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This Is Boston Not LA: 

Not much bad you can say about this - arguably the best compilation from the USA in the early 80’s. It’s funny that such a great summation of the New England (mainly Boston) scene circa ‘82 can have notable absences like SS Decontrol and DYS, and still basically kick your ass top to bottom. Before getting into the nitty gritty let me break it into tiers here:

Tier 1:

• Jerry’s Kids (6 songs)
• Gang Green (7 songs)
• The Freeze (8 songs)

Tier 2:

• Decadence (unfortunately only 1 song)
• The Proletariat (3 songs)
• Groinoids (1 song)

Tier 3:

• The FU’s (4 songs)

From this info there’s a couple pieces of information you can glean. 1) The best bands on this comp have, by far, the most songs. 2) If the FU’s are the worst band on the comp, it must be a pretty good comp, and since I’ve mentioned them, let’s start from the bottom. The FU’s stuff on here is forgettable in light of their 3 lps. Overly simple, a little cute, but ultimately not that great. It’s still classic stuff, but I honestly never reach for it when I want to hear them.

Teir 2 finds one of the best punk novelty songs EVER in Decadence’s “Slam” which is a song about slam dancing, and features the all time classic line “gonna rip your Rock Lobster shirt”. The drumming, guitar riff, and vocals are all caveman style, totally as low as you can go, which to me makes the song better.  I really wish they had more songs on here, and I’ve even heard they have a lost demo tape. I believe Dave Collins of DYS is on drums here. The Proletariat were like a baby Wire/GoF type band. Not really as interesting or nervy as those bands could be, and the song Religion is the Opium of the Masses is interminable, but their other 2 tracks, especially Options are pretty good. The singer definitely throws his voice to sound British which is pretty lame, but it could be worse. The Groinoids are probably the worst band in a conventional sense on the comp. Just totally out of time nonsense, but at this point that tends to be more enjoyable for me.

Now to the heart of this thing. Jerry’s Kids, Gang Green, and The Freeze all deliver enough material here to fill their own 7″s, and sometimes I wish these songs were released like that.  Jerry’s Kids bust it out like a tighter, well oiled version of SOA maybe. It’s not that much like their XClaim lp but still extremely catchy and great. These are some of my favorite hardcore songs ever. Gang Green probably produced their best songs ever in this session. They were still high school aged at this time, and the songs thrash and burn with teenaged hormonal imbalance. Vocalist Chris Doherty’s screeching and cracking delivery is still one of the all time greats to this day. Actually they remind me of a more out of control Urban Waste at this stage. The songs are almost all a blur of speed and fuzz and crazy yelling. Never again would Gang Green come close to this. The Freeze’s offering are the beginning of their Hardcore era, and personally I think their best material ever recorded too. The songs are garagey and tuneful, snotty as hell, and they stick with you forever after. Of course even though they were actually from Cape Cod, they turned in the title track “Boston Not LA”.

There is a boot of this but I believe the labels were changed AND it doesn’t include the original inner sleeve/lyric sheet.