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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.

The Only Ones: The Only Ones LP (1978, CBS Records)

There’s nothing like striking something from your want list by finding it in the wild. I’ve had the Only Ones’ first self-titled album on my want list for years, watching copies pop up infrequently, usually overseas, and always for inflated prices. After stalking the record for years I knew what I was looking at when I found a copy, and when the momentcame, I knew what was happening and ripped Excalibur from the stone… carpe’d motherfucking diem, if you know what I mean. Ridiculous analogies, I know, but I was pretty darn excited when I found this record.

I love the Only Ones. I think I first heard “Another Girl, Another Planet” on the Rhino compilation No Thanks! The ‘70s Punk Rebellion. That compilation is perhaps the best survey of 70s punk you’ll find, and over the years I’ve bought the album or single for just about every one of the 100 tracks on it. However, even among such heavy company, “Another Girl, Another Planet” stood out. It’s one of the best power-pop songs ever. If you don’t agree, then it’s clear we have radically different ideas of what comprises a great pop tune. My love for the Only Ones deepened when I picked up a copy of their second album, Even Serpents Shine, at Vinyl Conflict many moons ago. That album knocked me out, and it’s one of those rare records that I first heard in my late 30s, but I listened to enough to learn every nook and cranny of it. If you ever come across a copy of that one pick it up, as it’s usually cheap.

Neither Even Serpents Shine nor this first, self-titled Only Ones albums ever got released in the States during the band’s heyday… instead, we got Special View, one of those mongrel collections of British bands’ material repackaged for the American market. Compiling songs from the first two Only Ones albums, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with Special View, but it never clicked with me… I could just tell this wasn’t how we were supposed to be listening to these songs, and just like when you hear the original UK track listing of the Clash’s first album, everything makes a lot more sense when you hear these songs in their original context, including the bits that some suit or another decided weren’t good enough for American ears.

Reading up on this self-titled album to prepare for writing this staff pick, I didn’t see too many kind words for it. People’s criticisms fall into two camps. There are the folks who dismiss the album because none of the other songs are as good as “Another Girl, Another Planet.” Fair enough, I suppose, as I’m sure an album full of pop bangers of that caliber would have been something to behold. But taking the album on its own terms, I like how it starts with its two most accessible songs, “The Whole of the Law” and “Another Girl, Another Planet,” then writhes around in this druggy, dream-like space for the rest of its running time. It seems appropriate given the lyrical subjects. The other criticism I see of this album is that it’s not punk, to which I reply… “so what?” Did the Only Ones ever present themselves as punks? “Another Girl, Another Planet” appeals to a lot of punks, but beyond that, I’m not sure where that expectation arises, other than from the time and place in which the Only Ones were making music. Only Ones drummer Mike Kellie was in Spooky Tooth, for chrissakes, so I don’t think they’re too concerned with their stash of punk points. (This is, of course, putting aside the fact that Spooky Tooth’s album Ceremony: An Electronic Mass (one of the many albums Dominic has turned me on to over the years) is, by my arbitrary metric, pretty punk, dude.)

Anyway, back to this Only Ones album. Is it a great album? Perhaps not. It’s certainly not as great as Even Serpents Shine, though I can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t aspire to greatness. It’s a murky, dingy album, the jacket’s muted, earthy, and unassuming layout doing a good job of capturing its overall approach and vibe. It certainly pulls me into its world, and all the way in at that. The album, particularly its second side, evokes what I imagine withdrawals must feel like, time moving slower than it seems like it should, the minutes grinding past like sandpaper against your skin. Not that it’s a difficult listen, just that it distorts your sense of time and makes you listen on its own terms. It’s an album to smoke a joint to and lose yourself in, not to throw on while you’re washing the dishes.

Right now I’m still basking in the glow of acquisition, so who knows where this album will land with me in the long term? Will it stick to my turntable like Even Serpents Shine, or will it live on the shelf, doing little more than making my Only Ones section feel complete? Either way, I’ve already gotten several enjoyable spins out of it, and I’m nowhere near ready to file it away.

Hatfied & the North: The Rotter’s Club LP (Virgin, 1975)

I’ve often said that “when it rains, it pours” is the most useful cliche in the record world. I always think of the time when we had three copies of the infamous Beatles “butcher cover” in stock at one time. I found them all in the wild, close enough together that I wondered, “is this record even rare?” Of course I haven’t seen another one since, so I’ll chalk that up to coincidence. The last few months have been slow for us in terms of used stuff coming in, but the floodgates opened over the past couple of weeks and the vinyl gods have inundated us with cool stuff. Our used drops should look pretty good for the next several weeks. Of course I kept a few items for myself, which leads me to this week’s episode of the synchronicity files.

I was on a house call where this guy had an amazing collection. His entire basement was full of packed shelves of CDs, vinyl, and books, and even as someone who has spent a lot of time looking at people’s music collections, it was impressive. When I got back to the store, I told Dominic it looked like the guy had bought just about every reissue reviewed in Mojo and Ugly Things since the 80s. We were chatting about our favorite records, and he told me his all-time favorite record is Soft Machine’s Third, and that he was a big fan of the Canterbury scene, including bands like Soft Machine, Caravan, and Hatfield & the North. I know a little about that music, but not a lot. I wrote about Caravan’s In the Land of Grey and Pink as my staff pick a few years ago after hearing a track on the BBC 6 program The Freak Zone (actually, I swear that I did, but now I can’t find the post to link it), but Canterbury is a world I’ve brushed up against, not dove into. Anyway, when someone who has 20,000 records in their basement tells you what his favorite record is, the smart thing to do is to listen to that record, so I listened to Soft Machine’s Third. It is excellent, and you shouldn’t be surprised if I write about it for my staff pick somewhere down the road.

I was looking at that collection on a Saturday, then on Monday I got to work and started getting settled in, and Jeff sends me a message that someone called the shop about selling some records and that it sounded promising. I had a moment, so I called the guy back, and since my next few days looked pretty busy and he was available, I went straight out to look at his records. It turns out the guy had a killer collection full of experimental music from the 70s and 80s, including a lot of UK imports, and you’ll see those records popping up on our Friday Instagram posts over the next several weeks. Oddly, this collection included many of the records I had just been talking about at the other guy’s house two days earlier… many of them records I’ve never seen or seen only once or twice. This happens a lot… I’ll buy two collections at more or less the same time and think to myself, “these two people should be friends.” I’ve never actually made a record love connection, but when the universe rings me up I try to answer, so I skimmed copies of Soft Machine’s Third and Hatfield & the North’s The Rotter’s Club off the top of that buy and brought them home.

For whatever reason, The Rotter’s Club is the record I keep coming back to. I think this might be a signal that I’m developing a taste for Canterbury. I may be speaking out of turn here because I’m a neophyte rather than an expert in Canterbury, but here’s a quick rundown. The scene gets its name because it was centered near the English town of Canterbury (the same Canterbury from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales). Scene fulcrum Robert Wyatt’s mother owned a 15-bedroom Georgian mansion near Canterbury, and many of his musician friends rented rooms there. Musical connections formed, people came and went, projects formed and splintered… it’s a whole long story I’m not qualified to tell, so look it up if you’re interested.

To my ears, Canterbury music brings together three musical styles: whimsical, often absurdist pop; sophisticated classical composition; and incantatory psychedelic improvisation. Those elements were all in the air in late 60s and early 70s Europe, but they didn’t come together anywhere in quite the same way they did in Canterbury. Critics often compare the whimsical pop element to Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, but Floyd were contemporaries of the Canterbury scene, not influences on it, and the Soft Machine often played the UFO Club alongside Floyd in both bands’ early days. The playful lyrics, filled with absurdities in the vein of Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll butting heads with low-brow jokes and puns, often garner comparisons to Monty Python. However, these playful passages sit, perhaps slightly awkwardly, next to complex, classical-influenced compositions that would coalesce into prog (many of the Canterbury bands formed before prog stalwarts like Yes and King Crimson had released anything). And even these proto-prog passages might drift away from the tight compositions and arrangements and do some free-form psych improvising for a few minutes. It’s a mixed bag, and it makes it harder to find your way into this stuff because if you’re interested in only one or two of those elements, the others may grate on your nerves.

The Rotter’s Club is a prototypical mix of these elements. I’m still not sure I’m 100% sold on the opening track, “Share It,” but from there I’m on board. And who can’t get behind song titles like “(Big) John Wayne Socks Psychology On The Jaw” and “Your Majesty Is Like A Cream Donut?” Actually, there are probably a lot of you out there who can’t, and if that’s the case, then you can ignore this whole corner of music history. The same goes if you hate early Yes and Crimson, or you can’t stand German progressive rock (aka “Krautrock”). I guess you have to have a pretty open mind to like this Canterbury stuff, or maybe you just need to be a middle-aged Anglophile who spends way too much time and money on music. Either way, they got me.

Kaaos / Cadgers: Split 7” (Lärmattacke Records 2022, original P. Tuotonto, 1981)

Like a lot of you out there, I took home a big stack of releases from the batch of Lärmattacke Records reissues we got in a few weeks back. As much as I’ve enjoyed all of them, I return to this one over and over. It’s funny, because I was on the fence about whether I needed to keep a copy. I’m not sure why… I think I had it in my head that these were less interesting, formative recordings by both bands and that I had the tracks on other compilation releases. It turns out neither of those things were true.

I don’t feel qualified to give the historical background on this record in the same newsletter that Usman, SSR’s resident scholar of Scandinavian hardcore, writes in, but I’ll do my best. Originally released in 1981, the Kaaos / Cadgers split must have been one of the earliest Finnish records in the hardcore style. In fact, it’s early even by worldwide standards, released in the same year as landmark early hardcore records like Minor Threat’s first EP, Black Flag’s Damaged, Discharge’s Why, and Dead Kennedys’ In God We Trust, Inc. Both bands were very young—teenagers, as far as I can tell… they all look like babies on the cover—and had long careers ahead of them, with Kaaos undergoing a series of lineup changes and releasing several more records, and Cadgers changing their name to Riistetyt and releasing their own impressive discography.

I have a huge weakness for young punk bands that leave it all on the table with little sense of finesse, and that’s how both bands play here. It seems like most people prefer the Kaaos side because it’s just so fucking fast. It must have been one of the most intense hardcore records released at that point, with tempos matched only by the Bad Brains and the Middle Class, but delivered with a chainsaw-wielding ferocity reminiscent of Discharge. The first track, “Kytät On Natsisikoja” (“Cops are Nazis”) became a Finnish punk anthem thanks to its infectious, shout-along chorus, but as someone who doesn’t speak Finnish, I’m just as enamored of the whiplash effect I experience when the song swings between the verses, where the drummer wails on the cymbals, to the verses where he goes to the toms. Throughout the record, the tempo seems to snap suddenly up and down, each member of the band clambering to catch up to the beat or let it catch up to them. The vocals are raw as fuck, frequently pushing into the red, but delivered with a total lack of posturing… the singer doesn’t scream or growl or bark, just yells with brute force like a total fucking psychopath.

The Cadgers side is a little different, but I play it just as much as the Kaaos side. The recordings are similar, which is interesting because they were recorded at different studios, albeit only a few weeks apart. A lot of that similarity comes from the way the vocals distort on the loudest and most intense parts, something I can never get enough of. As I mentioned above, the tempos aren’t as frantic on the Kaaos side, but my favorite track is the last one, “Kirkot Kyteen,” which is the slowest one on the record. I love how the singer lays into the last syllable of each line in the verses, stretching them out to absurd proportions to make room for more unhinged snarling. I can picture the rest of the band egging the singer on while he recorded his vocal tracks… “make it crazier!” On the choruses, the slightly off-time backing vocals add to the chaotic feel, and there’s a rad guitar lead squeezed in there too.

So, musically, the record rules. As for my assumption that I had these tracks on compilations, that was not true at all. Usman can correct me on any / all of this stuff, but from what I can tell, the Cadgers side of the split never appeared in full on any compilation release. I assumed the Kaaos side appeared on one of their several compilations, but it’s not on Höhnie’s Totaalinen Kaaos collection, which is where I had assumed it would be. The only comp it appears to have been on is Lost and Found’s 1994 CD collection, Total Chaos, though according to Discogs, that CD omits the last song from the split (even though it appears on the disc’s track listing). I don’t think I ever owned that CD anyway.

Hindsight being 20/20, it seems obvious this record would have bowled me over. It’s a classic record whose existence I had known about for years, but never checked out. It turns out there’s a reason people drop over a grand for the 200-copy first pressing, and it’s not just because of the rarity. So yeah, if you’re in the same boat as me, pick up one of these while you can. I think it deserves a place in the pantheon of great 80s hardcore records.

Rat Nip: My Pillow 7” (Songbook Records, 2023)

Rat Nip’s previous 7”, Comfortable Chair, was Record of the Week when it came out in September 2020, and My Pillow would have been Record of the Week this week if it hadn’t already sold out. I knew this record was limited and that it would be really good, so I got what I thought would be enough copies to last us a minute. However, they arrived at the same time as the Koro repress, and we got a massive flood of orders. Over the past week, I’ve picked a lot of orders that had both Koro and Rat Nip 7”s, and with good reason. I try to reserve the Record of the Week honor for things we can sell to you, so fuck it… I’ll make Rat Nip my staff pick.

For those of you who didn’t catch Rat Nip’s demo tape or first EP, at their core, Rat Nip is a dark and heavy hardcore band in the tradition of Black Flag’s Damaged. While Rat Nip doesn’t imitate Black Flag’s musical quirks in the manner of Annihilation Time or someone like that, the desperate vibes are similar. Like Rollins on Damaged, Rat Nip’s vocalist sounds like they’re mustering all their strength for a last spasm of anguish after soaking up years of abuse. While Rat Nip’s singer never goes fully unhinged a la “Damaged I,” the comparison I hear is based on all the pain mixed in with the power and aggression. Rat Nip’s vocals don’t feel like posturing; they feel like they come from somewhere deep and real.

Rat Nip’s rhythm section is rock solid, executing these tracks with the workmanlike precision and power one expects from a band from Pittsburgh, where the bar for hardcore punk is so high. The rhythm section rarely calls attention to itself, but if you are listening, there are moments of finesse like the blink-and-miss-‘em bass breaks in “Too Late” that betray just how deft and intricate these performances are.

The star of My Pillow, though, is the guitar. It’s one thing to find a workable guitar tone and use it for the entire record (something way too many bands cannot do), but it’s something else to use the tone and texture of the guitar in an interesting, artistic way. The riffs on My Pillow could stand on their own, but they’re enhanced by the way Rat Nip sculpts the sound. Much of the record uses a Public Acid-type approach of one guitar track with a crunchy tone and another one that’s totally fucked (or at least fucked from a different direction), but it’s far from a formula. Just check out my favorite track, “Too Late,” whose slow part features a crystal clear guitar chiming on the skinny strings before it descends into a black metal-ish, reverb-drenched spooky lead. Another favorite moment is in “Old Sky,” where you’re bopping along to a fist-pumping verse and then when the chorus kicks in this super chunky, Celtic Frost-sounding guitar track touches down in the mix for just that part. So sick.

Rat Nip’s attention to tone and texture also extends to the non-hardcore passages on My Pillow. There are several brief moments of haunting static and feedback, and a short sound collage between “Hurt People” and “Old Sky” that is genuinely fucking creepy. I would be interested to hear more stuff like that, but I’m sure Rat Nip doesn’t want to become fucking Neurosis or something.

If you’re wondering about my photo for this piece, here’s the story. A few weeks before My Pillow came out, a promo package arrived at Sorry State from Songbook Records containing a poster for My Pillow (currently hanging in Sorry State’s window) and the baggie I’m holding. It’s labeled “prop for the new insert,” and, without the actual insert, I was puzzled why they sent me a bag of Fritos and dried fruit. While the image on the insert isn’t easy to parse, I take it that the baggie contains actual “rat nip” that, like the body of the punk who just offed himself in the photo, will provide a tasty treat for our rodent friends.

Like I said above, unfortunately My Pillow is sold out at Sorry State and from Song Book Records. Song Book says they won’t repress the record, so if you see a copy floating around a distro or shop, grab it while you have the chance.

The other day I was standing by the stage at a gig, chatting with my friend Billy as Flower set up their gear. Talked turned to the band Nausea, and Billy mentioned he first heard Nausea when he picked up one of their Punk Terrorist Anthology CD collections on a school field trip to Florida. That made me remember that, coincidentally, I also discovered Nausea on a school field trip to Florida. My senior class trip was to Disney World in Orlando. On the way back to Virginia, we stopped for a day in Daytona Beach, and since I went to the beach all the time back home, I skipped out on frolicking in the sand with my classmates and went looking for something more interesting. I ended up at some kind of record store or another and bought a copy of Nausea’s Extinction on CD. I didn’t like it then, thinking it was too metal. I can’t recall hearing it since then, so maybe I would like it now. I’ll get around to that one day, perhaps if a reissue comes through the distro.

Remembering how I found that CD unlocked a bunch of memories about school field trips. As I’ve noted many times, I grew up in an isolated environment. “Small town” doesn’t even cover it… soybean fields surrounded my house for at least a mile in every direction, and the nearest city was Norfolk, about 50 miles away. As a teenager into punk rock and skateboarding, I took every opportunity to get out of there. Whenever there was a school field trip, I signed myself up. I’m not sure if it was still the case, but it was a tradition at my school that, every year, the 9th grade class went on a field trip to Washington, DC. I figured out that you could sign up for the trip even if you were no longer in 9th grade, and I’m pretty sure I went on the DC trip all four years I was in high school. The bus would drop us off at the National Mall, right in front of the Smithsonian Museum, and while the rest of the class filed in to the attractions there, I ventured out on my own, looking for punk. This being pre-internet, I didn’t know where to look, and sadly I never made it as far as Georgetown, where Smash Records was at the time.

Another field trip I signed up for was when the French club went to a French restaurant. After years of studying French culture, the teachers had the idea to treat us to some French cuisine, but the closest French restaurant was four hours away in Alexandria, Virginia. I remember liking the meal, though the only dish I remember was a bright green soup the color of the walls at Sorry State.

After our meal, we had a small block of unstructured time in Old Town Alexandria, where I found a small record store. I don’t remember what it was called. In my mind, it was on the second floor of a building, though I may be mixing it up with one of the other hundreds of record stores I’ve visited in my life. While I remember little about the store, I remember exactly what I bought: a single by the Holy Rollers (which I bought because it had the Dischord logo) and this single by the Clash.

I haven’t listened to any of my Clash records in years, though I have a lot of them. I have mixed feelings about them as a punk band, but it would be hard to argue they didn’t have talent as songwriters, and their tunes got hooks into me early. Exploring punk in the pre-internet days, they were one of the biggest names associated with the genre, and (some of) their music was easy to find. In high school I thrifted a cassette of Combat Rock that I listened to all the time. To me, it seemed at least as punk as Black Flag’s Slip It In or 7 Seconds’ Soulforce Revolution, other releases I stumbled upon in my early days. The Clash also rivaled the Sex Pistols in terms of the attention they received from mainstream media, so I read several books about them back when the only punk bands that featured in libraries and bookstores were them and the Pistols.

Whenever I get a hankering to listen to the Clash, as I did the other day, I end up spinning this single. As many great songs as there are on the Clash’s albums, many of their best ones only appeared on non-album releases like the The Cost of Living and Black Market Clash. This single features two songs from The Cost of Living, which was never released in the US. This single was never available as a stand-alone item… it was only sold as a bonus item that came with initial US pressings of the Clash’s first album. As a single, it’s a monster, with a Strummer song on one side and a Mick Jones song on the other. The Strummer song, “Groovy Times,” is good. It’s a lot like the material on Give ‘em Enough Rope, which makes sense because the Clash first demoed the song during the sessions for that album.

Truth be told, though, I’m a sucker for the Mick Jones songs, and “Gates of the West” is one of his best. From what I can gather, the song is about the Clash’s desire to break it big in America, a task they’d only started to tackle when they wrote this song. They pack the song with great melodies, and I love how the music has a similar mix of swagger and trepidation as the lyrics, with Mick belting out the chorus but more hesitant, almost mumbly in the verses. It’s crazy to me they never put this on an album, as it’s one of my favorite Clash songs.

That’s a rather roundabout way to recommend you a single tune, but if you haven’t heard it, here it is. Here’s to field trips!

Lately the grind of running Sorry State has been weighing on me. We’ve been busy and I feel like I’m falling behind on essential tasks. When I get overwhelmed, it’s hard for me to enjoy music. The problem is compounded because listening to music is part of my job for Sorry State, and sometimes it can feel like an endless treadmill of getting new releases in, giving them a few listens, and moving on to the next thing. Last weekend I blocked off a few hours of unstructured time for decompression… no plans, nowhere to be, no pressure on myself to take care of anything on my to-do list, just a little time to feed my soul whatever it needed in the moment. So, of course, I ended up listening to records.

I’m not sure what prompted me to pull out these two Fairytale records. They might have been at the front of my mind because I’ve been hearing rumblings they have an LP in the works. At any rate, I had that feeling that these are the records I wanted to hear in that moment, and since I had the time, I threw them on. And they sounded great!

I just re-read my descriptions for these two records I wrote when I named them Record of the Week in 2020 and 2021, and I don’t think I hit the nail on the head as to what’s special about them. As I wrote, Fairytale’s foundation is in noisy d-beat hardcore in the tradition of Swedish bands like Anti-Cimex and Shitlickers, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to describe them simply as a noisy d-beat band. But there’s so much more to their music, particularly on their self-titled 5-song EP on Desolate Records. Whereas a lot of d-beat bands aim for a heavy sound with a robust bottom end, Fairytale’s sound is like phyllo dough, a bunch of thin layers that feel substantial together without losing that sense of delicacy and complexity. I swear I hear phantom sounds emerging from the mix, poltergeists of feedback, echo, and distortion that dart through the music but evaporate before you can pin them down.

“Fantasy,” the first song on the 5-song EP, is my favorite track on these two EPs. Starting with a single guitar playing a simple, vaguely bluesy riff, inevitably the song erupts into a straightforward d-beat assault. However, there’s so much expression and subtlety to the playing. I love the way the guitarist accents the higher strings in part of the main riff rather than just banging away on the power chords. The riff creates an intense dynamic, interacting with the inventive vocal cadences and rock-solid rhythm section to create that alchemical magic I wrote about above. I also love the song’s coda, where the rhythm section continues barreling forward while two lead guitar tracks explode then wander away from one another, the rest of the band coming in for a final thump before the song lands and kicks up a pile of dust.

Sunday afternoon I posted some photos of my weekend playlist to Sorry State’s Instagram stories, and Fairytale’s guitarist Dan responded and offered to share recordings of their upcoming album. They were in my inbox when I got online Monday morning, and I listened to the record at least five times in a row. After that, I put it away, because I like to save some excitement for when the record arrives with its complete artwork and packaging. It was tough to stop listening, though, because it’s so killer. It picks up right where the EPs left off, leaning in to that ephemeral magic that is such a distinctive aspect of their sound. Of course, when it’s out we’ll do our best to get copies for Sorry State, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about it in the other parts of the newsletter.

Another year is behind us, and it’s time to take stock. As always, there is so much great music out there for anyone who cares to pay attention to it. I know it’s nerdy, but I relish composing my year-end list. It’s sort of like those gratitude journals that people do nowadays, forcing you to give attention and acknowledgement to moments of joy you experienced over the previous year. And the hope is that, as a reader, maybe you’ll get turned on to something you didn’t already know about. I know that happened to me as the Sorry State staff worked out our lists behind the scenes over the past couple of weeks.

A note about my top 10: in the past, I have excluded Sorry State releases from my year-end lists. I thought this was important both to maintain some semblance of objectivity and because I try as much as possible to treat my children with equal love and attention. However, this year there were two releases on Sorry State that I think made significant contributions to punk and hardcore, and it felt wrong not to include them in my top 10. However, I haven’t included any Sorry State releases in my list of honorable mentions, but our other nine releases from 2022 all deserve a place there.

Also, note that none of these lists are in any order. It’s hard enough to narrow these things down, much less rank each item.

So yeah, here’s what moved me this year…

Daniel’s Top 10 of 2022

Straw Man Army: SOS 12” (D4MT Labs)

If you’re reading this, hopefully you already know about Straw Man Army. If you don’t, stop what you’re doing and listen to the two albums they’ve put out so far. Their music is thoughtful and earnest and beautiful in a way I rarely associate with punk, particularly hardcore punk… they’re one of those rare bands that is unmistakably punk while challenging punk’s philosophical and aesthetic norms and expectations. Most of all, though, they’re just a great band who writes great songs, and SOS finds their anarcho-punk sound evolving to embrace elements of psychedelia and pure pop. While their sound is more akin to bands like Zounds and Crisis, being a Straw Man Army fan today reminds me of being a Fugazi fan in the 90s, when you knew you were watching something special happening in real time.

Nightfeeder: Cut All of Your Face Off 12” (self-released)

Cut All of Your Face Off is 2022’s windows-down, fists in the air, volume at max, everyone screaming along album. While embedded in the thriving world of dirty, Discharge-descended hardcore, Nightfeeder injects that sound with a hooky sensibility I find irresistible.

Rigorous Institution: Cainsmarsh 12” (Black Water Records)

Cainsmarsh was my most anticipated record of 2022… the one I knew was coming and couldn’t wait to hear. I remember the day it came in, taking it home, putting it on the turntable and thinking, “FUCK YES!” Cainsmarsh gives us more of the stomping, anthemic punk and incredible lyrics I loved on their earlier singles, but fleshes it out with a sense of dark musical abstraction that reminds me of early Swans, a sound tailor-made for their dystopian lyrical themes. Another of contemporary punk’s most essential bands.

Peace de Résistance: Bits and Pieces 12” (Peace de Records)

Peace de Résistance’s debut LP blindsided me. Maybe it shouldn’t have, since I already loved Moses’s other band Institute and Peace de Résistance had already released a strong demo tape, but I don’t think too many people had “singer for Institute makes a glam rock masterpiece” on their 2022 bingo card. While you can hear Moses’s punk background in his lyrics and in the seedy rawness of the production, this record has its sights set on something bigger than punk. I’m here for it.

Sniffany & the Nits: The Unscratchable Itch 12” (Prah Recordings)

On the first night of Scarecrow’s European tour, my friend Flo asked me if I’d heard the Sniffany & the Nits album yet. I hadn’t, and while he talked it up that night, I didn’t get to hear it for another month and a half. It lived up to the hype. It sounds like the people who made this record have musical interests and knowledge beyond hardcore punk, but appreciate the genre’s intensity (not to mention its blistering tempos). Sniffany’s singer is also an ultra-charismatic frontperson, which makes for a gripping album.

Reckoning Force: Broken State 12” (Not for the Weak Records)

Being just a couple hours away in Raleigh, we knew there was a wave of killer young bands forming in eastern Virginia, but Reckoning Force’s Broken State made a lot more people sit up and take notice. A total powerhouse of a record, its big hooks, blistering speed, and wall of sound intensity bring to mind the best bands of the No Way Records years.

Rat Cage: In the Shadow of the Bomb 7” (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Man, I love Rat Cage. Every time they put out a record I play it to death, and this new single is no exception. While always a fast, raw, and in-your-face hardcore band, each Rat Cage record sounds a little different from the others. The lyrics for “In the Shadow of the Bomb” were inspired by a trip to Hiroshima, and the music gives a nod to the heavy and anthemic tradition of Japanese hardcore.

Shaved Ape: demo cassette (Sorry State Records)

For me, Shaved Ape’s demo is the most exhilarating piece of hardcore punk that came out this year. It is raw intensity personified, and whenever I play it I have a distinctive visceral reaction that I don’t get from any other record. It’s a similar kick to 7-inch bursts of intensity by DRI, YDI, Genetic Control, Negative Approach, or Deep Wound, but has enough personality to stand alongside those records rather than in their shadow.

Woodstock 99: Super Gremlin 12” (Sorry State Records)

Super Gremlin is another record that floored me when I first heard it. I remember that first listen, feeling surprised and delighted as each new song went in a direction I never could have expected. While it’s certainly episodic, the snarl of nihilistic hardcore runs through the entire record (well, most of it anyway), as does a Ramones-esque fusion of the dumb and the arty. One of those records that sounds like nothing before it.

Alienator: demo cassette (self-released)

I haven't stopped listening to Alienator's demo tape since it came out in January 2020. Alienator channels the moment when punk and metal first crossed over, when bands like Corrosion of Conformity, early DRI, and post-Discharge bands like Broken Bones and English Dogs exploded with the unpredictable intensity of water splashing into hot oil. Alienator references Siege’s speed, Slayer’s technicality, Sabbath’s heaviness, and YDI’s raw anger, arriving at a blistering sound you can’t hear anywhere else.

2022 Honorable mentions

Indre Krig, Ignorantes, Horrendous 3D, Verdict, Fatal, Long Knife, Delco MFs, White Stains, Personal Damage, Dissekerad, Vidro, Gefyr, Primer Regimen, Inferno Personale, Fuera de Sektor, Savageheads, Axe Rash, Neutrals, L.O.T.I.O.N., Gauze, the Prize, A.I.D.S., Cherry Cheeks, Judy & the Jerks, Ammo, the Drin, Yambag

Favorite Reissues

Pohjasakka: Kidutusta Ja Pelkoa 12” (Finnish HC)

Totalitär: 1998-2002 12” (Skrammel Records)

Agoni: En Röst För Fred 12” (De:Nihil Records)

Mercenary: Demos Collection 12” (Beach Impediment Records)

Sluggo: S/T 12” (4Q Records)

Aunt Sally: 1979 12” (Mesh Key Records)

Varaus: Tuomittu Elämään E.P. 7” (Larmattacke Records)

These are 2022’s reissues I was most excited about. It excludes some like Sealed’s reissue of Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church and TKO’s recreation of the Portland edition of Poison Idea’s Kings of Punk because I already had original copies and thus the reissues weren’t as important to me (though the music on them is). The reissues that are on the list presented music that was new to me and/or brought together material I already knew in a way that felt exciting and fresh.

Best Live Sets I Saw in 2022

Axe Rash, Inferno Personale, Vidro, Tower 7, Ammo, Golpe, Public Acid, Fried E/M, Mujeres Podridas, Suck Lords, Electric Chair, Woodstock 99, Indre Krig

After a few years without venturing too far from home, in 2022 I got to go on tour and to go to a few fests. I’d love to write about each of these experiences, but in the interests of keeping this to a semi-reasonable length, I’ll just say that if you have the opportunity to see any of these bands, take it.

2022 in Record Collecting

I feel like I’ve calmed down on buying collectible records, but these pictures tell a different story. That being said, I remain a bargain hunter, and as in my score photos of years past, a lot of the records you see here have sub-optimal covers or other flaws that kept their prices down. However, some were just plain bargains, like my biggest dawgs, Swankys’ Very Best of Hero LP and Anti-Cimex’s second EP. The latter is extra special because my pal Anders sold it to me the day after Scarecrow played an incredible couple of gigs in Cimex’s (and Anders’) home country of Sweden.

This year I’ve been trying to get my collection organized. I’ve been putting new polybags on everything, adding the several hundred LPs I’ve bought over the past 5+ years to my Discogs collection (I’ve been good about cataloging my 7”s), and trying to get digital copies of everything I have on vinyl. It’s an ongoing process. A lot of my record-buying filled gaps this process exposed, so I bought a lot of things this year that I should have owned already. If I posted them here, you’d say, “you’re 43 years old… why didn’t you own that already?” That being said, I think these Dead Kennedys OGs with posters elevate them to “score” status.

It’s funny, the Scarecrow European tour was not the orgy of record shopping you might expect it to be… we were all watching our finances and more interested in absorbing the unique facets of punk culture we encountered than looting these places for their cool stuff. Even so, I picked up most of the things in these pictures on tour. I’m a sucker for records I can associate with a memory, and epic out-of-town gigs with my buds have always provided some of the best ones.

Most Wanted Records

Every year I think about what records I want the most and figure, “I’ll never own those.” However, when I look back at a similar want list I wrote about a few years ago, I now have every record on it, including the Chicken Bowels 7” I got this year. So maybe one has to will these things into existence? Universe, if you’re listening, I’d love to lay my hands on:

Appendix: EP 7”

Confuse: Stupid Life 12”

Joe Henderson: The Elements LP

Negative Trend 7”

Nico: The Marble Index LP

Svart Framtid 7” (I’ve taken so many swings at this one that it’s approaching white whale status)

Other 2022 Highlights

I got married!

I toured Europe!

Scarecrow released our second EP!

Went to some sick fests

Got two great new employees at Sorry State

Sorry State put out 11 releases on our label

Collaborating with Paranoid on their 10th Anniversary reissue series

Getting to do Sorry State exclusive colors of a few sick records

That’s all, folks. Here’s hoping 2023 brings plenty of good news alongside the inevitable bad.

The Breeders: Title TK LP (2001, 4AD Records)

A problem one runs into when your record collection gets to be a certain size is making sure you give adequate attention to everything. I have enough records that I can’t store them all on easy-to-browse, eye-level shelving. The letters T through W of my LPs are behind a chair in my living room. If I know I want to listen to Total Control or Wire, it’s easy enough to reach behind the chair and grab one of their records, but it’s difficult to flip through those records and see what’s there. Consequently, Tarnfarbe or Univers Zero don’t get played as much because they’re just not as accessible and those artists’ names aren’t often at the front of my mind.

I’ve always been aware of this problem, and for years I refused to alphabetize my records, reasoning that if I kept my records in that order I would only play records that start with certain letters that were more accessible on my shelves. Eventually, though, that chaotic organizational system outlived its usefulness… I just couldn’t remember what I had or didn’t have, and I’d often want to listen to something and couldn’t find it. My latest solution is that I alphabetize my records, but I get help from technology when it’s time to decide what to listen to. While records are great at providing an immersive listening experience for the album you’ve chosen, digital libraries are more convenient to browse. So, I’ve been trying to get digital copies of everything I own in a physical format. As this process comes together, I’ve browsing my digital library to help me select what record I want to listen to.

I love this app called Albums, where the default view of your digital library is a grid of album artwork in random order. It only takes a few seconds of scrolling to find something I want to listen to, and then I go over to my shelves and pick out the record and play it. This method has prompted me to play records I hadn’t played in years. That’s what happened the other day with Title TK. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to listen to that evening, and when I scrolled past the album’s cover, I thought, “that’s exactly what I want to listen to.” It may have been ten years since I last listened to Title TK—who knows—but I’ve been having a lot of fun with it since I pulled it out.

Title TK is kind of a weird, under-appreciated album in the Breeders’ discography. It’s their third album, but it came out eight years after their breakout second album Last Splash. Those eight years were chaotic, with many line-up changes and expensive aborted recording sessions. Apparently, Kim Deal was a brutal taskmaster in the studio, alienating many of the musicians who contributed to the sessions. At one point, unsatisfied with the drum performances she was getting from every musician she tried, Deal decided to learn drums herself, moving back to her native Ohio to woodshed. (Deal, indeed, provides some of the drum tracks on Title TK.) After years of false starts, a new version of the Breeders coalesced in 2000 with three members of Fear (!?!?!?!) joining the fray, as well as Kim’s twin sister Kelley returning to the band after a hiatus.

If you get two Breeders fans together, they’re probably going to argue about whether the first album, Pod, or the second album, Last Splash, is the group’s high-water mark, but I think Title TK is their catalog’s quiet masterpiece. Maybe it just hit me at the right time, but there are so many things I love about this record that are unique to it. The biggest ones are the senses of space and rhythm that characterize these songs. I always thought I heard a distinct dub reggae influence on Title TK, not only in the heavy bass on tracks like “The She,” but also in the mix’s sense of wide-open space. So much of my listening diet around the time Title TK came out was punk and hardcore, and I found it refreshing to hear a record that sounded so light and airy. Plus, all that space in the mix provides the perfect setup for blindsiding the listener with a weird sound coming out of nowhere, like the synth burst that interrupts the otherwise gentle “Off You.” Also, while the album is as full of great guitar and vocal parts like you would expect, many of the songs get their mojo from unexpected rhythms. The first track, “Little Fury,” is a perfect example, where a minimal yet distinctive drumbeat provides the song’s most important hooks.

Those are the parts of Title TK that are unique, but it also has all the things I love about the Breeders’ other records. There’s Kim and Kelley’s harmony singing… there’s almost always something special about siblings singing in harmony, and the sound of Kim and Kelley singing together is just pleasing to my ears, syrupy but with a haunting quality. And then there are Kim’s lyrics. They’re imagistic, full of apparent non sequiturs, but always alive with potential meaning. They’re like Stephen Malkmus’s lyrics, but without the self-conscious erudition (some might say pretension). As with the lyrics, Kim’s songwriting seems to follow an idiosyncratic internal logic, never doing what you expect but always sounding natural and intuitive. I just love the way Kim’s brain works.

So yeah… Title TK… an under-appreciated gem. Check it out, or if it doesn’t sound like something that would appeal to you, give some love to one of the lesser-accessed corners of your collection.

Oh, and if you’re familiar with this album and you’re wondering why I’m holding it up backwards, it’s because I like the back cover better than the front, so that’s how I have it shelved. There are quite a few records I have shelved that way. This one has been that way so long I almost forgot what I know as the front cover isn’t actually the real album cover.