bidhardcore.com

Clevtoday is a 90’s Cleveland hardcore special, with a round up of items from the most polluted hell-hole in the midwest.

 Kickin’ it off with this Only The Strong comp on blue vinyl, 1st press. This is the most limited standard variation of the record, the b-side on this one is just a 1-2-3 punch of violent moshy hardcore — the undisputed best Confront song, the only recorded Meanstreak song (feat. Paul Inmate on guitar), and a classic take of Darkness by Integrity. Find me another comp that delivers that well… you’ll have a hard time. A-side has the only good Insight song (Utah? what?), a pretty good Even Score song (they’re called Life Cycle on some pressings) and a good Face Value song too. Speaking of Erba and Anthony Brown…

…Here’s a Face Value 7″ on clear vinyl. Coming Of Age. There’s some great unsung riffs on here, I think they kind of get a bad wrap as being too posi-core for cleveland, and also some of the drumming choices. The drummer obviously is rock-trained, and extremely proficient, but he uses some crappy cheaters beats during the fast parts. I don’t know if it’s laziness or he thought it would just sound better. Even so this was a good highschool jam, and has a cool vibe.

Total idiocy you’re looking for? How about the Integrity/Kids Of Whidney High split 7″ w/ Bloodbook zine. I think the Integs tracks is a demo take of Jagged Visions with some sound effects of pigs dubbed over it. I still have no idea if the KOWH side was actually authorized or what, but “I See Pretty Girls” was a highschool mixtape staple. I’m sure there’s a place in hell just for people like me.

 Here’s one sometimes overlooked, The Mormons self released 7″. This is Steve (9 Shocks & Homostupids) and Kevin (9 Shocks) high school band. I once bought a copy off Steve at a 9 Shocks show and he insisted I explain why I wanted to pay money for it. Honestly it’s a cool record, some of the songs have an early (read: good) Gang Green type sound. Some of it misses the mark, but this is one of the more collectible 90’s cleveland DIY releases. Actually it’s not too far off some of the Homostupids releases, so I guess things come full circle.  BTW: i think Jamie from Boulder/Midnight is the one selling this.

Lastly here’s an Upstab Stabbing The Church 7″, which was sort of a legit bootleg.I always liked this one a little more than their officially released 7″s which were a little cleaner (still good though). When Mind Eraser played with Upstab in Cleveland Chris was wearing a ski-mask and holding an open switch-blade. While it seemed par for the course for Cleveland, it was a far cry from anything on the east coast then, or now, which is too bad. At least there’s still real nihilistic punk music happening somewhere.

Some people have sort of equired as to why myself, and others like me, have such a fixation on this era of Hardcore and Punk, from this area of the country. I feel like there’s a lot of factors, obviously I think the music is generally good, and the cult vinyl pressings are fun to collect, but I really dig the meanspirited-ness that was on display by so many of these bands. Just utterly unconcerned with being offensive, or being friendly or even being noticed. With the exception of a band like Integrity, who were obviously big and opperating in a different scene, despite sharing memebers of bands like the Inmates, most of these dudes were just playing for each other, and as a result went unnoticed by the idiots buying southern crust metal and cut-rate grindcore instead. Of course I was too young to know the difference, but it’s all time and place man.

Well you know what “they” say - zines are the life’s blood of “our” “scene”. Seriously though, here’s a few EARLY issues of Flipside my friend Rob Base is selling. These are from back when 1) Flipside was cool 2) They wrote about bands you would care about. Wait do they still publish Flipside? I seriously don’t even know. I have one of those Flipside videos of 7 Seconds and Youth Brigade, there’s at elast 20 7 Seconds songs, all terrible recording quality, all sounding identicle… So these zines…there’s tons of photos of all your (my) favorite bands in these that aren’t widely circulated, Misfits, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, The Germs, GBH… plenty of good usable material for the entrepeneuring bootlegger, or archivist. Hey it’d be a crime not to make t-shirts from some of these photos, and that says nothing of the written content, which is pretty good in the early Flipsides. My favorite is the review section. Also: please check out the rather irreverent Wasted Youth ad below; it probably did not move many units in Texas at the time. I suppose some doofy “shock-me” 82-core band circa now will try and appropriate this as a JPG graphic for their stupid myspace profile. Expect the green-taped copies of Reagan’s In to be sent straight to the dumpster if those folks in Berkely see this. Well it’s not like anyone can really expect taste from a band with the name Wasted Youth I guess. Anyhow, all these mags are in good looking shape , which is pretty surprising considering the age, and the quality of the paper they’re printed on.