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Rhino 39

April 22, 2008

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.

rhino39 7

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

Posted in Dangerhouse, Los Angeles, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

The Amerikan In Me

April 17, 2008

avengers group copy

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.