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What’s up Sorry Staters?

Life’s been a whirlwind for me lately, so I might try to keep it brief this round. I did wanna draw all you readers’ attention to the fact that Sorry State is now stocking a lot of classic titles from Beer City Records. Most importantly, I wanna talk about The Faction. I don’t know a lot about Beer City as a label, but I know they also produce and sell skateboards. Which is sick! It’s kinda cool that a skateboard company is also focused on and does so well on getting permission to release classic punk and hardcore reissues. I think they also are the primary distributors for labels like Frontier. Pretty wild.

Anyways, back to my point: I love The Faction. I’m sure like many other people, my introduction to the band was “Skate and Destroy” playing during the opening of the Bones Brigade video. Even though Bones Brigade and all the Powell stuff was a bit before my time, I always found discovering classic skateboarding was slightly more accessible than discovering 80s punk and hardcore. Whether it was through friends’ older brothers or whatever, I somehow managed to see the Bones Bridage Video Show on VHS when I was a young teenager. I thought “Skate and Destroy” was such a ripping song and it blew my mind that a punk band was howling about skateboarding while paired with ripping footage of skating on screen. So perfect. Then when I found out that the Bones Brigade’s own pro skater Steve Caballero played in the band, my mind was blown even further. Young me was like, “I wanna rip it up skating and also have a rad hardcore band.” That was the full vision. The Faction’s first LP No Hidden Messages is great and still a favorite, but they have a lot of other great records in their discography. The early singles Yesterday Is Gone and Corpse In Disguise, as well as the later mini-LPs Dark Room and Epitaph, are all back in print thanks to Beer City. All on 12” format, and they’re pretty damn cheap. You definitely need tracks like “Tongue Like A Battering Ram” and the band’s re-working of “California Dreamin’“ in your life.

Maybe 12” reissues of 80s skate rock aren’t really on everyone’s radar. It’s just cool to me that the records are accessible. I love collecting og records, but the prices for originals are super frustrating sometimes. I think about the scenario like I was still a teenager. If I could’ve walked into a record store and bought a copy of any of the classic Faction records, then I would’ve been so STOKED. If you feel like it’s worth shelling out the $15 to hear some classic tunes, I’d strongly suggest it.

Anway, that’s all I’ve got. Skateboarding and 80s hardcore… you know, the usual haha. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

I don’t have a staff pick this week, so instead I’m going to whine. Y’all are down for that, right? You may have noticed that, in the intros for the past two editions of the newsletter, I’ve written about heading off to Thursday evening gigs after I finish putting everything together. That’s been a weight on me lately. In fact, last Thursday I didn’t finish the newsletter before leaving for the Fried E/M gig in Chapel Hill. I worked on the newsletter until after 9PM, then left for Chapel Hill (about an hour from my house), arriving in time for DE()T’s last song and missing Bug-E.M.S. I was in an atrocious mood, berating myself for not being more on top of my work, and I tried to avoid talking to anyone at the gig so I could sulk. Apologies to the few brave souls who approached me that night and had to soak up my bad vibes. After the gig I got home and worked until about 3AM finishing things up. Rather than sending it out at that hour, I scheduled it for early Friday morning.

The next day Scarecrow was playing with Fried E/M in Virginia Beach, so I knew I’d see those folks again. I know playing out-of-town gigs can stress some people out, but right now Sorry State is so stressful that I love going out of town for gigs… I feel like I’m away from all of my stressors. The crew from Not for the Weak Records was putting on the gig and they did a great job. All the bands killed, and I felt good about Scarecrow’s set even though I seem to be having problems with my distortion pedal. Friend E/M was incredible, and I even moshed a little, the first time I’ve done that in several years. Every time I think I’m a retired mosher, a song as good as “Inner Peace” comes around that pulls me back in.

Martin and Gabe from Fried E/M are old friends, and I’m stoked they were down to hang out after the gig. The Scarecrow, NFTW, and Fried E/M crews went down to the Virginia Beach oceanfront and hung out on the water until 4:30 in the morning, chatting about life and punk and the things you talk about at a post-gig hang. I loved how Usman and Martin had some kind of magical rapport… you’d think they’d be oil and water, but they’re more like an odd couple comedy duo. I’d listen to that podcast.

Back in Sorry State land, things have been so busy that I feel like I’ve had no time for myself. When I’m feeling depressed, I find it hard to get up in the morning and I linger over my morning cup of coffee for way too long. This week I resolved to get out of bed and get to work more quickly, but I haven’t been leaving work any earlier or taking it any easier. So, what ends up happening is that I work 12+ hour days, arriving home dead-eyed. I’m not sure whether it’s depression, stress, or some combination of the two, but I’ve had trouble finding enjoyment in the things that usually move me this week, most importantly music.

The one thing that sparked my musical curiosity this week was vaporwave. I was sitting on the couch, looking at my phone, trying to find something interesting to think about when I stumbled on a video that explained all the different subgenres of vaporwave with samples of artists from each one. I’ve known the term vaporwave for many years, but I can’t recall listening to any of the music. Rachel once described it to me as the background music playing at K-Mart, and some of it sounds like that, but not all of it. The more interesting things I heard reminded me of something you’d hear at a spa or in the background of a corporate training video, but what seems to separate vaporwave from your typical background music is that it sounds a little bit fucked up. Most of the releases have cassette hiss, like they’re ripped from an old VHS tape, and some have little glitches added in like the recording has been damaged. This style of music is meant to evoke peace and calm, but with vaporwave there seems to be something sinister lurking in the background. It’s like the cheery background music for a training video made by an evil corporation.

I keep listening to releases mentioned in that video. It’s all I want to hear right now. Why? I find it nourishing in my current state of mind, but I can’t put my finger on why. It’s like when you’re sick and all you want to eat is plain bread or oatmeal… something bland and grey or off-white. I’m probably being dramatic, but hopefully this week I can get a little more rest and get back to recommending you some killer punk next week. But, then again, Scarecrow is playing with Absolut in Richmond next Thursday, so that might not be a realistic expectation.

What’s up Sorry State readers? I’m gonna get straight to the point. I’ve listened to I am the Blues probably 10-15 times this past week. Released in 1970, this record is the sixth studio album by the legendary Chicago bluesman Willie Dixon and is nothing but heavy hitters from beginning to end. The album features songs written by Dixon but originally recorded by other artists such as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters for Chess Records. These songs have been covered countless times by artists like The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and The Grateful Dead to name a few, and are essentially part of the blueprint for rock n roll. Willie Dixon is pretty much the most badass person to ever walk this earth. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1915, he was one of fourteen children. His first venture into the world of music was at the age of four, where he sang in his church’s choir. Later, as a young teenager, he served time on prison farms in Mississippi, where he was first introduced to the blues. In 1936, he left Mississippi to head up to Chicago and began boxing. At 6’6 and 250 pounds, Willie was a force to be reckoned with. After winning the Illinois State Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship in 1937, he began his short career as a professional boxer, only fighting in four fights before leaving the sport due to a dispute over money with his manager. During his time as a boxer, though, he met Leonard Caston, and the two would harmonize together while at the gym. Caston was the first person to persuade Dixon to start taking music seriously, even going as far as to build him his first bass, crafted from a tin can and one string. He also learned how to play the guitar during this time. In 1939 he helped found the Five Breezes along with Caston, a group that blended blues, jazz, and vocal harmonies. However, this came to a halt in 1940 with the draft for WWII. Dixon was imprisoned for ten months for refusing to fight for a nation with such deeply rooted institutionalized racism. After the war, he formed a few more groups and recorded for Columbia Records. The biggest move in his career though came in 1950, when he signed with Chess Records as a recording artist but quickly became more involved with administrative tasks for the label. By 1951, he was already a producer, studio musician, talent scout, and staff songwriter for the label. Over the next decade is when he penned the legendary songs you’ll find on this album, my favorites being “Back Door Man,” “Spoonful,” and “The Little Red Rooster.” These songs are just incredibly written, and I’ll never get tired of listening to them. Willie Dixon is a southern legend and his music wonderfully stands the test of time and will be appreciated by music lovers for generations to come. If you ever want to learn about the roots of rock n roll, listen to Willie Dixon.

P.S. Shoutout to my brother William, who just moved to Seattle, for introducing me to the blues and Willie Dixon’s music. Thanks for fulfilling your duties as an older brother by always putting me on to cool shit. Good luck in Seattle brother, I’m gonna miss listening to records until the crack of dawn with you.

Hi Sorry State readers! Here we are again. I hope you got a chance to read about and hopefully have a listen to Dominic’s staff pick last week, Laura Lee’s Women’s Love Rights. Music is an incredible outlet to seek solace when things are extra fucked up, and right now they are extra fucked up.

I wanted to take this time to just pay general homage to some women who showed me, when I was only a kid, that it was not only OK to push ourselves into spaces traditionally held by men, but that it was absolutely fucking necessary. Bikini Kill was that band for me, and Kathleen Hannah was that voice. She’s still that voice. And I’m about to hear that voice live next month!

Bikini Kill is often the face for the riot grrrl movement, but they didn’t start the movement. It was a subculture developed by a group of women who were tired of the sexism in their local male-dominated punk communities. Riot grrrl started as a DIY foundation that allowed women to have a free space to share their feminist political beliefs through art and zines. Women could publish opinion pieces that would have never seen the light of day in traditional literature. Bands like Bikini Kill and others naturally worked their way into the riot grrrl scene, and of course they were also influenced by predecessor icons like The Slits and Kim Gordon. There’s a lot more to it, but for the sake of brevity, I’m gonna get back to Bikini Kill.

Kathleen was the most bad ass front-woman. She just didn’t give a fuck. She stood up on stage in her underwear completely unbothered, unshaven, hyper-focused on getting their message across, encouraging girls to the front! Great book, by the way. Often heckled and even assaulted by men in the audience, Bikini Kill would not budge. An unapologetic force to be reckoned with, they are an important part of punk history.

I remember being so stoked to find a first pressing of Bikini Kill’s Pussy Whipped from Sorry State a few years ago, which I think is their best album. One of my other favorite Bikini Kill items (also procured at Sorry State) forever ago is the 7” New Radio single, as it has three of the band’s best songs: New Radio, Rebel Girl, and Demi Rep. That’s seven minutes of essential Bikini Kill.

Anyway, we typically stock many Bikini Kill albums, but they’re sold out now, so check back for a restock! And if you’re local, you never know what gems you may find lurking in the bins like I did. And if you’re just starting out on your Bikini Kill journey, I would for sure grab The Singles album to get the most bang for your buck. Pussy Whipped and Revolution Girl Style Now are other must haves!

I found all three songs that comprise the New Radio single if you want to check it out below!

Thanks for reading! Have a good weekend!

Angela

https://youtu.be/91TC7BoWFvY

What’s up Sorry Staters, I hope you are doing okay out there? Another week and another newsletter. Thank you for joining us. With so much going on around us in the world of news, it is often hard to think straight these days. Here in the United States particularly there just seems to be bad story after bad story. We just have to find ways to keep going and not let all this negative shit get us down. Finding things that bring us joy and fuel our passions is so important. Thank goodness here at Sorry State we have all this great music to enjoy and share with you all. Records really are the best, and we have a ton of good ones here and plenty more on their way. Let’s talk about a couple that I have been enjoying this week that maybe you’ll dig too.

Firstly, a fun compilation that we got in called Good Times Rock N Roll Comp Vol.3.

I’m a sucker for a good compilation and especially dig a great cover version. This one although slightly out of my own personal wheelhouse was making me smile as I was playing it yesterday. It’s a double LP made up of all covers done by a truly worldwide array of punk bands. Some songs are old classics and some are more recent songs. The songs chosen range from Abba’s On And On to ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man, making stops at Judas Priest, Poison Idea and even the Fab Four along the way. The band Snooper do an interesting job on Come Together and the Abba song On And On is handled by Prison Affair particularly well. There are over forty tracks across the two slabs of wax and too many songs to go into here, but some you’ll really like and some you might think are just okay, but I don’t think there were any misses. Granted I have only had a couple of listens, but the tunes I did like made it for a fun party kind of record and worthy of picking up. My only gripe would be the lack of any kind of information other than the track listing and the fuzzy blown out type face used which my old man eyes have a hard time reading. But that’s just me being picky.

Often with these types of affairs you’ll hear something from a band that either confirms your feelings that they suck or makes you think, oh that was good, these guys aren’t bad. Lol. There are a few of these here. Don’t make any judgment before you listen is what I say. There also might be bands you don’t know and that can be interesting hearing someone for the first time doing someone else’s songs. Possibly, right? I think so. I also like that some bands just can’t quite pull off the musicianship on their interpretations. The slightly wonky amateurish recordings add charm, and what is lacking in musical chops is made up for with enthusiasm and good vibes. That’s not meant to belittle anyone involved here. On the contrary. Everyone puts in a spirited performance. Nice job all involved.

Moving along to something slightly different now and a quick point in the direction of a record I just discovered last week whilst going through our bins here at the store. A record by a band named Metz from Texas who recorded an album in 1974 that has been barely heard. Reason being the record was a private pressing of just a handful of copies and has not been officially reissued. The copy we had was a grey area reissue, but for $8 it will do just fine. Particularly as originals if ever seen go for big bucks. Which surprised me why the price for even an unofficial pressing is so low. We didn’t screw up either. I double checked online and you can pick up the same reissue I snagged for under $20. Why should you? Why indeed?

There’s not too much information out there on the record and the story behind it, but reviewers of these types of things have described it as Glam sounding with a sound far more at home in London than Texas. The comparisons to Mott The Hoople, Cockney Rebel and Alex Harvey et al are fair, as too are the observations that the vocals sound somewhere between Marc Bolan and Johhny Rotten. It’s all of that and then just a good rock ‘n’ roll band getting down. What sets the sound apart here is the addition of female vocals. They provide great back up and take lead on songs also, providing a bit more street swagger. They kinda remind me of the girls singing on the GG Allin album Always Was Is And Shall Be. It has that sort of vibe. Slinky and sexy 1970s style.

The glam tag I can see, though. Along with the vocals, there’s also plenty of tap tapping keyboard action and art rocky style song structure. Several songs have stretched out repeated codas, and it has been hypothesized that this may have been to please the audiences in the Texas clubs back then who would have been enjoying legal MDMA at the time. It’s an interesting theory. It could also be that they hadn’t written proper endings to songs and just went with the groove and feel of the recording and mimicked the live set. Who knows?

I read also that the main man behind the album is a Richard Metzler, which would explain the name. He apparently was linked with Houston’s Moving Sidewalks, the psych band that had future ZZ Top members, and did the photography for their album.

Probably the best thing for you to do is hit the link here and give it a listen and see what you think. Hopefully you’ll dig it and have fun listening. I know I have.

Okay, time for me to get out of here and let you go. I’ll see you next time friends.

Cheers - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

So I’m finally back to write for the newsletter after my trip to NYC, and STILL all I wanna talk about is Poison Idea…

But first, since I missed my opportunity last week, I have to write a little bit about the trip. Firstly, biggest appreciation to Jim and Amy in Philly (as always) and Mike H in NY for giving us Acid idiots a place to crash and putting up with our nonsense. It was truly humbling to watch some of the best bands in hardcore every night. All the bands ruled. Quarantine is insane, and I can’t wait for their new record. Impalers were a blast to see since it had been years. Public Acid played a spontaneous show at a small bar in Brooklyn and our homies in 80HD tore it the fuck up. And of course, Warthog’s 10-year anniversary performance was really special to see. If you haven’t seen footage yet, the dramatic opening of the curtain at the beginning of their set made my jaw drop. Public Acid’s own Eric Chubb kept drunkenly repeating, “That was coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Anyway, back to Poison Idea. TKO is truly doing the lord’s work with these series of reissues. Even though I already owned most of the recordings on these latest 2 offerings on other versions of these records, I still feel like a fool for not paying more attention when the limited versions dropped. Oh well, black vinyl will have to do! Goddamn, I really do feel like a pretentious asshole. The care that was put into the packaging on both of these reissues has great attention to detail and really feels like it was designed for someone who’s a big fan of Poison Idea. Get Loaded and Fuck, more infamously known as the Ian MacKaye 12”, compiles tracks from the Filthkick EP, Getting the Fear 12”, and an extra track. Only 6 songs, but daaaaamn such a killer under-the-radar batch of songs from the War All The Time-era line-up of the band. The attention-grabbing hype sticker even has little Easter eggs like a little headshot of Ian MacKaye. As for the other record… Of course, we are provided with the properly updated title for the reissue of Record Collectors Are STILL Pretentious Assholes. It doesn’t get much better than that. This classic EP also comes with a few bonus tracks including the band’s compilation cuts off of Drinking Is Great and Cleanse The Bacteria. Both LPs contain heavy duty inner sleeves with tons of cool photos both from the early period of the band and the latter period, along with setlists, flyers, etc. Both records come with funny and profane bumper stickers, both of which I want to paste onto my vehicle. But then obviously I’d have to get a 2nd copy of each record to have an unpeeled sticker (again, pretentious asshole over here.) Then, the most rad and legendary part of the packaging… Record Collectors includes a poster with a map key pointing out every single record included in the notorious cover photo… AMAZING. I hear that TKO has some more goodies in the pipeline with some other much pined-after bonus packaging ;)

Damn, I love hardcore. And records. I mean seriously, I think the cover of that record must be the model for me and a bunch of my dumbass friends’ obsession with all this mess. It occurred to me that all the stuff I just rambled about is probably information that is readily accessible from TKO before you buy either of these records. But who cares? I’m just reiterating because it RULES.

Forgive me for figuratively drooling all over you in this newsletter write-up. I’ll try to tone it down next week. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Shotgun Solution: Shotgun 7” (1983, High Rise Records)

I have little in the way of biographical information on Shotgun Solution. I know they were from Rome, Italy, and released this 7” in 1983. Other than that, I only have a few scattered shards of information I’ll share further down.

I believe I first heard Shotgun Solution in the early 2000s. I can’t pinpoint the first moment I heard them, but I had three primary sources for finding out about long lost 80s hardcore bands around this time. The first was exploring other people’s Soulseek libraries, and there were some doozies out there jam-packed with every punk rarity you could imagine. Another was making my way through the Kill from the Heart website and trying to hear every band it listed. The third was record collecting friends, chief among them Brandon from Direct Control and Government Warning. He and the people he introduced me to had a huge hand in shaping my taste in punk to this day.

Back then, I remember wanting a copy of this EP, but being convinced I could find a copy for under $50. Two decades later, I consider myself very lucky to have paid more than double for this copy. I bought this copy from Discogs on Record Store Day. I’m always a bundle of nerves leading up to Record Store Day, because we invest so much money in it. If it went poorly, we would be pretty fucked. However, it’s gone well every time (so far), and this year I think it went well. Weeks, if not months, of work go into making Record Store Day happen at Sorry State, and I remember basking in the glow of what felt like a job well done when I opened Discogs and saw this sitting there. Riding on good vibes, I smashed the buy button and my high was only slightly impacted when I opened the package to find the record had been over-graded. Oh well, the record sounds great, and that’s what counts.

The day this came in the mail, I brought it to a party at Usman’s house and my friend Rich told me he’d never connected with this record. I found that surprising, because I just love it. I’m a huge fan of early 80s Italian hardcore, particularly the loose and wild-sounding bands. Shotgun has plenty of that. While the playing isn’t straight up sloppy like Wretched, there’s a looseness that makes the record feel dangerous. The guitarist is also insane, with a noodly style that reminds me of Negazione in the way there are a million notes but you’re not sure they all make sense. And the lengthy, wah-wah drenched solo at the end of “I.C.Y.K.I.M.F.” is a fucking masterpiece. Trigger warning, though: that song has graphic and misogynistic lyrics that will be enough for some people to write them off completely.

Shotgun Solution’s wildness connects them to bands like Negazione, Wretched, and Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, but the anthemic, oi!-ish elements of their sound remind me of Raw Power’s big choruses and the oi! influences you hear in groups like Basta, Klasse Kriminale, and Nabat. There’s just a slight oi! feel, mostly in the guitars, as Shotgun Solution’s catchy and hyperactive anthems are more like classic California punk than anything else. In other words, you can sing along with it. (Though, as I mentioned, you might not want to sing along to “I.C.Y.K.I.M.F.”)

While Shotgun isn’t an easy record to get (I went twenty years without an attractively priced copy presenting itself to me), it seems like there are a lot of copies in the US. I remember an old Raleigh punk telling me about how Raw Power’s van broke down outside their house and the band stayed there for an entire week while they figured out new transportation. I think someone from Shotgun Solution might have been on tour with Raw Power, and they left a big stack of them at the house as thanks for the hospitality. I’m sure that person sold and gave away a bunch of other copies while they were in the States. Side note, this is not my story so I’ve probably mis-remembered the details, but I think it ends with Raw Power’s van rotting in front of said punk house for years until one night the punks lit it on fire and tipped it over. It was gone the next morning, apparently taken away by the city, and no one heard anything else about it.

Another short anecdote about this record. In 2011 (or maybe 2012?) I drove Smart Cops on their US tour. Of course, there was lots of talk of classic Italian hardcore, and the Smart Cops were rabid fans and very knowledgeable. Smart Cops guitarist Edo even played drums in the reformed lineup of Klasse Kriminale. However, at some point, I realized they hadn’t heard of Shotgun Solution. Getting to introduce a bunch of Italians to a killer record they didn’t know about is a highlight in my history as a record nerd.

What’s up Sorry State Readers? I hope everyone had a good week. As we enter these warmer spring months, I find my listening habits changing up a little. Everything is green and blooming again, and naturally I’m drawn towards more upbeat and bouncier music. This week I’ve been listening to a lot of Tom Tom Club but the album I want to bring attention to about today is Close to the Bone. If you’re not familiar with Tom Tom Club, the band was originally founded as a side project by Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, husband and wife duo of Talking Heads fame. Recorded in 1983 down at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, this record is the follow up to their highly successful first self-titled album and features heavy reggae and dance club influences all over it. The legendary reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry (R.I.P.) was set to produce the first record for them but failed to show up to any of the scheduled recording sessions, so they took matters into their own hands with the assistance of Jamaican engineer Steven Stanley, who at the time was only 23. The band also took the reins for the second album. Both records feature beautiful cover art by artist James Rizzi that I get lost in every time I look at them. Back to Close to the Bone specifically though, this album is packed full of groovy tunes. Tracks like “The Man With The 4-Way Hips,” “On The Line Again” and “Pleasure of Love” were all met with great underground success. I love the B-side of this record, it’s so much fun to listen to. I find the lyrics from “Never Took a Penny” stuck in my head after every listen.

“Never took a penny

Never told a lie

You made me so unhappy

Now I’m gonna make you cry”

Shit just hits sometimes. I also really love the song “Measure Up.” It’s a lively song that’s got a lot of different stuff going on in it; I’ll include the track in a link below. In short, this album is a lot of fun and a great listen while enjoying a nice spring picnic or out on the beach this summer. If you haven’t yet, give it a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYmglxcGyrY

Hi Sorry State fam! I hope all is well and you’re out there catching shows and not COVID, and that you’re buying/acquiring cool shit to listen to!

My pick of the week is the newly released Spread Joy II album. As I was writing this week’s blurb, I noticed a pattern in my staff picks. I’ve totally been gravitating toward fun, fast, high-energy grooves, so the new Spread Joy was a no brainer.

Compared to their much loved S/T debut album, this one is a good three minutes longer. Clocking in at a modest 17+ minutes, the band continues to give us only what we need and zero filler. And they really do a great job deciding what’s necessary, because I don’t walk away feeling like I was short-changed at all. Speaking of short, the opening track, Ow, is a 45 second whirlwind that might make you second guess whether you have the album on the right speed. It’s so damn catchy and abrasive (in the best way). My point is it’s so satisfying I didn’t notice how short it was.

The album is clean and crisp, bouncy and frenetic, with sick bass lines that lock in perfectly with the super crisp and clean drum beats. It’s razor sharp all around, and just as tight as their debut. But head to head, this one has an edgier vibe, and I think that has a lot to do with the vocal delivery of Briana Hernandez. Which is fucking rad.

Briana’s vocal style is diverse and high energy. It shifts from bouncy and poppy to shrill and erratic. I wouldn’t call it riot grrrl, but it does toe the line here and there. At times it even feels like she’s about to go full Kathleen Hannah. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a few ear piercing, rage-laden screams, but I’m also perfectly content with her fresh and really interesting vocal delivery. A great example of that is on the song Discomfort is Palpable, where it sounds like she’s crying the song instead of singing it. And if that was the intent, it’s brilliant. I want to hear more people cry their songs. Not cry ON their songs. Cry their songs. That’s an important distinction.

Having not heard Spread Joy until this latest release, I didn’t know what to expect. They are frequently described as post-punk, which, sidebar, is such a catch-all that it tells us absolutely nothing. Just in general, it’s become nothing more than a “safe phrase” to spare oneself a stern virtual lecture on what is and isn’t punk. You know, a wise man by the name of Ian MacKaye—maybe you’ve heard of him—was once asked how he would define punk, and he said (paraphrasing) that punk is just a free space. A free space to create. And that’s what Spread Joy sounds like to me. They sound free. They sound unburdened by labels and constraints and rules. They sound like a band that’s here to move shit forward, whether we like it or not. They sound punk.

Oh! We’ve got the new Spread Joy album in black and also a stunning clear coke bottle green. I know colored vinyl isn’t everyone’s bag, but there’s just something about clear vinyl that sounds far superior to other non-black vinyl. And don’t sleep on their first album either!

That’s a wrap for me. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Hello, and thank you for reading. I went to a few gigs over the weekend and had a blast. I saw QUARANTINE, who ruled. No surprise there. I was happy to get some hangs in and grab one of their tour tapes. Luckily, they put it online so everyone can hear it even if you don’t have a copy. Hell yes. This band rules and everyone in the band also fucking rules. I can’t wait to hear what is next for them. Alright, so we just got the new RIGOROUS INSTITUTION 12” last night. I’ve only listened to it one and half times, but I think I like it a lot, so I am mentioning it here. I just now discovered you can jam it online already here, actually. I don’t think this band needs an introduction, right? To be honest, when I listen to this band, I can’t tell what I even like about it. But it always keeps me listening. That’s why I said “I think” I like it haha. It’s a weird feeling. I think it makes me feel uncomfortable cos of the way the songs are written. I’m not sure. It certainly doesn’t bring me a feeling of joy, and it doesn’t bring me the satisfaction of teeth-grinding hardcore. The songs almost creep along. They aren’t driving, and they are not catchy. It kinda sounds like you are wading through some nightmarish swamp of shit, and the air you’re breathing is humid with a suffocating stench. The vocals are prominent in mix and sound just simply gross. It truly completes the sound. Anguish. That is what is sounds like. Does that sound like something you want to hear? Alright that’s all then, thanks for reading and thanks to everyone for the support.

Hi there, one and all and thank you for reading our newsletter. It means a lot to us that you take the time to do so, and we of course hope that you leave with something cool to check out and get into. This week the conversation here in America is centered around the right’s attack on a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body. These nut jobs are intent on rolling back fifty years of freedom and progress and won’t stop there. I mean, they’re even going after Mickey Mouse. This weekend should see protests across the country to oppose this potential overturning of Roe Vs Wade by the Supreme Court and here in Raleigh we are expecting folks to come out. Without getting into a political discourse here as this is not the place, I will use this as the link to my pick for you this week, as it seems appropriate.

Laura Lee: Women’s Love Rights. Hot Wax. 1972

On the humble radio show I do over at The Face Radio we played a track from this album, and it got some good responses and rightly so; it’s damn good. We played a cut called It’s Not What You Fall For, It’s What You Stand For and lyrically it says it all. Add the fact that the backing is a killer funk-soul track, and you have a certified winner. Go take a listen.

Laura Lee was born in Chicago and raised in Detroit. Her career began singing Gospel with The Meditation Singers in the late 1950s. She toured the country with them successfully for many years until making the switch to a secular career in the mid 1960s. Signed to Chess Records, they attempted to score a hit with Chicago produced tracks but a move to Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals resulted in the song Dirty Old Man becoming a top twenty R & B hit and a top 100 pop hit. This was followed by several more R & B hits, but in 1969 she left the label and after a quick spell at Cotillion found her way to the newly formed Hot Wax label in 1970. Hot Wax was the label set up by Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, the three brilliant songwriters and producers who had just left Motown. They scored hits with acts like Honey Cone, 100 Proof (Aged In Soul), Flaming Ember and with Laura herself. The label stayed around for just four years and was folded with acts moved to the sister label Invictus, another Holland-Dozier-Holland run label whose big successes were with Freda Payne and Chairmen Of The Board. The label is also notable for releasing the first Parliament album, Osmium.

Women’s Love Rights, the song, was released as a single and ended up becoming one of her biggest hits, breaking into the Pop top 40 charts. It’s a great song and sets the tone for the rest of the album where every song discusses the female experience from one angle or another. Musically, the sound is similar to the pop-soul sound of those Honey Cone records, but Lee’s gutsy and raspy soul delivery makes these songs just a little but more special and meaningful. That she is singing about woman’s liberation issues right as Roe V Wade was being settled into law is not lost these fifty years later. It is astonishing that we are considering overturning that landmark decision and rolling the clock back. It makes a work such as this record stand out even more now. It was already a great record but deserves even wider exposure to a new and younger audience.

Side one is packed heavy with bangers. Wedlock Is A Padlock is a terrific song that talks about exactly what you think it does. One of my favorites is the song I Don’t Want Nothin’ Old (But Money) where Laura puts down her old loves and tells us what will cut it with her. On Love And Liberty we get a telling of the state of affairs in women’s liberation and it makes you sad to think that there are still people (men) that want to turn back the progress that had been made up to that point back in the early 1970s.

The second side of the record switches gears slightly and tackles the subject of love and relationships in a more traditional manner with less of the protest but with just as much soul and passion. She takes an old standard like Since I Fell For you and extends it with the sort of personal confessional rap that Millie Jackson would do so well and make popular during her career in the 1970s. On Two Lovely Pillows, a love song, Lee’s vocals really make the difference and transform the song into something much more urgent and pleading.

It’s all great stuff and basically a top soul album from start to finish. Kudos to producer William Weatherspoon, another Motown man that came over with Holland-Dozier-Holland. He worked his magic on Freda Payne and Chairman Of The Board among some of the other Hot Wax & Invictus label acts.

Lee cut another album shortly after for Hot Wax called The Two Sides Of Laura Lee and her former label Chess also issued an album of her earlier sides called Love More Than Pride, cashing in on her current success but in the process creating a decent album of songs. Around this time Lee began a relationship with singer Al Green and left the Holland-Dozier-Holland stable, but soon after became seriously ill and had to retire from the industry. She reappeared later in the 80s with a gospel album and once fully recovered in the 90s continued her life as an ordained minister and singing mostly gospel.

It will be those late sixties sides and the two early seventies albums that she will rightly be remembered for, and I would encourage you to seek out a copy of any of the three albums I mentioned, but look out for Women’s Love Rights. It speaks to us now just as strongly as it did fifty years later. Thank you, Laura Lee.

Before I sign off a quick note to tell any of you that might be interested in knowing that we have in stock a few copies of The Gentle Cycle LP I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It’s a good album and on nice green vinyl too. Snag one while we have ‘em.

Okay, that’s my lot. Cheers everyone. Take care, love each other and I’ll see you here next time.

-Dom

Today we launched preorders for three new releases on Sorry State, and coincidentally test pressings for three upcoming releases just arrived yesterday. I’ll have plenty to tell you about those records in the coming months, but listening to the test presses last night had me reflecting on the process of releasing a record. Earlier this week I put a lot of energy into writing descriptions for the new releases, which is a weird exercise. I love writing for the newsletter, but I always struggle to write the generic blurbs that get passed along to distributors and reposted on the websites of stores and distros that carry the record. I feel like I know my audience for the newsletter. I imagine the people who read the newsletter are the die-hards like me who are eager to know about all the coolest new releases, and my job of telling you about what we carry is pretty straightforward. However, when I’m writing for the wider, more nebulous audience for the descriptions, it’s very different. The cliche is that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and I feel that when I try to both introduce and sum up a record I care about in one pithy paragraph.

For many of the releases on the Sorry State label, the official description blurb is one of the few things I write about the record. Which is ironic because these are the releases I feel the most connected to. While I lean on the bands for most of the creative work on the records I release, I develop a close relationship with releases as I shepherd them through the production and manufacturing process. This relationship feels even more intimate when I put out multiple releases by an artist. So, for my staff pick this week, I thought I’d give you an insider’s view of the three new releases.

The Sorry State label has never benefited from consistent branding. I’ve always released whatever excited me at the moment, and you can see trends in the label’s discography as I get into particular sounds or scenes. There are also certain styles I just like; Sorry State will always put out records that sound like early 80s hardcore. While the three new releases differ greatly from one another, each of them continues a thread that runs through the label’s discography.

Invalid’s self-titled LP is SSR-108, and given that it has the earliest catalog number, I’m pretty sure it was the first of the three projects to come together. (I typically only assign a catalog number once I have a master recording for a release; if you want to read more insane ramblings about catalog numbers, check out this old staff pick.) As I wrote in the main release blurb, Invalid appeared on my radar when they released their Do Not Resuscitate cassette on Cruel Noise Records. I didn’t know it at the time (though I might have assumed), but Invalid features members of heaps of other bands I like. If you cruise their Discogs profile, you can see connections to Blood Pressure, Caustic Christ, and EEL, for instance, but there are many more I’m sure.

It’s more than the pedigree that attracted me to Invalid, though. Stylistically, Invalid has this sound that I don’t hear often, but I love when I do. The three records I mentioned in the official description—Direct Control’s first 7”, COC’s Eye for an Eye, and Unseen Force’s In Search of the Truth—all fall under that umbrella. It’s 80s hardcore at its core, but with a bit of thrash metal in the riffing style and an emphasis on writing memorable parts that aren’t quite pop but are hooky as hell. So you get the intensity of 80s hardcore, the musicality of thrash metal, and the catchiness of more anthemic strains of punk brought together in one package. It’s a subtle balance to achieve, but Invalid nails it.

Beyond the style, I also love that Invalid performs their music with such intensity. Conventional wisdom states that hardcore is a young person’s game, but I tend to be fond of bands whose members are older. These bands know—if only intuitively—why they’ve stuck with hardcore. I love the sound of young kids discovering hardcore as an outlet for their youthful energy, but there’s something about old heads who use hardcore as a way of articulating and responding to life’s never-ending drudgery. It makes the music mean more to me, like hardcore is growing along with me as I get older and my values and passions evolve.

Next up is SSR-110, Woodstock 99’s Super Gremlin LP. While Woodstock 99 released a demo and a 7” before Super Gremlin, I’ve known the members for much longer than the band has existed. Their singer and drummer are both from North Carolina and I’ve known them and followed their projects since they were quite young. In that way, Woodstock 99 connects to another thread in Sorry State’s discography, and that’s documenting the hardcore punk from our part of the world. This part of the label’s mission, which is inspired by Dischord Records, waxes and wanes as our local scene does, but I’m always proud to put out music from North Carolina that I think deserves a wider audience. Not that Woodstock 99 is from North Carolina, but my connection to the band is personal, unlike with Invalid and Hüstler where I have had little real-life hang time with the band members.

Anyway, Woodstock 99’s three core members were in Cement Shoes, and I followed and enjoyed that band and the first two Woodstock 99 releases. I liked all of them, but I hadn’t considered putting out a Woodstock 99 record. Then my friend Trevor, who sings for the band, sent me the recordings that became Super Gremlin. I’m not sure if he was fishing for a label or just sharing what he made because we’re friends, but the record blew me away. It starts off in the (relatively) straightforward hardcore mold of their previous 7”, but bigger, bolder, and meaner, the crisp and bright recording and the band’s massive sound reminding me of War All the Time / Kings of Punk-era Poison Idea. But then the record goes somewhere else.

If you lived in the mid-Atlantic and saw Cement Shoes numerous times over the course of their existence, you probably noticed a change in the band. They’d always had an off the wall sensibility (just look at the cover art for their first album), but toward the end of the band, that evolved into full-on antagonistic crowd baiting. I remember a show where they opened for Warthog and L.O.T.I.O.N. in Richmond. Trevor harassed and abused the audience for the length of their set, to where I was kind of upset and worried about him. Now that I think of it, that was the record release show for their album, Too, and I remember one member telling me they sold zero copies of their record at the gig. It’s like they were daring the crowd to like them, and no one took them up on it.

I think the darkness of that era of Cement Shoes resulted from some particular circumstances, because once the members moved to Cleveland and reconfigured as Woodstock 99, the seedy darkness had reemerged as a more playful, yet still dangerous, psychedelia. One thing I like about psychedelics is their ability to unlock my sense of wonder, and even though I was sober and taking a walk on the nature trail by my house when I first listened to Super Gremlin, it summoned that sense of wonder. As I listened to each track, I couldn’t wait to hear what the band was going to do next. Super Gremlin isn’t like a genre record where you know what you’re going to get and the band impresses you with their adeptness at elaborating and interpreting a style. It’s a record that sees punk rock as a wide-open arena of possibility, and charges in whatever direction the wind blows. It’s a record that feels so fresh that I wanted to be part of it, even if I know some people will not get it at all.

Finally, SSR-113 is Hüstler’s self-titled LP, which compiles their two previous cassette releases on Sorry State. Hüstler is one of the few bands who I agreed to put out based on an unsolicited submission. People send me music all the time. Every day I get one or two emails, sometimes more, from people asking Sorry State to release their music. A large percentage of these I never listen to because I can tell that the person doesn’t know or care about what Sorry State does. Plenty of others I listen to and like just fine, but don’t feel the spark I need to in order to want to release a record. Putting out a record is a big decision that involves investing thousands of dollars and many hours of my and my employees’ time, and it’s not worth doing if I’m not passionate about the music. With these kinds of submissions, I suggest other places where they might send their music and offer to carry the record in our distro once it’s out.

Submissions rarely move me enough to want to release a record when I have no personal connection to the band, but when Tyler from Hüstler sent me what became their first tape, I was hooked. I couldn’t (and, truthfully, still can’t) articulate what I heard that drew me in so much, but Hüstler just had something. Their music had the intensity of the hardcore and punk I’ve always loved, but it sounded fresh. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard, but I knew that I liked it. That Tyler just wanted to put out a cassette and wasn’t pushing for a vinyl release (which is much more expensive and riskier) made it an easy decision to press up 100 cassettes and see if the rest of the world responded like I did.

And they did! Hüstler’s first tape sold out quickly, and once the physical copies were gone, the digital version kept getting downloads on Bandcamp and plays on Spotify. A few months later, Hüstler did a second recording that was even better than the first one. Without losing the intensity, they leaned into the more idiosyncratic elements of their sound and arrived at something even more original and memorable. The second tape sold out even quicker than the first, and also continued to get plays on Spotify and Bandcamp. I haven’t checked, but I’m guessing Hüstler has done more business in digital sales than any previous Sorry State artist. I think we hatched a plan for an LP compiling both tapes around the time the second EP came out. Given the strong reaction the first tape got and the fact that the second tape was (in my opinion) even better made me confident that plenty of other people like Hüstler just as much as I do.

Re-reading this lengthy staff pick, I realize I pretty much said what I said in the official release blurbs I mentioned at the beginning, only with a lot more words. Maybe this version clicked with you when the snappier versions didn’t, or maybe you should ignore my ramblings and just listen to the music and form your own impressions, because you can do that in the year 2022.