spent a few months in London in 2008, I listened to this comp incessantly and set about acquiring the originals. I got them all except, oddly enough, the Oppressed’s Work Together (though I picked up a 90s Spanish reissue at some point). I’ll get an original of that one day, but it’s my least favorite single on that collection, so I’m not sweating it too much.

A few months ago, though, I picked up a copy of the Oppressed first EP, Never Say Die, in a small collection. I don’t think I’d heard the record before, but it won me over with some of the rawest, most primitive punk music I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. Weirdly enough, what sound like the band’s weaknesses on “Work Together” are their strengths on Never Say Die. Within the context of the oi! compilation I mentioned above, which is filled with anthems like the Business’s “National Insurance Blacklist,” Cock Sparrer’s “England Belongs to Me,” and Major Accident’s “Mr. Nobody” alongside rippers like 4 Skins’ “One Law for Them,” the Partisans’ “Police Story,” and Blitz’s “Never Surrender,” the slow place and leaden rhythms of “Work Together” are difficult to sit through. However, the primitive delivery on Never Say Die is charming as hell.

Jeff uses this word “dunderheaded” that I think captures why I love this record so much. The A-side, “Urban Soldiers,” is about as dead simple as a song can get, with a straightforward 4-chord progression, a basic rock beat, and vocal cadences one step removed from nursery rhymes. Oddly, the song has two choruses, one built around the phrase “Urban Soldiers” and the other just featuring the singer yelling “we’re skinheads!” four times in a row. The lyrical dunderheadedness continues on the two B-side tracks, “Ultra Violence” (“blood! on the! streets!”) and “Run from You” (as in “I won’t run from you”). The Oppressed sounds like a caricature of a skinhead band, from their lyrical focus on violence and their identity as skinheads to the giant boot on the front cover to their record label name, Firm Records. I would find this kind of thing stupid, but the Oppressed is so defiantly one-dimensional that I can’t help but love them. They are so committed to their thing that they leave me no option but to suspend disbelief and submerse myself in their world.

I should note that while Never Say Die appears to be the work of committed dunderheads, the Oppressed later had a political awakening and devoted themselves to combating fascism within the skinhead scene. The Oppressed’s singer Robby Moreno traveled to New York and discovered the S.H.A.R.P. (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) movement and tried to import those ideals back to England. The Oppressed also got back together in the 90s, and their 1994 Anti Fascist Oi! E.P. repurposed a short set of classic oi! covers, changing the songs’ lyrics to critique the right wing politics that still haunted the UK and European skinhead scenes. These 90s releases aren’t as exciting to me, lacking the wide-eyed sense of discovery I hear on Never Say Die. I’m glad for that later era of the Oppressed, though, because the band’s outspoken political stance allows me to enjoy their earlier stuff free of any suspicions about dodgy politics.

Brian Johnson: The Lives of Brian (Dey Street Books, 2022, audiobook)

My journal tells me I struggle with insomnia every spring, and this year is no different. I’m not sure if the cause is the change to daylight savings time, the pollen, the changing weather, the excitement of winter being over, or something else entirely, but when my head hits my pillow this time of year, it’s like my brain gets a signal to wake up and start racing. Honestly, it sucks. I empathize with people who struggle with insomnia long term, because not feeling rested is a drag, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Often, rather than letting my monkey brain chase its tail until sunrise, I’ll try to quiet my mind with an audiobook. Usually I go for something dry, like a history of some time and place that’s far away from my current concerns. Lately, however, I’ve been listening to rock biographies. I listened to Ronnie James Dio’s autobiography a few months ago, then Bob Spitz’s massive tome on Led Zeppelin, which was one of the better rock books I’ve ever read. And earlier this week I finished The Lives of Brian, the recently released memoir by AC/DC singer Brian Johnson.

Although I’ve listened to and read so many of them, I don’t devour rock books the way I used to. Somewhere along the line, I realized my favorite parts of these books were the human stories they told rather than the musical ones, and then I had the further realization that all kinds of human beings, not just musicians, write their stories. In fact—and this may be hard to believe—some of those humans are even better than musicians at writing their autobiographies! Not being a massive AC/DC fan (though I do like them), I wouldn’t have been interested in Brian Johnson’s memoirs, but a while back on the You Don’t Know Mojack podcast (which I still listen to every week), Brant mentioned the book was fantastic and that it was devoted almost entirely to Johnson’s life before he joined AC/DC. So, late one night I downloaded a sample of the audiobook, which Johnson reads himself, and was sold.

While his bandmates in AC/DC are Aussies, Johnson was born and raised in Newcastle in the northeast of England. Johnson’s mother was Italian, and his parents met while his father served in the British army in World War II. Brian paints a detailed picture of life in postwar Newcastle, where (like all of Britain) the war’s effects continued to be felt well into the 60s, particularly on council estates like the one where Brian grew up. It would be easy to draw this world as a caricature, but Brian’s way with a story is apparent from the jump, as he portrays the people in his life with remarkable empathy and the unpretentious wit that has served him so well as a lyricist. Perhaps it’s Johnson’s Italian heritage, which made him an outsider on the insular, homogenous council estate, that gives him the perspective to see the world around him so clearly. Regardless of the cause, Brian deserves the credit for his vivid and powerful writing. And it’s his, too… from what I’ve read, Johnson wrote The Lives of Brian himself, longhand no less, without help from a ghost writer.

While The Lives of Brian is light on AC/DC content, there’s a lot about music in the book. Johnson didn’t join AC/DC until he was 32 years old, and he was obsessed with music from the time he was a young boy, when he was playing in the street and heard a teenage girl playing a Little Richard record in her living room. He was so entranced that he knocked on the stranger’s door and asked her to play the record again. Eventually, Brian started playing in bands himself. One of the most remarkable stories in the book is when Brian needs to buy a PA system so his band can play bigger gigs, and he covers the expense by joining the army’s reserve force. He heard from a friend that recruits to the Parachute Battalion received a substantial bonus upon completing training, so he signed on and started jumping out of planes in pursuit of his dreams. Talk about commitment!

Before Johnson got the call from AC/DC, he was in a glam rock group called Geordie that had a few minor hits and even appeared on Top of the Pops. Johnson goes into detail about his time in Geordie, and the story comes alive thanks to Johnson’s account of the sub-mainstream music industry they inhabited. It was a world full of shady labels, shifty promoters, future superstars, and talentless hacks, all rubbing elbows and getting into epic drama. Johnson quit his job as an apprentice engineer—which could have been a lifelong career—to pursue Geordie, but after the group failed to build on its initial success, they fell apart, leaving Brian, the father of two young children, to move back in with his parents and start life over from scratch. He starts a successful business fitting cars with then-fashionable vinyl roofs, but he finds himself unable to walk away from music and soon he’s formed Geordie II, which hones Johnson’s live chops as they play (mostly cover tunes) in pubs and working men’s clubs around Newcastle.

Ultimately, though, it’s not what happened that makes The Lives of Brian so great; it’s Johnson himself. Having lived for 32 years and experienced his fair share of adversity before joining AC/DC, who hit their commercial peak just as he entered the band, Johnson has perspective and wisdom. His view of his difficulties early in his life are tempered by the unfathomable success he experienced with AC/DC—he knows those struggles prepared him for the gig—but he’s also aware of how lucky he is… at so many points in his journey, a different choice would have led him into very different circumstances. Johnson doesn’t view himself as a genius, and he isn’t entitled in the least… the only trait he credits for his success is persistence. The sentence “Never give up” appears many times in the book. This sense of hope for the future and gratitude for the past makes The Lives of Brian an utter pleasure.

I’ve been immersing myself in the world of 80s North Carolina hardcore for the last few weeks, so it’s time to bust out a post I’ve been thinking about for a long time. As is my duty as a North Carolinian, I am a huge fan of Corrosion of Conformity. I’ll assume you are already familiar with CoC’s legendary first two albums, Eye for an Eye and Animosity… if you aren’t, then you should remedy that ASAP. Today, though, I’m going to write about the CoC tracks that didn’t appear on those albums. CoC, for all their ambition, seemed to have a chaotic way of working, and as a result their studio albums often didn’t contain the definitive versions of their songs. I always heard from old heads that the band was at the height of their powers around 1986, after they had recorded Animosity, but before they brought in Simon Bob Sinister as vocalist for Technocracy. It’s likely they played the definitive versions of many of these songs onstage at the Brewery in Raleigh or in Los Angeles or Oklahoma City or god knows where… CoC toured a lot during that period. Sadly, I wasn’t around to experience that, but I can give you a quick rundown of a couple of CoC’s “lost” studio sessions.

While I want to focus your attention on the non-album tracks recorded by the Animosity lineup of Mike Dean, Reed Mullin, and Woody Weatherman, any discussion of CoC’s non-album tracks would be remiss not to include their earliest recordings, which went to the North Carolina compilations No Core (cassette-only, 1982) and Why Are We Here? (7”, 1983). These recordings capture the band before they landed on their trademark sound and are straightforward hardcore punk with little of the metal influence you hear on Eye for an Eye and Animosity. They’re killer for what they are and every fan of CoC’s hardcore era should be familiar with these tracks. However, only someone who loves 80s US hardcore to the exclusion of all other styles of music would insist these tracks are CoC’s best work.

The next tracks I want to point your attention toward also appeared on compilations, a running theme in this piece. In 1988, a year after Technocracy came out, Caroline released a 12” EP called Six Songs with Mike Singing: 1985. Six Songs compiled CoC’s contributions to 1985’s Thrasher magazine compilation LP, Skate Rock Volume 3: Wild Riders of Boards and the Fartblossom Records compilation Empty Skulls Vol 2: The Wound Deepens, released in 1986. While the information on the back cover of Six Songs with Mike Singing is minimal, it appears CoC recorded all six tracks at the same session, which found the Animosity lineup running through a short set of songs from much earlier in the band’s run. For me, the version of “Eye for an Eye” here tops the album version, the chorus more anthemic despite Mike’s wild vocal style, and “Center of the World” and “Citizen” are far more precise than the embryonic versions that appeared on the No Core tape. “What(?)” and “Negative Outlook” from Eye for an Eye also get the Animosity lineup treatment (one right after the other, just like how they appeared on the original album), but the real surprise is “Not for Me.” “Not for Me” isn’t a CoC song… it was originally performed by the Raleigh hardcore band No Labels, which Reed and Woody played in before the band broke up in 1983. There’s no sign on Six Songs that “Not for Me” isn’t a CoC song, even though No Labels guitarist Ricky Hicks says he wrote both the music and lyrics. Proper accreditation aside, the song is scorching, and fits well with the other stripped-down hardcore songs CoC recorded at this session.

In 1987, CoC released the Technocracy EP, their first and last recording with former Ugly Americans singer Simon Bob Sinister on vocals. After the highs of Eye for an Eye and Animosity, I think the band disappointed some fans with Technocracy, which found Simon Bob struggling to find his way into CoC’s manic and intricate new songs. If people who bought Technocracy when it came out suspected that Simon Bob wasn’t a great fit for these songs, that was confirmed in 1992, when Relativity released an expanded CD version of Technocracy with additional tracks from a studio session in which the Animosity lineup ran through all three of the new songs on Technocracy. (The actual Technocracy EP featured a new version of “Hungry Child” from Animosity, whereas they re-recorded “Intervention” during the session with Mike on vocals.)

For my money, these Technocracy bonus tracks are CoC’s single best studio recording. The band sounds so ridiculously locked in here, abandoning the rigid timing of conventional hardcore in favor of an elastic sound where beats get stretched way out or condensed a la later Black Flag or Bl’ast, the band lunging forward and rearing back like a heaving, unified organism. The songs take on a proggy complexity, frequently shifting tempo and rhythm, but you hardly notice how intricate they are because the band plays them with such grace and power. The instrumental performances on Technocracy are similar, but don’t have the same spark. But while the instrumental performances are comparable, the vocal performances on this earlier session are a stark contrast. It’s clear Mike Dean was meant to sing these songs.

I’m no Simon Bob hater, though. While he seems to have struggled on Technocracy, a “lost” studio session from 1988 shows how the band adapted to his more conventional and melodic style. Mike Dean left CoC in 1987, replaced by Phil Swisher on bass, and this lineup of Reed Mullin / Woody Weatherman / Phil Swisher / Simon Bob recorded at least four songs, only one of which came out officially. “Bound” appeared on the compilation Rat Music for Rat People Vol III, but three others—“Fingers with Teeth,” “The Line of Fire,” and “Teacher”—seem to be available only via unofficial versions on the tape trading circuit. While these tracks still find CoC with a locked-in playing style full of ornate but perfectly executed rhythmic shifts, they’re less metal than the music they had been writing for the past several years. Simon Bob had also found his voice as CoC’s singer, imbuing these songs (particularly “Teacher” and “The Line of Fire”) with big, anthemic choruses. These songs remind me of 80s skate rock, pop songs played with the drive and intensity to fuel an intense skateboarding session. From what I’ve read, CoC had an entire set of similar material, but the four tracks I mentioned above are the only ones I’ve heard recordings of.

After Simon Bob quit the band in 1988, CoC brought in vocalist Karl Agell and rhythm guitarist Pepper Keenan, and this lineup released Blind in 1991. While early demos from the Blind period have moments that remind people of the band’s earlier eras, CoC had more or less completely switched gears. Mike Dean had been the principal songwriter during his time in the band, and the new lineup’s southern rock-influenced metal had little to do with the earlier iterations of the band. I know some people follow CoC into the Blind era and beyond, but I just can’t do it. It sounds like redneck music to me.

If you want to hear the non-album tracks I wrote about here, you have a few options. Six Songs with Mike Singing appears as bonus tracks on CD and digital versions of Eye for an Eye, and the CD and digital versions of Technocracy also feature the sessions with Mike Dean on vocals. If you want these tracks on vinyl, Caroline’s original 1988 12” EP of Six Songs with Mike Singing is your only option for those tracks. While that record has never been repressed, a patient person should be able to find a copy without spending too much money. As for the Technocracy songs with Mike singing, they are on Metal Blade’s latest white vinyl pressing of Technocracy, which is distinguishable from the original version by the cover’s updated color scheme. The original version of Technocracy featured the same music on both sides (why don’t more one-sided records do that?), so the reissue replaces the redundant side with the Mike Dean versions. As for the 1988 demo tracks, those remain unreleased, but you can look them up on YouTube if you want to check them out.