I Hear The World Through Rat's Ears, Rat's Ears: The Hardcore Punk Listening Club Thread

hey all

seemed to be a lot of interest in doing a hardcore punk listening club

hoping to have a good balance of classic stuff and maybe some more unknown

RULES:

1) just let me know if you want a week, and i'll do an order, first come first served

2) open to international and UK stuff and obv USA, but would like it to be kinda "old" stuff so let's say mid-90s and earlier if everyone's cool with that?

3) punx

So...I thought I'd kick it off with the album that seems appropriate, an old classic I'm sure everyone's heard but it's been kinda blowing me away again...

This weeks' pick is:

http://www.mintmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Black-Flag-The-First-Four-Years.jpg

Black Flag - The First Four Years

i love keith morris so much

This is my favorite "Bad day at work" record.

i think this early stuff is really interesting, you can sort of hear hardcore being born in real time, but it still has a lot of remnants the pistol and clash and stuff

like there's something about some of the little chord change breaks they throw in that seem really "hardcore" to me like the "head on my shoulders" part of nervous breakdown

ha, I just listened to all of this like two weeks ago.

I would love to do a week, so I guess that's next?

"Fix Me" is like the primordial blueprint for all of hardcore, it's from January 1978!!!

also great on this particular record are the compilation tracks and B-sides... "I'M NOT.... A MACHINE!!!"

this is the best thread title of all time btw so thanks for playing everybody else but it's sullen rat's ears for the permanent win

Looking forward to this thread because this type of stuff has always been kind of blank spot in my life. I mean, I've heard selected songs fromt he big bands but I've never really delved into some of the landmarks albums.

black flag has aged really badly imo I gotta say

I've heard it before

That sums me up as well, really looking forward to this thread.

xpost

really aero? cuz i've been kinda blown away by how awesome it is to me right now.

"Fix Me" is like the primordial blueprint for all of hardcore, it's from January 1978!!!

yeah it's crazy, you never think of them as being from the 70s...and i guess they would have been Panic before that even.

I know ppl will say Middle Class and Bad Brains are also the beginning of hardcore, but Black Flag feels like the real template to me.

as great as Bad Brains are, they seemed so superhuman in a way whereas Black Flag feels like the band that kids thought they could be

(this is not to understate Bad Brains influence or greatness in anyway)

sleeve are on deck for next week!

Current Order:

1. sleeve
2. this week could be your life?

otm about about bad brains being superhumans i was in a bad brains cover band briefly and it was so hard to play those songs! we jammed every day for like 5 days and still butchered them -- it was super fun tho

ill take week no 3 :)

Would mostly agree with aero re:aging badly but for me this is the exception, mostly because Morris and especially Reyes are so fucking good. They've got this...I don't know, agility? wit?..that goes out the window with Cadena and Rollins. "White Minority" is pretty useless but everything else on that first side is fire; "No Values" and especially "Revenge" are for me the best things they ever did.

Speaking of revenge

The Jealous Again EP was released after Reyes had left the band for a final time. He was credited as "Chavo Pederast", nonstandard Spanish for pedophile, after a falling out with the band. Reyes was so angered at this perceived betrayal that he hit Dez Cadena in the head with a brick, and later smashed their touring van's windshield. Reyes had also alerted the Canadian border agents to the band's lack of work permits, which prevented them from playing their final Canadian show of the tour.

how about week 2? (twas only a minutemen reference)

Order:

1. sleeve
2. flopson

xxpost

yeah like i can't imagine actually sitting down and writing "pay to cum" in 1979

xpost
woah i didn't know about that reyes thing

polishing my scalp in anticipation of rollins bashing itt

i actually think "white minority" is a great song but it's so problematic i never know to take it....weird complex of emotions/racism/politics going on in it...irresponsible at best maybe...or not...i dunno ever how to feel about it. they certainly couldn't have been so naive as to think it wouldn't have been taken by white power ppl

matt i will take a week if you plz.

sometimes i think i am the only human in the world who prefers damaged to the early stuff. yeah yeah rollins, but its just so much...thicker? without straying into the actual sludge stuff of a few years later. (which i like too.) plus ginn was getting out some really insane strangulated noise. (also i dont totally hate hank on that one. there were still enough chants/choruses and tighter structures that he could really indulge his tortured poet slop.)

i dig slip it in a lot actually....i love ginn's lead playing on everything but yeah towards the end his insane robert quine-meets-kerry king sprawl is amazing

strongo you are week 3!

lineup:

1) sleeve
2) flopson
3) strongo

Okay just gave this my first ever listen to this (The First Four Years) and it pretty well encapsulates why I haven't spent a lot of time with this genre in general. I think this kind of hardcore is precisely the king of "you had to be there" genres for me. I remember hearing and reading a lot about bands like Black Flag before I ever actually heard a single note, so I had built them up to be a lot more, wel, "vicious" (for lack of a better word) sounding than they actually were. I anticipated more of a punch in the gut than a swipe across the face. I get the appeal and I appreciate the sentiments (squicky politics aside), but it just doesn't get that much of a rise out me. I'm sure I'd have felt completely different if I'd experienced this stuff at the time though, particularly live. I'm going to give this another spin or two though, because there were some moments that really did jump out at me and I kind of want to pinpoint why.

I do like how "Damaged" sounds pretty much like a sprawling epic by the time you get to it.

put me down for a week I guess...

sometimes i think i am the only human in the world who prefers damaged to the early stuff.

nah, I love early flag but damaged-era stuff is all-time, mainly because of ginn/cadena's twin gtr attack. I mean rollins looks and sounds like a boner in this vid but the band are gods of overcompression, sounds like a f'kn freight train....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDJm53YTVG4

was anyone in this thread really "there" for early black flag tho?

haha edward iii i would love to you but no one is forcing you to!

<3 ginn's button down office shirt in that video

I prefer Damaged as well, love the crazy unbalanced careening effect, plus it has "Thirsty & Miserable".

it's not my imagination I'VE GOT A GUN ON MY BACK

lineup :)

1. sleeve
2. flopson
3. strongo
4. edward III

dukowski might be my fave ever-dude-in-a-band for the disconnect between his smiling golf-shirted substitute teacher look in photos and the way he just goes fucking off in every live clip i've ever seen

they were definitely a lot funnier before henry was allowed to work out his bitterness over that ice cream store job

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19-0-HHCRhc

"White Minority" is awesome satire--I feel like I said this on another thread, but Greil Marcus mishearing "gonna feel inferiority" as "gonna breed inferiority" colored his whole take, which was way off. The song was sung and drummed by Latino band members and recorded by an African American engineer, so it's hard to imagine Ginn didn't talk about this. But I haven't read that new book yet...

Listened to some Black Flag this morning after I finished my Beach Boys ballot, as a palate un-cleanser.

hardcore

Hermosa Beach Boys

hey sleeve! post some hardcoah

I'm here, just got back from camping.

Gimme an hour or two.

OK, so I spent some time thinking about this one (and looking on Spotify) and decided to go back to my Midwest hardcore roots. So let's go to the "old man rambles about his youth" section now.

I kinda started getting into hardcore after hearing it on the local college radio in maybe summer 1982? Memory gets hazy but I remember hearing the Necros and the Frantix and never looking back. I definitely was into all the higher-profile Brit-punk like Clash/Sex Pistols stuff, and I went to see The Clash play the Combat Rock tour which musta been fall of '82. Theoretically I could have made it to some DC shows in '83 (I was only 2 hours south) but there was no cool record store in my town and I hadn't heard of Maximum Rock & Roll. There were a couple of hardcore shows in my town as 1984 rolled on but I never heard about them in time, they were all at this queer-friendly club called the Silver Fox and publicity was minimal, I remember missing a Scream show there.

I went to Bloomington Indiana in the summer of 1984 for early college registration and was lucky enough to catch JFA, Sun City Girls, and two local bands. It was a whole new scene and I happily wallowed in it. For whatever reason we were a common tour-stop for lots of bands, and there were all ages venues. The scene back then was thriving, and is documented on two out-of-print vinyl comps, The Master Tapes 1 & 2.

Two of the best bands represented on there were the Zero Boys and Articles Of Faith (both of whom had great tracks on those compilations), so for your August listening pleasure may I recommend the early work of both bands...

1. The Zero Boys - Vicious Circle (1982)
http://bp2.blogger.com/_-LvJQKf6B5U/RobRnPzaJbI/AAAAAAAAAd0/-y4jQ7BQQ8Q/s320/zero_boys.jpg

Jack Rabid's overview

This band loomed so large in my local mythology. By the fall of 1984, when I showed up, you couldn't find a copy of the album anywhere. It took another ten years or so to get reissued. Still a great record on par with any other from 1982. My favorite part os the 1-2-3- punch starting side 2, beginning with 'Down The Drain". Smokin' hot, pissed off, catchy, and fast.

2. Let's not forget Articles Of Faith, unfairly dismissed by at least one of their contemporaries as "thesaurus rock", but damn this stuff kills. Go search out "Complete Vol. 1" or the 'Core" LP/CD. They were from Chicago and their first three singles are where it's at, but the debut LP Give Thanks has its moments. You're on your own after that.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WwjMxOiiFEo/TaM9cfgeDyI/AAAAAAAABEE/FgcSxbkT3eI/s1600/Articles+Of+Faith+-+Core.jpg

Both of these albums are on Spotify, so have at it, listen, discuss, bicker, etc.

haha! i was actually thinking of doing articles of faith for my week. i have never heard the zero boys, so i will check this out and report back.

also, everybody listening needs to remember to turn it up! that's what this stuff was made for. jumping around the room also helps.

ooh I wanna be signed up for a week too

I am jealous (again?) of my bf because he saw black flag pre-henry many times (he is 47 years old)

I love Vicious Circle! Never heard of it before the '09 reissue, but listening backward through hardcore has been fun.

I saw DC hardcore shows including the Bad Brains in 1979, Teen Idles, Untouchables, and later Minor Threat, etc. I saw Black Flag with Henry around 3 times.

Craig Finn on the Zero Boys … http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/13/us-punk-rock-hold-steady

Holy shit - the Zero Boys! "Civilization's Dying" was my favorite song on this Rhino records hardcore compilation about 15 years ago. Next steps: 1. buy album 2. bookmark thread.

I did a 'top 10 hardcore albums' list for Terrorizer a while back (no idea what they're actually planning to do with it) and put Vicious Circle in without p much any pause at all

considering how little other material they recorded before or after it amazes me how *complete* it sounds

Holy shit - the Zero Boys! "Civilization's Dying" was my favorite song on this Rhino records hardcore compilation about 15 years ago. Next steps: 1. buy album 2. bookmark thread.

― kkvgz, Wednesday, August 17, 2011 4:11 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha i was just going to say the same thing, i loved that faster & louder comp...all those rhino comps were awesome, the ny and la punk ones, the power pop ones

listening to zero boys now
this is so awesomely bratty

That Zero Boys record is quite good. Can't claim any original, old-school ties to the band because I just discovered them via the Secretly Canadian reissues a couple years ago, but it is fantastic.

On the homemade cassette comp that introduced me to punk, "Mom's Wallet" was always a favorite.

yeah i ain't seen him around?

both of last week's bands I'd heard on comps but never dug into, zero boys were cool but articles of faith really blew me away. such a great sound, so brutal.

Used to confuse Articles of Faith with Icons of Filth, not really getting into 'em--I'll give it some time.

<3 Icons Of Filth

sorry dudes trying to wean myself off ilx before school starts & totally forgot about this, here are my albums i will post some thoughtful text about them soon

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-2207589-1269869345.jpeg
Urban Waste - Urban Waste EP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s6UikQpGYk

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8AlxbPswM0E/TYJ9xPYDHEI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/LFuOkjjG2Vg/s1600/thisisbostonnotlafront.jpg
V/A - This is Boston Not LA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt-C7ZTFxbQ

hope you all like these as much as i do

nice!

yeahhhh been listening to Boston Not LA this week at work cause of its mention in the 1st thread, Gangreen is my fave but the Jerry's Kids tunes are way better than I remembered.

Never heard Urban Waste, so on to that now.

I know fuck all about Urban Waste but here is a start I guess:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Waste

SKANK YOURSELF TO DEATH DEATH DEATH

wtf is that crazy noise at the beginning of that tune? love it.

oh man side 2 of this Urban Waste is really doing it for me, "Ignorant" kills it too.

Thanks for the wiki link, I was definitely into Kraut and Bad Brains and early Beasties but I never heard of these guys.

haha great cake recipe there.

thought "Reject" might be a Necros cover, but instead it seems like kind of a direct rip soundwise/themewise? Not really a problem though.

Oh man, I forgot about this thread. Says the person with approx 75 unread bookmarks. :/

Jerry's Kids are one of my fave HC bands. I still need to get This Is Boston Not LA, I only have it on mp3. I think it's OOP at the moment tho.

Urban Waste got reissued on Mad At The World not too long ago, I've got that one. Orig goes for mad dough I'd assume. Public Opinion is on my HC mix on my ipod at the moment so I was listening to it the other day!

Urban Waste has such a savage guitar sound, love it.

xp: Still catching up, but Articles of Faith's "In This Jungle" kind of turned me around. "Five O'Clock" is even better--it's got the Husker-ish depression-on-speed thing down cold. Was interested to see Mould produced, and the later stuff sounds like early Soul Asylum. His production really started to suck in '85 though, glad this sounds better than the last few Husker records.

AoF rules. If you like the track off the "Charred Remains" tape that is on "Core", you should probably check out the entire "Charred Remains" cassette compilation- I think the whole thing is up at the Cosmic Hearse blog. That tape is amazing, and has lots of classic and obscure American hardcore from this era.

if you're a nerd about these things, this blog has a rip of the original vinyl of AoF's wait 7"

http://www.goodbadmusic.com/2007/11/01/articles-of-faith-wait-7ep-wasteland-records-usa-1983/

interesting to compare w/ the remastered versions on core

nb: I am a nerd about these things

All mastering is an art, but there's something particularly hazardous and hit-miss about CD masters of '80s punk albums: Appliances-SFB's SFB on CD is unlistenable, and I assume that's where all the online downloads come from too.

Appliances-SFB's SFB

Never heard of this, who were they?

haha given how much time i've had to comment on this thread i totally won't hold it against anyone if they ignore my pick(s) next week. (i will get to these bands, i swear.)

I reviewed This Is Boston Not LA in NY Rocker. vaguely remember singling out Gang Green & The Freeze. even then i was too old for HC, honestly, but i dug the energy

all the stuff I've forgotten over the years and i still recall pretty much every album and show i wrote about :/

It's good!

Jerry's Kids, DYS and Gang Green played with a bunch of other bands about this time last year. A couple of my friends went and said it was fantastic.

Oh I meant this is Boston Not LA is good. oops

man there is nothing sadder than hardcore band reunions in my experience

I saw the Gorilla Biscuits reunite at CBGBs once for a tribute show and that was pretty awesome but iirc it wasn't billed as a reunion show or anything. I think it was a one off thing.

you know what else is deeply sad? american hardcore.

the movie or in general?

well, you know.

but nah, the movie.

it's kinda like: if i wanted to hear a bunch of middle-aged men bitch about how it was better back in the day i could watch a documentary about the beatles.

You know what the best part of AH is? When the chick from 90210 comes on and is talking about the old Boston scene and they never mention that she was an actress. It was like Lou Barlow being on that Sex in the 90s only not quite as good.

I mean this lady, btw: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0253705/

reunions are tricky - i can understand musicians wanting to revisit their past & new fans wanting to see what they missed - and also old fans not wanting their memories sullied.

hardcore always seemed like the most YOUTH oriented genre of rock - i went to 7A a few times and felt like gramps (or a pervert) and i was 23

oh yeah i mean i used to be faaaaaaaaar more anti-reunion in my early to mid 20s. ("well, maybe if joe strummer rose from the dead i might to go a reunion show." shit like that.) but various early 00s reunions (wire, burma) cured me of that.

btw kids, speaking of good (well, great) hardcore docs, "we jam econo" is now on netflix instant watch.

we jam econo makes me happy to be alive in this world

"Five O'Clock" is my fave AOF song. I forgot Mould produced that LP!

I love that bit in Gangreen's "Snob" where his voice breaks cuz he's screaming so hysterically.

Fav bit of of Boston HC triva - The Freeze went on to collaborate with Edward Gorey, one of their neighbors in Cape Cod.

The Freeze's "Sacrifice Not Suicide" and Prolitariat's "Options" are my two favorite tracks on Boston Not L.A. First wave hardcore, for me, plays best on compilations and mixtapes.

Re: Appliances-SFB, I'm happy to report the SFB LP from '84 is every bit as great as I remember. They were a Madison, Wisconsin, post-punk band fast enough for the kids but with their own sound--like Second Edition blended with "Holiday in Cambodia"/"Police Truck" but played with a screaming soul band's glee at grooving so tightly at a crazed emotional pitch. Killdozer cited them as an influence, and you can hear some of the Appliances' twang and dark heaviness in later Minneapolis and Chicago bands, but SFB is so much more punk to me than a lot of that stuff: lyrics still audible/comprehensible and political if arty, plenty of non-cliche chant-along frenzy, a real commitment to being challenging while taking the new audience along for the ride--they seemed like a pre-hardcore band caught up in hardcore. Their best song was probably "Bob Hope," compiled on "We Don't Need Nuclear Force," which you can find online, but the whole record is amazing, produced by Butch Vig. The '92 Youtube video for "Mr. Ugly" sounds good if you ignore the visuals.

Now on to Boston, my other hometown.

Thanks for info - I'll add that to my (increasingly long) download list.

In fact now that you mention We Don't Need Nuclear Force I can see I have indeed put Bob Hope on my Ipod, just listed as Appliances not Appliances-SFB.

what's good with strongo

I dug the AoF stuff- what is the next installment? I'm still down to take a turn when that comes around too, yo

haha ugh yeah i kinda boned this didn't i? life.

gimme a little while and i will get something together.

okay kids, so this is the first post that a.) takes us into the '90s and b.) takes us outside america. (well, at least in one case.) (both do feature languages other than good ol' gutter american.)

the '90s were obviously a weird time for hardcore because everything had fragmented into a zillion little niche scenes and subgenres. (pretty much every issue of mrr i read between 1992 and 1996 featured arguments over whether or not something was actually hardcore if it didn't sound like a straight rip of state violence, state control or let them eat jellybeans.) a lot of what i'd considered posting would probably get shouted down as NOT HARDCORE, DUDE by a certain segment of the audience. (too emo, too grindcore, too mosh, too meathead sxe, too noise, too whatever.) so i tried to choose two bands that i think were among the best at bringing the '80s hardcore sound into the new decade.

the first is 1997's LOW CHARGE ep by GAUZE. who are, of course, japanese hardcore legends from the '80s. this is a seven-inch recorded when the band came to america and released on prank. as far as i can tell it is a mix of old tunes that have been redone and some new shit? to my ears it sounds better than any of their '80s stuff, louder and heavier and more chaotic and better recorded. the entire record is available in this youtube right here. it is very short and worth ten minutes of your life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_5EobsD9go

the second is the discography (because i couldn't settle on a specific record) of LOS CRUDOS, who were based in norteamérica but very passionately devoted to south/central american and immigrant issues. they kinda floated between scenes, i think, during their lifetime. they were popular with the profane existence types because they played more-or-less straight-ahead and highly politicized d.i.y. hardcore but they also got a lot of respect from the screamo/power violence/avant-whateverthefuck axis because of their speed and intensity and et cetera. if you only check out one song, make it "asesinos," heard at 6:15 or so in the first youtube here, which might be my fave of all '90s hardcore songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvwTzOc8dtQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_19tWb4sPBY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg0sTiCmzoM

(there are about five more parts, but you can find 'em on youtube if you really want to.)

okay? OKAY. no idea if these are on spotify, sorry, but i bet they might be.

enjoy! or don't. i don't give a fuck. at least i'm fucking trying. what the fuck have you done?

neither on spotify, but they DO have los crudos de durango, who are almost as good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8cuSHh12bU

anyways, excellent choices, gauze also notable for pretty much winning the hc band logo sweepstakes.

Crudos! Yes!! I can't believe I forgot about these brutes after seeing them a dozen times in Chicago and filling my drawer with their scratchy palimpsestic recycled band T-shirts.

haha crudos was one of only two hxc bands where i owned a silk-screened band logo patch for affixing to jacket or messenger bag

Could use suggested additions to this--I made it over summer and added from this thread:

http://open.spotify.com/user/petescholtes/playlist/7zPWjHqlPHUZH5FQTIHETN

oh I guess it's my turn huh