I see that this seems to be the only Ramones album that isn’t easily available at the moment but by strange coincidence it happens to be my favourite.
Now, I’m not saying it’s the best Ramones album by a long shot but for me it has a special place as it was the first Ramones album that I got when it was newly released.
I remember watching a Saturday morning music video show – the fact I was up watching TV on a Saturday morning shows how young I was at the time – called The Chart Show, which used to have a rock section showing mainly heavy metal videos, when on came the video for I Wanna Live.
I couldn’t believe it and was totally blown away by the track – it remains my favourite Ramones song to this day. A lot of the video is live footage from shows – at this point I hadn’t ever been to a gig. It all looked really exciting to me.
I finally got to see The Ramones a couple of years later on their Brain Drain tour and they still remain one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen.
01. I Wanna Live
02. Bop ‘Til You Drop
03. Garden Of Serenity
04. Weasel Face
05. Go Lil’ Camaro Go
06. I Know Better Now
07. Death Of Me
08. I Lost My Mind
09. A Real Cool Time
10. I’m Not Jesus
11. Bye Bye Baby
12. Worm Man
The Lewd were an early San Francisco band around from 1978 – 1982, although I believe they originated in Seattle. I have to admit I don’t know much about them.
This is a vinyl LP that I guess I bought sometime in the mid-90s that claims to be a complete discography although I’ve noticed there is an (unavailable) CD version which contains an extra eight or so tracks – which I must admit I find slightly irritating.
I was one of those vinyl purist collector types who refused to switch to CD for years, until I finally admitted defeat about 2001. It always bugged me when you used to see CDs with extra tracks. Although there were also a few pro-vinyl groups who would release LPs with bonus tracks.
Anyway, this Lewd collection is made up from the Kill Yourself 7″, American Wino LP and three compilation tracks.
01. Kill Yourself
02. Trash Can Baby
03. Pay Or Die
04. Mobile Home
05. Suburban Prodigy
06. M 17
07. American Wino
08. Justice/Liberty
09. I’m Not Pretty
10. Climate Of Fear
11. Magnetic Heart
12. Suburban Prodigy
13. Beyond Moderation
14. Polluted Brain
15. Fight
16. Mobile Home
17. Cold & Numb
18. Dressed In Black
The Dicks are one of the classic hardcore/punk bands from Texas.
A lot of Texas punk groups seemed to differ from the standard hardcore sound with ‘weird’ groups like the Butthole Surfers and the funk influence in the Big Boys music, while the Dicks had a blues edge to their sound.
Like some of those other groups (Big Boys, MDC) they had an openly gay member in lead singer Gary Floyd – but does that really mean anything?
For the first time I think I can actually claim that this is a complete discography. There were actually two line-ups for The Dicks: a Texas based one from 80-83 and a San Francisco based one from 83-86. With the exception of the track Gilbeau, these two downloads represent each one respectively.
01. Dicks Hate The Police - Hate the Police 7″
02. Lifetime Problems - Hate the Police 7″
03. All Night Fever - Hate the Police 7″
04. Saturday Night At The Bookstore(live) - Dicks 80-86
05. Fake Bands - Live At Raul’s
06. Hate The Police - Live At Raul’s
07. Dead In A Motel Room - Live At Raul’s
08. Wheelchair Epidemic - Live At Raul’s
09. Babysit - Live At Raul’s
10. Shit On Me - Live At Raul’s
11. Lifetime Problems - Live At Raul’s
12. Suicide Note - Live At Raul’s
13. Shit Fool - Live At Raul’s
14. Love Song - Live At Raul’s
15. Kill From The Heart - Live At Raul’s
16. Anti-Klan Pt 1 - Kill From The Heart
17. Rich Daddy - Kill From The Heart
18. No Nazi’s Friend - Kill From The Heart
19. Marilyn Buck - Kill From The Heart
20. Kill From The Heart - Kill From The Heart
21. Little Boy’s Feet - Kill From The Heart
22. Pig’s Run Wild - Kill From The Heart
23. Bourgeois Fascist Pig - Kill From The Heart
24. Purple Haze - Kill From The Heart
25. Anti-Klan Pt 2 - Kill From The Heart
26. Right Wing, White Ring - Kill From The Heart
27. Dicks Can’t Swim - Kill From The Heart
01. Gilbeau - Cottage Cheese Comp
02. I Hope You Get Drafted - PEACE Comp
03. No Fucken War - PEACE? 7″
04. Nobody Asked Me - PEACE? 7″
05. I Hope You Get Drafted - PEACE? 7″
06. Legacy Of Man - Rat Music Vol 2 Comp
07. The Police Force - These People
08. Off-Duty Sailor - These People
09. Executive Dive - These People
10. Sidewalk Begging - These People
11. Lost And Divided - These People
12. Dead In A Motel Room - These People
13. Cities Are Burning - These People
14. Doctor Daddy - These People
15. Decent And Clean - These People
16. Legacy Of Man - These People
17. Little Rock ‘N’ Roller - These People
18. George Jackson - These People
I posted some Really Red stuff last year but I didn’t post the Teaching You The Fear album as it had been reissued not that long before, or the Despise Moral Majority EP as it was live tracks from the afore-mentioned album.
I see now that this album no longer seems to be easily available so here it is with the EP tracks as a bonus.
So once again, with my other Really Red post you can get another (almost) discography.
01. Entertainment (live)
02. Starvation dance (live)
03. Nico/Reminder (live)
04. Too Political
05. Bored With Apathy
06. The Fee
07. Teaching You The Fear
08. Decay
09. Run ‘Em Out
10. No Art
11. Bar-B-Que
12. White Lies
13. Nico
14. Starvation Dance
15. Prostitution
16. Aim Tastes Good
17. Entertainment
18. Pigboy
19. Ain’t No Time
20. Lockjaw
21. Reminder
Chris D from the early LA punk group The Flesh Eaters went on to perform in the group Divine Horseman.
This is another classic example of taking a more traditional folk/country style of music and fusing it with punk rock, along the lines of Tex And The Horseheads and The Gun Club.
Indeed on the first album, which tends to feature guest musicians rather than a regular line-up, Jeffery Lee Pierce (Gun Club) and Texacala Jones (Tex & The Horseheads) are both present as well as other famous names like Kid Congo Powers (Cramps, Gun Club), John Doe (X) and Dave Alvin (Blasters).
At times this also reminds me a bit of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, with a kind of Southern Gothic atmosphere to the music and lyrics.
01. When The Rain Comes Down
02. Lilly White Hands
03. Past All Dishonor
04. Frankie Silver
05. Sanctuary
06. Heat From The Sun
07. Little Sister
08. Hell’s Belle
09. Time Stands Still
01. My Sin
02. Sapphire
03. Devil’s River
04. He Rode Right Into Town
05. Come Into This Place
06. Tenderest Kiss
07. Love Call
08. Too Young To Die
09. It Doesn’t Matter
10. Middle Of The Night
In my last post I talked about Toast – a British group from the mid-nineties that liked to sing songs about drinking, problems with women and generally piss people off. As a consequence some people actually thought they were Nazis.
Of course, FEAR are the masters of this kind of punk rock.
Personally I love FEAR and never thought they were being serious about what they singing.
They only released two albums in the first period of their existence 1977-1986, but have since released two more (with a different line-up) and a live recording from 1986.
Here are some bootlegs from that early period including studio out-takes and live recordings.
01. I Love Living In The City (1978)
02. Now Your Dead (1978)
03. I Don’t Care About You (Live ‘85)
04. Let’s Have A War (Live ‘85)
05. I Love Living In The City (Live ‘85)
01. Null Detector
02. I Love Living In The City
03. Friends
04. Welcome To The Dustward
05. New York’s Alright
06. Beef Baloney
07. I Am A Doctor
08. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
09. More Beer
10. Budweiser
11. Fuck Xmas (single)
01. We Love The Little Girls
02. Fuel Injected Papa
03. Johnny Are You Queer?
04. Here We Go Again
05. Let’s Have A War
06. I’m Back (And I’m Bitching)
07. 3 Blind Mice
08. Disconnected
09. I Don’t Care About You
10. Cat Fight
11. Fresh Flesh
12. I Love Living In The City
13. (Bleep) Xmas
Toast were a great British group from the mid-90s that seemed to have a very brief career involving four 7″ releases (on Damaged Goods and Crackle Records) and some infamous live shows.
They played fast snotty-nosed punk rock with songs about drinking and not getting on with girlfriends.
Toast were a great live act and were one of those groups that had that real ‘punk-rock’ attitude of liking to piss people off and baiting the audience while getting drunk.
I saw Toast when they supported the Descendents on their 1996 UK reunion tour. By the second song the lead singer had already been involved in fisticuffs and accused of being a nazi.
01. I Feel Sick
02. Waste Of Time
03. Sarah Jane
04. You Make Me Wanna Puke
05. One Chance
06. You’re Getting On My Nerves
07. Make It Up
08. Give Me A Beer
09. Mr Postman
10. Back To The Barrooms
11. Nothing At All
12. I Lose Friends Like I Lose Money
13. Latch Key Kids
14. Best For You
I don’t know why I love SoCal punk from the early eighties so much considering I grew up in Northern England? Maybe it’s the whole suburban, middle-class vibe that runs through the music that I connect with.
Most artists, musicians and otherwise, seem to be urban in their outlook. They live in cities, with all the culture and variety that offers, and that is where their ’scene’ tends to exist and they look down on suburbia.
Here’s a quote about the great writer J.G. Ballard, who died last week:
“J.G. Ballard’s become the great sort of sage of the suburbs, living for years and years in Shepperton. And Ballard, sitting there and thinking about what the suburbs are, says that they are very interesting because whatever it is you do to kind of create some sort of shock to your imagination, get you out of boredom and inertia, will happen in the suburbs rather than in the centre. That’s his pitch. And to react against this inertia and boredom that is endemic to that place, you have to come up with solutions like acts of subversion.”
I think you know what I’m saying.
So, back to the music. Lost Cause aren’t one of the greats of the SoCal punk scene, but they are a fairly typical example of the bands that came from there, having that sound and attitude. Which makes them pretty good in my book. Here are their Born Dead 7″ and Forgotten Corners LP.
01. Born Dead
02. No Justice
03. American Hero
04. Senior Citizen
05. No Intro
06. Can’t Find Myself
07. Misfit
08. Living In Hell
09. Don’t Take A Chance
10. Airport Religion
11. Firing Line
12. Constipated Rage
Late 80s, melodic punk – this was always going to appeal to me.
The Problem Children were a three-piece band from a small backwater town in Canada actually called Dunnville.
Between 1985 and 1989 they released an EP – On The Air (1987) and two LPs – The Future Of The World Is Up To Us (1986) and Long Weekend (1989), which I’m putting up here, although I’ve added some extra tracks from the EP.
This record was a compilation of mainly previously released material that I believe was supposed to raise the profile of the group in Europe before they toured here and they always intended to release more stuff.
In the end it turned out to be a bit of an farewell album as they didn’t release anything else afterwards.
I believe they had some success among Canadian students but otherwise they just didn’t seem to be very well known at all, which is a shame as they did some pretty good stuff.
01. Fuk Yuz All
02. Thrashin’ With Yer Parents
03. Plastic Liver
04. Red Dyed Hair
05. What’s It All About
06. We Want You
07. Nobody Wins
08. The Future Is Now
09. We Are The Children
10. On The Air
11. Staying Young
12. Energy
13. 1-24
14.The Pit Between Two Signs
15. Canada’s Eulogy
16. Lover Or A Whore
17. Believe
18. Long Weekend
(If that title doesn’t get my blogspot more hits then I don’t know what will).
The Hard-Ons were one of my favourite groups in that late 80s-early 90s period, playing melodic pop-punk with a bit of a metal edge to some of their songs.
I saw them a few times (once with the Senseless Things) and eagerly awaited any new releases by them.
Then in 1992 they released the album Too Far Gone – it had a lot more of a grunge/metal sound to it than their earlier releases and the pop-punk element seemed to have gone.
Combined with a really lacklustre gig they played on that tour, when they just didn’t seem to care and finished early, I found myself losing interest.
After that the Hard-Ons just seemed to disappear and I assumed that it was just the inevitable end of a great group.
Imagine my surprise then a couple of years ago when I picked up my local paper to see the Hard-Ons were playing a gig that night in my home area.
A couple of hours internet surfing later and I realised that there were four albums (two just being released) out of some really great stuff that I’d had no idea about and they had been active again since about 2000.
In fact Boss Tuneage have just released a 25th Anniversary best of the Hard-Ons album and there has just being a Stupids/Hard-Ons mini-tour, (nowhere near where I live mind).
Anyway, here are their early singles from the first period.
01. Surfin’ On My Face
02. Bye Bye Girl
03. There Was A Time
04. Excuses
05. Girl In The Sweater
06. I Heard Her Call My Name
07. Ferdi’s Song
08. All Set To Go
09. Busted
10. Suck ‘n’ Swallow
11. Just Being With You
12. Growing Old
13. Where Did She Come From?
14. Get Out Of My House
15. Dull
16. Sri Lanka
