Middle Class punk from suburbia

I first began to get into punk music in the mid-80s. One of my friends had gotten into punk a couple of years earlier from the influence of his older brother and going around to their house I would hear a lot of this music.

I found that it really started to make a connection with me. The music was fast and exciting with a lot of energy – the only thing like it I had heard before was heavy metal – but punk was more direct and had more emotion about it.

It also seemed to have a certain amount of honesty and integrity when compared with more mainstream music, with the bands really saying something and meaning what they said.

But the thing that held me back from fully embracing this music was that many of the groups that my friend was listening to were either Anarcho/Crass type bands or the Exploited Oi-boy, barmy army type of street punk.

It felt somehow fake to be listening and singing along to the likes of Blitz and Crass – I was a middle class suburban kid who felt like a bit of a misfit geek outsider. I wasn’t a revolutionary vegan anarchist who was into the ALF and lived in a squat and neither was I some working class hooligan boot boy – and surely if punk was about anything it was about not being fake, about being who you are, no matter what.

Of course there were always some of the early groups like the Ramones, Buzzcocks, Damned etc that didn’t fit into those scenes and all these groups really appealed to me, but it wasn’t until I discovered some of the American hardcore bands that I truly found a music that I could really relate too.

Black Flag’s ‘First Four Years’ album, one of my earlier purchases, had more to say to me than anyone like Sham 69 ever could – the music was much more ’suburban’ and about personal feelings rather than political issues and life on a council estate.

Looking at the pictures of the flyers on the back of that album’s cover I could see there was even a group called Middle Class. This group intrigued me, partly because of the name but also because they were often cited (along with Bad Brains) as the first hardcore punk group.

Now I can see some hardcore as almost being a post-punk type of music. Rather than just simply making everything faster, louder and shorter there is a deliberate attempt to strip it back and make it sparse and minimalist. When you look at groups like Middle Class, Minutemen or Urinals/100 Flowers you can see this is as much a deliberate approach as anything Wire, Joy Division or Gang of Four were doing.

Middle Class moved on to a more typical post-punk sound on their Homeland album after their earlier hardcore releases – collected on Blueprint For Joy – but it is still recognizably the same band.

 1. Out Of Vogue  2. You Belong  3. Situations  4. Insurgence  5. Love Is Just A Tool  6. Above Suspicion  7. Archetype  8. Home Is Where  9. Blueprint For Joy  10. Last Touch  11. Introductory Rites

Live Tracks – 12. Be Contemporary  13. Language Of Paradise  14. Love Is Just A Tool/No Time  15. Blue Movie  16. Red Light Sexless  17. Concession To The Enemy  18. Taken By Force  19. Failure Of All Pop  20. Misery Loves Company  21. TV Photo Life  22. Outro

http://rapidshare.com/files/111573154/middle_class_blueprint.rar

1. The Call  2. A Blueprint For Joy  3. Out Of My Hands  4. Listen  5. Shaken  6. Mosque  7. Restless Yong Men  8. Ritual And Deceit  9. Everything

http://rapidshare.com/files/111585091/middle_class_homeland.rar

Rhino 39

Just a quick post this time as I haven’t a lot of information on this band.

Rhino 39 are another early American punk group, this time from the Longbeach area of Los Angeles and seemingly one of the first bands who hailed from those suburbs, they also released a single on the Dangerhouse label.

Those three tracks feature Dave (Bratton) Dacron as singer and are very fast punk rock and can be seen as having an early hardcore sound.

Dave Dacron was unfortunately killed in a car accident shortly after this 1979 release.

Afterwards the band seemed to go quiet for a few years, apparently still playing and recording occasionally as a three piece, until Joel Bratton – younger brother of Dave – joined the band and an album was released on Triple X records sometime in the mid-80s.

This album has a slower, more melodic punk rock sound with even a little bit of a country twang creeping into a couple of tracks.

Here are the Dangerhouse single and Triple X album. A double CD containing these and previously unreleased/rare/live tracks etc was released last year, but I haven’t managed to track down a copy yet.

 

 

 

 

1. Prolixin Stomp

2. Xerox 12

3. No Compromise

 

 

 

 

4. Take Your Medicine

5. Hurry Up And Wait

6. Untitled

7. Sleepwalking

8. Tomorrow Morning’s Night

9. Headcheese

10. Near Extinct

11. Remember To Forget

12. What Is Your Name?

13. Unblues

14. Bars And Bricks

15. Minute By Minute

16. J. Alfred

17. Using The Night

 Download it from here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/109601397/rhino_39.rar

The Amerikan In Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mentioned in my previous post on Negative Trend and like that group, The Avengers were an early American punk group, around from 1977-1979, from San Francisco and who were a support act at the Sex Pistols final gig – only they actually managed to play.

The band had a fairly stable line-up consisting of Penelope Houston – who went on to perform as a solo folk artist; Greg Ingrahm – later replaced by Brad Kent who also played with DOA; James Wilsey – who later worked with Chris Isaak; and Danny Furious.

During the time that they were active they only released a 3-track 7″ single on Dangerhouse Records and a 4-track 12″ EP that was produced by Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, but later in 1983 an album – known as the pink album – was released which included these tracks along with six other previously recorded but unreleased tracks and one live track.

I picked up the pink album fairly early on in my ‘punk life’ sometime in the mid-80s. I had probably only heard about the Avengers because of the Sex Pistols connection – at this time American punk seemed fairly unknown in the UK with the exception of a few groups like the Ramones, Dickies and Dead Kennedys (unless you want to start including groups like Blondie and Talking Heads). So I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect.

I was totally blown away by what I heard and to this day they are still one of my favourite groups. From the early fire of tracks like We Are The One through the anthemic The Amerikan In Me to the slower, more melodic sound of Cheap Tragedies and Corpus Christie it really made a massive impression, I liked the female vocals and how the music was fast and furious but still retained that catchy melodic edge. It convinced me that the American punk scene was definitely something that I should be spending a lot more time checking out.

The songs here come from the pink album, a track from the Rat Music for Rat People Vol. 1 compilation and a 4-track live bootleg EP that was recorded at the Sex Pistols’ Winterland gig.

 

 

 

1. We Are The One

2. Car Crash

3. I Believe In Me

4. Open Your Eyes

5. No Martyr

6. Desperation

7. Thin White Line

8. Paint It Black

9. The Amerikan In Me

10. White Nigger

11. Uh-Oh

12. Second To None

13. Corpus Christie

14. Fuck You (live)

 

 

 

15. Cheap Tragedies

 

 

 

16. End Of The World/Summer Of Hate (live)

17. We Are The One/I Believe In Me (live)

Download it from here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/109883045/avengers.part1.rar

 http://rapidshare.com/files/109889191/avengers.part2.rar

Sophie Lancaster

I’m sure anyone who has ever being a fan of any sort of alternative music – whether it be punk, metal, grunge or goth – can relate a whole host of stories of the verbal abuse, threats and violence that they have received because of the way they look.

However, this court case, which I have been following in the news over the last few months and just ended the other week, I found particularly shocking due to the level of violence involved and the tragic outcome.

Sophie Lancaster, 20, and her boyfriend Robert Maltby, 21, were attacked by a gang of youths in Bacup, Lancashire on account of them being Goths. Both were hospitalised after being beaten comatose. While Robert later recovered, albeit with some permanent brain damage, Sophie died from her injuries. One of her injuries included having part of her hair and scalp ripped from her head.

Two of the youths have being found guilty of murder with another three pleading guilty to GBH with intent. For more details on the case here is a link to the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7316601.stm

So this post is a rather poor attempt at a tribute to Sophie, Robert and anyone else who has ever being a victim of this kind of prejudice and violence. Of course most of these songs are about getting over a beating. Unfortunately for Sophie the consequences were much worse.

01 Partisans – Mindless Violence

02 Minor Threat – Seeing Red

03 Iron Cross – You’re a Rebel

04 Vice Squad – Darkest Hour

05 Black Flag – Rise Above

http://rapidshare.com/files/106758831/mindless_violence.rar.html

There will be a memorial service to Sophie at the Whitby Goth festival later this month (25th-27th April) and check out the Sophie Lancaster memorial website as well.

http://www.myspace.com/inmemoryofsophie

Music? Riot!

 

One of the very first American punk groups, Negative Trend were from San Francisco. They very nearly played as one of the support acts for the Sex Pistols at their infamous final gig at Winterland Arena– along with other San Francisco punk groups The Nuns and Avengers – but were apparently physically prevented from doing so by the promoter.

They had a fairly changeable line up in their short existance – three of which are represented in the recordings here – and several of the members went on to appear in other notable punk groups such as Flipper, Toiling Midgets and Theatre of Sheep.

These songs come from the ‘Pop’ sessions, We don’t play we riot EP, and two tracks from the Tooth and Nail compilation.

The first nine tracks feature Rozz Rezabek who was later in Theatre of Sheep, a group from Portland that were well liked in the local area and who were an influence on the emerging grunge scene. I must admit I know very little about this group as the only time I have come across them was in the Nick Broomfield documentary, Kurt and Courtney, as Rozz was interviewed on account of being a former boyfriend of Courtney Love.

The final two tracks from the Tooth and Nail comp feature Rik L Rik singing and apparently were recorded as solo tracks but later remixed to appear on Tooth and Nail as Negative Trend tracks. The original versions of these tracks, along with three others, appear on the Beach Blvd. compilation as Rik L Rik tracks.

 

1. M-16

2. Never say die

3. No alternative

4. You and I

5. I can laugh about it now

6. Won’t be pacified

7. Dead wrong

8. Mannequin

9. I don’t wanna be a machine (Karen Anne Quinlan)

10. Mercenaries

11. Meathouse

12. Black & Red

13. How ya feelin?

14. I got power

15. Mercenaries

Download it from here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/105652679/negative_trend.rar.html

Howdy

 

Hello,

when I first began thinking about starting my own music blog a couple of months ago – to join the hundreds of others that are already out there – I thought that I had some unusual and interesting rarities among my record collection that people would appreciate the chance to get hold of.

However, the more time I’ve spent following other other people’s blogs and finding new ones the more I realise that pretty much most of the stuff I have is already out there in some form or other, if not re-issued on CD – hence the reason why I decided to call this blog ‘I’ve Heard It Before’.

Instead, I now just intend to use this blog as a way of sharing music with friends – and anyone else who happens to stop by – and as a sort of autobiography of the music that I really enjoy and grew up listening to and which probably had a profound and adverse effect on the way that I turned out.