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Double post today since I vacationed for a couple days…

Unit Pride’s 7″ fits the characterization of “second rate but still straight” perfectly. They can’t really stack up to heavy hitters like UC, Youth Of Today, etc. from the ‘88 class of straight edge hardcore, but they still deliver everything you need. Fast catchy riffs give way to crew back ups and some solid mosh parts. The lyrics are about as sesame street posi-core as could be possible (”friendship means the world to meee”), but the songs keep a fast clip and the vocals are rough enough that it never leaves me feeling too silly. All the other tell tale late 80’s low rent edge core characteristics are here too. Drums that sound like buckets and boxes, clean bass, mosquito-buzz guitars. Arguably this is one of the first records of note from the genre that wasn’t influenced by early 80’s bands like Minor Threat, SSD, etc., and instead was modeled on (then) current bands like Youth Of Today and Gorilla Biscuits. Obviously when this kind of thing starts happening, it tends to signal that a particular musical strain is plateauing, and though the well was probably dry by the time this 7″ actually came out, it still offers some memorable riffs and sing alongs.

Track 2 is Wide Awake and I think this song is the best on the record. Its got the most urgent delivery, the hardest sounding riff, and probably the best breakdown, which is really all you should be looking for in something like this. There’s nothing to intellectualize, and you can’t justify this to the Brooklyn crowd. It’s like trying to sell a Kung-Fu movie to a serious movie critic. “Well the part where the hero fights with one hand tied behind his back on a roof-top has some awesome jumpkicks”.  In some ways this endears the style more to me. No jerk-off who has to use annoying/pathetic qualifiers like “raw”, “inept”, “blown out”, “psych-punk”, “later-flag”, “monster-riff”, is going to be able to rub their stink on this wonderful little slab. No, songs like Think About It are only for people like me, who can differentiate pressings of the Side By Side 7″, and who have a collection of live sets from WNYU’s Crucial Chaos, which Unit Pride performed on btw. And speaking of pressings, you’ll notice this is the original pressing on Step Forward records.

It was the best of times…it was the blurst of times. It was 2002, or actually it was 2001, which soon became 2002 when I first heard this weird dude Greg from Cape Cod had a new band with Justin from Down But Not Out, and 2 other guys I didn’t know. I could have never guessed the number of times I would end up seeing this band over the next 3 years, but I thought their name, Mental, was really cool.

I got the first tape they didfrom Greg at a show and when I took it home I was pretty sure it was recorded on a boombox. “I think they’d be good if they recorded in a studio, but I can’t hear any of the songs on this“. The titles were stuff like “Fuck Responsibility” and “High School Sucks” which seemed cool considering how over-serious most hardcore bands were at the time. So in the spring of 2003 when I heard they were going to the local Dead Air Studios, I was eager to see how things would turn out.

I rode out with some friends on night in May ‘02 to do the crew backup vocals on Mental’s first studio recorded demo (affectionately known as demo 2).  When we got there, they were finishing up guitar tracks. I recall thinking it would be a late night because they hadn’t even started the vocals yet, one of the many times in my life I’ve been so very wrong. Greg laid the vocals down for 9 songs in probably 40 minutes. Mostly first takes as I remember it, and he sounded great. Brash, angry, youthful and confident. The tunes sounded great too. I was shocked actually, at how awesome it sounded for such a young band. I knew this would be a new favorite. It sounded a lot like old New York hardcore bands, maybe with some other stuff thrown in, or perhaps just the hindsight the 90’s provided. I’ve never quite put my finger on it, but it sort of always reminded me of the first Sick Of It All 7″. Maybe with some Straight Ahead and Token Entry too. It didn’t really sound like one thing or a particular band to me, I just thought it was good, and at the time it pretty much stood alone. Logos for straight edge hardcore bands had got really scratchy and lyrics quite serious and wordy. When Mental came along they had big cartoon letters and seemed like they were having fun on their recordings (even moreso live). It kind of just took an unnecessary chip off the shoulder of Hardcore for a little while, without ever being too jokey or goofy. It’s not really easy to walk that line, and it was sort of how I knew they were something special. A breath of fresh (”fresh”) air.

I went to the recording for their 7″ later that year, again at Dead Air and I remember being at least a little surprised how much more they had their shit together already. They did 11 songs in a day I think. There might have been an extra half day to finish up vocals and do the mix, but I still remember being in awe at how fast the band had moved, even though they were releasing a 7″ they had enough material laid down to make a 12″. All of my bands up to that point had struggled just to get demos together. After demanding that someone yell “bust!” prior to a breakdown in one song, it was put on me to be the one to do it, although I think someone from the band could have done it better.

Once their 7″ came out it seemed like things never stopped for Mental. The record came out in the winter of 2003, but by summer 2003 they’d recorded a demo of the absurd side project Dumptruck, and another E.P. to be out by the year’s end. Tours and endlessly colorful t-shirts followed, as well as a couple more records. The first time I saw the whole USA from the window of a van was with Mental, lifting guitar cabinets and drums on a nightly basis. I guess it’s weird to write about stuff that is so recent, but it was good times, even when it wasn’t good times, and I still play these tapes (and 7″) pretty often.

An Insted test press - hmmm. Can’t say I love ‘em, or really even like ‘em. It’s like someone took 7 seconds, made the vocals even less threatening, made the songs longer, and then put a picture of 3 kids skipping down the road on the cover - how does this even qualify as hardcore? It’s too Boy Scouts Of America.  I’m not saying you need to be in full on GG Allin mode, but I dunno, where the hell is the anger? It’s like Crucial Youth only they don’t know it’s a joke.  Choose For Yourself, Live and Let Live, Be Someone… I feel like I’m watching that Stuart Smalley sketch on Saturday Night Live. I will admit that We’ll Make The Difference is a pretty classic Straight Edge Anthem, but a whole album of this stuff is just too much.

Shout out to Gil who is the only non-straight edger ever in history to like Insted. To me this is insane. It’s like going to confession once a week but not being Catholic. Gil you’re one of a kind buddy.  This one’s for you.

Well if you’re a collector of early Revelation items you know this is one of the top 5 rarities - Gorilla Biscuits 7″ w/ Todd Youth B-Side label.  I’d assume there was an excess of A-Side labels,  and so the plant just ran them out with leftover War Zone B-Side labels on the vinyl.  I thought these were numbered somewhere but I can’t see it in any of the pictures. The dude selling this tries to make something of the fact that the lettering is purple. There’s really no way to verify what’s more rare though. These were probably the last copies from this pressing sold, and I’d imagine they were just slipped into whatever sleeves were around at the time.

I used to really love this record, now I’d probably turn it off after the first 2 songs. Most of it is kinda poppy which is a good gateway to hardcore for a lot of kids, but the first 2 songs have a pretty straight up NYHC sound like Token Entry or, actually the first War Zone lp. It’s cooler than Start Today (the GB lp) anyway, which at one time was probably my favorite record, and now only makes me cringe. That thing pretty much serves as the blueprint for over-polished octave laden pop-punk/HC hybrids, although I guess it’s directly descended from the first Dag Nasty lp.  I’d rather just hear Break Down The Walls… or Breakdown “both demos”… or Break On Through (To The Other Side), honestly. I’m still straight edge though which is more than I can say for some.

If you’re into this, frankly the Buy-It-Now price is probably worth it. These were breaking $300 US a couple years ago, and given the weak state of the dollar, the fact that it’s driving up the price of nearly all hardcore records, and that Gorilla Biscuits are one of the most popular straight edge bands ever, it’d be a sound investment.

Youth of Today - Can’t Close My Eyes 7″ with blank b-side label is one of those random anomalies no one is really sure about. I’ve heard a number like 40 or 50 thrown around as being the quantity existing but there’s no way to confirm that, and since I’ve seen 2 or 3 I feel like that might be low. Some copies have something written on the label, or a picture glued to it, some seem to be blank like this one. Seems like it happened during the 2nd pressing as they all come in sleeves with white lettering.

For a record so awesome, Can’t Close My Eyes sounds like absolute crap on the original 7″. Later on they “remixed” it, and rerecorded the guitar tracks so that it finally sounded listenable, but on this version the guitars sound like they were recorded through a cellphone inside a tin can. Absolutely the worst guitar sound I’ve ever heard on a hardcore record… except maybe that Full On Straight track on the Generation of Hope comp. Even sounding like total garbage though can’t stop a song like Expectations. Even you straight edge hating druggies can dig a song like this, it’s the ultimate teenage anger track, complaining about the overbearing expectations of parental units. In general YOT sound most like Antidote and DYS at this stage in their career. The vocals are the most throat-shredded and spastic, the riffs at their most thrashing and uncontrolled, the vibe in general is just youthful anger. This is also the only YOT record to have a kind of militant stance about straight edge, more in line with DYS/SS Decontrol/Negative FX, than the positive reputation they have today, and all the dull post Insted bands that cite them now.

I wish there was a straight edge band now with vocals this out of control and raging. Cappo is just letting it fly on here with absolutely no regard. No matter how many bad bands these guys have been in since the 90s (Shelter, Never Surrender, Last Of The Famous, other pop-punk bands I haven’t heard thankfully…) this will always be a sick release and my favorite Youth Of Today record. Bonus:  2 dudes from 76% Uncertain are on this one. Hi Bob.

Alright here’s a wacky Wednesday entry for you. I’m pretty amped on seeing the new Indiana Jones tonight, and I’ll be sure to post a complete list of spoilers here tomorrow. When I saw Star Wars: Episode I on opening night in 1999, I deemed it “pretty good”, so you can definitely trust my opinion. Also I applauded, as did the majority of the audience.

 Anyway, there’s a guy from Prema (ha!)selling his late 80’s/early 90’s recs on good ‘ol ebay. If you don’t know Prema is one of the funniest bands of all time associated with hardcore. When they were 13 they had some band that was like fast dumb hardcore… I forget the name but they obviously get compared to Crippled Youth all the time. I’m sure they didn’t sound like them. Then they became Hare Krishna (ah the early 90’s), and got more serious, playing melodic-Hardcore. When they produced their follow up lp it was something like 60 minutes long, 2xlp, and “grungy”. First of all: Fucked Up eat your heart out. Second of all, I think they were barely out of high school. I’ve been waiting for the day I can score a copy of this thing outta the dollar bin or someone’s trash pile.

So one thing you might want is a test pressing of the No Escape/Turning Point split. I’ve mentioned before how godawful the Turning Point stuff is on here, but let me just say it again - WORST! I think I’d rather listen to an hour of Jay Leno stand-up. The No Escape side is pretty tight, heavy early 90’s HC. Not too tough guy, not too introspective, just lays in the cut. Tim Singer is the vocalist… I like Boiling Point Fanzine better than No Escape but it’s still alright.

There’s a Chain Of Strength Confusion sleevealready pushing $300. One of about 10 variations of the less good Chain 7″. I think this is some of the rejected vinyl from the Foundation press with a different sleeve. It looks crappy that’s the main thing. Early 90’s color Xerox, but if you are a Chain completest you’ve gotta have this. Hope you didn’t spend that stimulus check.

 Another test press up: Ink and Dagger’s “Love Is Dead”. The number of times I heard this band compared to Swiz is obscene. It’s more just early 90’s “chaotic hc”, like Swing Kids lite, on a vampire gimmick. Can’t believe anyone would still want this, but from time to time I still hear this crap discussed. This is definitely the least bad entry in their catalog, I dug it for sure when I was 16/17 (”SOUNDS LIKE A CRAZY FUGAZI!”). WHOOPS! Later on these guys read an issue of, probably some British magazine they found at Tower Records, and started name-checking Square-Pusher and Aphex Twin, like electronic music had just landed from outer space and they were the first to discover it. How embarrassing.

Oh, a Child Abuse 7″ on Muthathat somehow slipped in here. That just seems weird to me because there’s no other records from a similar time period, although I guess it’s regionally from the same part of the USA.  To me it’s just funny to think this guy was, by all odds, hanging out at Flagman shows, probably in a sweater vest or some Stussy shirt, with a Child Abuse 7″ sitting in the same box of 7″s that probably had multiple Falling Forward and Metroshifter records in it. This would be the point where some overly sensitive type, whose “salad days” were in this time period, and went to 164 different Lifetime/Resurrection gigs at the Middlesex where everyone played drums poorly and there were no fast songs, or pants that fit anyone, is going to pipe up and complain that I don’t understand, AND I’m a dick, AND Outspoken is still good, AND if you weren’t there you can’t make a qualitative assessment of the music, AND they’re much older than me and that means I don’t know anything………. Same old complaints I’ve heard every time I bring these things up, but face it — all of those bands are no good. I blame grunge, alt-metal, and shoegaze. You will never convince me otherwise. With maybe 5 exceptions, there are no hardcore bands from the USA in ‘92-’94 I wanna listen to. Hey it’s fine… I sang in a band that had a 3″ CDR demo. That alone is goddamn laughable.

Ok full disclosure: I just can’t take anything seriously that has stuff like these stupid flame graphics that are in each auction. Why does ebay even still have this stuff? Am I making my homepage at geocities infocommons?

Alllllllright. So if you’re straight edge, you’ve probably had a Turning Point phase at some point, and you probably know this 7″ (the one linked here is 1st press w/ both inserts). All these people love the Turning Point lp, it’s this big time straight edge hardcore centerpiece. Not me. That thing SUCKS. The vocals are wimpy and whiny. The music is over produced. There’s weird proto-90’s-emo parts.  Clean guitars (a travesty on a sxe hc record), slap bass (I want to know WHO OK’d this), and worst of all, vague “poetic” lyrics, all permeate the half an hour of garbage known as “It’s Always Darkest Before The Dawn” (this is one of the stupidest album titles ever).  Everything about this record is the ruin of a straight edge hardcore band. As I’ve said before, all you need is:

• a good singer with a raw voice
• good mosh parts (+a good intro)
• at least one good tshirt design (or generally cool graphics — see record cover)

7″ era Turning Point has all of this ON LOCK. Unlike their stupid lp (to say nothing of that godawful split 7″), Skip’s voice is a throaty growl, like a deeper SSD or something. I guess it’s pretty similar to Confront or Brotherhood, very burly.  Everything is delivered with maximum intensity, authority, and plenty of youthful anger. There’s no warbling, no whining, nothing attempting to be “sensitive”. The music takes a similar approach. Right from the get-go, To Lose breaks out with a nice slow intro that commands people open up the dance floor. There’s no choice. A quick bass break leads to the main section of the song with lots of harsh barking, thick backups, and catchy riffs. To Lose is the archetypal straight edge song where-in the singer is lamenting the loss of a friend to drug abuse. “It hurts/to see you hurt yourself/but you’ve stopped listening and I can’t help”. What more can you ask for?

I gotta point out how GOOD I think this record sounds in the recording. The snare sound is exemplary. Very snappy, but very deep. It reminds me a lot of the snare on Danzig 1 which is the ultimate muscular drum sound. The bass drum also doesn’t suffer from the typical “overly clicky” problems you’d expect from a cheap recording by a young band, but instead it’s got a nice, full boomy sound. Seriously, at a time when Don Fury was botching every drum recording in the tri-state area, Turning Point struck gold. Those bass to snare drum hits that kick off some of the songs on here, like for instance, The Few and The Proud, are part of what make this record so heavy and memorable. It’s like someone chopping down a tree — a satisfying ‘CRACK’. The guitar sound is similarly thick as opposed to many other bands of the day who were stuck with thin bumble-bee sounds that engineers would try and cover up with chorus or echo. I haven’t got any idea what gear was used but it sounds as good as a Marshall amp. Another important thing about the guitar: frequent use of divebombs. There’s nothing cooler than a divebomb going into a crucial mosh part. There just isn’t, it’s not up for debate. The bass guitar is, I guess, unremarkable but that also means there’s nothing wrong with it, which is definitely good.

Yes this is the best Turning Point release, and it’s definitely my favorite of the late 80’s second tier sxe bands, along with Confront. If you’re playing straight edge hardcore, please, do what works, and stay true to the style. Sound like this record. There’s nothing innovative about adding crappy Fugazi parts to your music like Turning Point did later on. No musical ability or artistic vision please! Only hard riffs and good yelling.

Once again, sorry for getting so carried away yesterday, I know I said it would be a marathon post, but there’s obviously way too much to read, especially on a hardcore blog. Forgive me father. Today I will keep it simple with some short-hair music, and I promise no term papers.

 You pretty much can’t beat this for Straight Edge HC rarities outside of a Judge Chung King 12″: Youth Of Today “Break Down The Walls” on red vinyl. Everyone knows this is THE album for mid-80’s straight edge hc. Raging and fast enough even for the druggies out there. Most people also know the Wishingwell edition has a much better mix than subsequent Revelation versions of the record which have additional reverb added, and some kind of obnoxious Mutt-Lange style gated snare sound (check Phil Colins “Air Of Night” and listen for when the drums come in if you don’t know what I mean). The recording is still kind of unbalanced though. The toms are really loud in some places and sort of sound like really big boxes when they get hit, the snare kind of fades in and out in places, the guitars are too quiet in some songs, the whole thing just isn’t that clear sounding. I know they probably thought they had to go to a big studio to make a big lp, but they probably would have been better served cranking it out in a day or two at Don Fury’s 8-track Demo-Demo. It’s just kind of surprising that the premier straight edge band of the day couldn’t get a recording that sounded a little better.

On the whole YOT actually had really bad luck with recordings through their career. The first 7″ sounds like everything was recorded through one of those soup-can telephone toys you make when you’re little. The original mix of the lp that follows this one has drums that clip badly, thin guitars, and the remix of the same album has drums that are off-time. In the end, the Wishingwell version of “Break Down The Walls” is actually one of the better sounding things they ever released. It’s all sort of irrelevant because thousands of people the world over have been moved by these songs time and again, but still it’s odd to think about.

Red vinyl copies of this barely exist.  Look no further than this passage from the Revelation Discography txt file for the explanation:

“The 150 count on each of the records is what Porcell believes to have been made.  100 of each color were given to the band to sell, but before they had a chance, everything from their van was stolen while parked near CBGB’s before a show.  Assuming the thieves were not hardcore kids and were more interested in selling the band’s equipment than some silly records, it can be inferred that the majority of these 200 records were destroyed (a few were given away at the show before the rest were stolen however).  A few years later, Wishingwell sold their remaining copies to local Orange County record stores.  The difficulty of finding either color of this record can be attributed to their initial limited pressing as well as the alarming 66%+ destruction rate.  In another fairly distressing yet humorous twist to the plot, I was told that the owner of one of the stores that got a number of the remaining color vinyl copies, took a dozen or so red ones home and nailed, yes nailed, them to his back porch and watched them curl up in the California sun.”

With the American Dollar the way it is, I expect an all time high for this. I got ripped off on the sale of one once. A really bummer day. Anyone who wants to mail me a free copy to replace it, please get in touch for my address.

More auctions from a seller I posted last week, and there’s plenty to go around, so be sure to check his whole list. Here’s a couple quickies from that list…

How about this
Chain Of Strength - True Til Death on green vinyl (that’s first pressing dude). Superior in every way to the Chain auction I posted last week, this is also much better than that modernized sounding remix Rev circulates now. I love the way the vocals are buried in the mix giving the music a more powerful feel, and the songs are much more aggressive and angry than the E.P. they did after this. The simplicity in the riffs really brings the anger to the forefront too, the main riffs in the first 2 songs only use 2 notes each. One more thing that some might say is out of the ordinary for the time, is how little focus there is on mosh parts, a couple songs don’t have them at all, and the ones that do can’t be called mosh-heavy by any stretch.

If you want mosh-heavy though, there’s always this
Release - The Pain Inside 7″, which to me sounds something like a combo of the Turning Point 7″ and the Raw Deal demo, but without guitar amps. What I mean is that the guitars have the thin, fuzzy sound that you can easily get by plugging your instrument directly into the mixing board/recording device, instead of plugging into an amplifier, and having a microphone record the sounds that come from that. Questionable production choices aside though, this record is one of the few to have the distinction of the letter A on the cover being replaced by the head of a man in a hooded sweatshirt. Some people would call him a Phantom-Edgeman. What I wanna know is why does that Phantom-Edgeman have red eyes? Was it a bad photograph, or is he some kind of vampire? Similarly the last E in the band name is replaced by a weird dude with a flat-top and big teeth. Bizarre.

Well…. like an idiot i just lost the stuff I’d just written today about Floorpunch. I found all these editions of their 7″ for sale by one seller:

• Red vinyl #’d 200
• Blue vinyl (of 800)
• Black vinyl - 1st press
• Black vinyl w/ Green lettering on sleeve - 3rd press
• Euro tour edition w/ Judge sleeve
• White vinyl farewell edition

as well as a copy of their lp on white vinyl, and the In My Blood Records shirt.

This sucks total De Ja Vu from an hour ago. Anyway all I really wanted to say is that FP’s legacy has held up remarkably well over the last 10 years. The recordings still sounds pretty hot, the songs still deliver the power-load, the shirts still look good, the records still have cool layouts, it’s all still there, not really dulled at all by time. I was pretty disappointed I didn’t make it to their reunion show last fall, especially since I only really saw them twice when they were around. One more thing I gotta give credit for was how they were able to be a serious band, while still keeping a good sense of humor in interviews and on stage. If anything, the 90’s were plagued with overly serious, self important bands in every sub-genre around, and it’s safe to say, looking back a lot of it was presumptuous and I’d go so far to say some of it was downright insulting. Floorpunch was never caught in that trap. I mean their name defined, if it were in a dictionary, essentially means “To mosh.” Right there that tells you a thing or two, but even though the lyrics and music were simple, it still meant something. The anger was still there at the heart of it, and, even if some people don’t want to admit it, the rebellion against the outside world (and the larger “scene” for that matter). Also they always picked great cover songs.

So that’s not everything I was going to say, but that’s the gist of it. BUST!