This is a record I had put off buying or checking out for a while, until I seen it on the Nerd X Alert blog and I decided I would give it a listen. I was pleasantly surprised at how good this record was. It has more of an old school punk sound and it rips. So why did I hesitate on checking out this record for so long? Well it's quite simple really... I thought the singer was wearing eye make up when I initially saw the cover! I know, silly right? Of course after a closer look I saw he wasn't, he just has kind of dark eyes, but I didn't really look that close and I figured it was an emo band or something so I was cool off it. But yeah, give these guys a chance. There is no mascara involved, I promise!
Don't let the ridiculously tacky cover art fool you, this is a really good album. Florida's CELPH TITLED and New York producer and rapper J-ZONE teamed up for this 2006 album as the Boss Hogg Barbarians. I actually purchased the record seen above from my local store the day that it got released. The store hadn't even put them out and put the price stickers on them yet! I still haven't opened it, because I had already downloaded the album before it came out. The cover art is some of the worst I have ever seen, but I love this album. It is very light hearted with alot of funky ass beats and funny lyrics with excellent metaphors, punch lines and rhyme schemes. Celph Titled is truly a beast on the microphone. Nothing about this album is really serious, it's almost like it's meant to be a really well produced joke album. If you have a good sense of humor and like hip hop, then I would check this out. I just hope you're not offended easily.
Here's a single from the album with one of my favorite songs from the album "Celph Destruction" on it. Check it out below, Celph Titled goes on for almost 3 minutes using the same rhyme scheme. The end of every sentence is a word that rhymes with "ooey" of some sort. I've never really seen that done on a song, and it's just basically Celph Titled showing off what a lyrical genius he is. You just have to check it out below to understand what I'm talking about, and I bet you didn't know that many words rhymed together!
And one last song that is called "The Weight Debate", the rappers are going back and forth arguing about a girl. J-Zone is saying she's way too fat and he's basically dumping her, and then Celph Titled is talking to her about how much he loves fat girls and he's basically trying to take J-Zone's woman. It's a funny ass song so check it out!
So I needed to balance out all the straight edge stuff I've been posting lately (and it seems that all my next pictures for upcoming posts seem to be of straight edge hardcore bands too) with the extreme opposite with San Jose's ROTTEN FUX. This release came out in 2006 I think on Six Weeks Records. I don't usually listen to music like this, but of course I am biased because these guys are all my friends, and I have known some of them for 10 plus years now. Even looking at the inside of this makes me all reminiscent, playing alot of these shows my self or atleast going to most of them. Love them or hate them, Rotten Fux we're a big name for a long time in the Bay Area hardcore scene, playing a ton of big shows on a regular basis all over the Bay. Rotten Fux name has always been surrounded by controversy as well. You may look at them and see spikey hair and studded leather and not associate this with "tough guy" hardcore, but trust me these guys would fuck you up faster than any of these so called tough guy bands that are playing right now. Rotten Fux we're known for having some of the most violent and crazy shows in the Bay Area, and it wouldn't be a huge shock for them to stop in their seat to beat someone's ass and then return back to the finish up the set, or to have a huge fight of 30 kids infront of the venue swinging chains, throwing bottles and hitting each other with brass knuckles. These guys didn't hesitate to write offensive songs either, with titles like "Animal Torture", "I Like Drugs", "STD Song", "No Chance for Peace", and those are just on this seven inch alone so you can only imagine what the rest of their stuff was like. Either way if you like that fast style, you should pick one up on ebay for $5 here. I know they pressed 500 at the time, and I really doubt there are that many left. Here is my favorite song below from this release, "My Rules":
"Gonna do what I want, When I want, My Rules!"
They don't have much live footage on youtube, being pre cell phone video era and all, but here's a little 30 second clip of what most of their shows looked like. A good time to be had by all!
Here is my copy of Cloak/Dagger's Lost Art that just came in, and I really think this thing is their best work yet. I was happy to find a white copy on ebay directly from Jade Tree. Apparently it was /1300 on black and /200 white. I'm surprised there are still white copies available since this came out in 2009. This is some seriously suspect cover art though. I mean what were they thinking with this? If I was to know nothing about the music, I would think it was just some weird emo band. This one even makes Trapped Under Ice's cover art look sick. Oh well, the music is just so incredible I can't stop listening to it. It came with a free digital download so I've been listening to it on my commute for the last 2 days straight. Highly recommended. Below is my favorite song "Eyes on the Wall", and if this thing doesn't get stuck in your head all day then I don't know what will. Definitely BUY THIS ALBUM, and I think Jade Tree still has them on white vinyl too!
So this will be the first post of a series of posts I'm going to do called "More than just wax", stuff that has been in my collection for a very long time that has special meaning to me and I'll post little stories with it. For a while now I have been just posting mostly new stuff that I've been getting in and have left out my most sentimental records because I just felt they deserved my attention for a nice long post. First we have The Forgotten's "Class Separation" 7" that was TKO Records' Round 2. The Forgotten is a band from San Jose that still plays every once in a while, but have been inactive for long periods between now and then. During the late 90's, early 00's street punk glory days, the Forgotten were so big they would pack out any place they played. They were truly the king's of the South Bay at the time, and anyone from other parts of the Bay instantly thought of the Forgotten whenever you mentioned San Jose. Some of my best memories from shows as a kid was from Forgotten shows. This was one of the first vinyls I ever bought and I'm amazed it even still plays since it's been spun so many times. I got this about 1998 or 1999 around the time the 2nd pressing came out, and spun this over and over again on my dads record player. This has got to be in all time top 10 favorite 7"s list, ever. This release really started my interest in collecting vinyl, and after this I started to transition from buying Cd's to vinyl. Thanks Forgotten!
The 1st pressing came out in 1997 and was on pink vinyl. I'm not sure of the pressing info on this, I think I read once it was out of 500. If someone could clarify that would be fantastic. As you can see in the first picture, the first and second pressings had slightly different layouts. This was recorded at Studio B, which at the time was recording alot of the Bay Area heavy hitters. This copy took me years to find, but I got one about a year ago off ebay for only $1. It amazes me how much street punk has lost it's value. I remember around 2001, a friend of mine sold his pink copy to another friend for $30 bucks, which was hard for us to wrap our little 13 year old minds around. I even see a pink copy up now on ebay at a BIN of $5.
Here is the 2nd pressing, the actual copy that I've had for years. I know they pressed a bunch on black, probably over a thousand and I think 100 on gray. I have been meaning to pick up a copy on gray, but I haven't found one for the right price. I've seen people post them for $25, but I'm not really willing to pay that much when I know I can probably scoop one sooner or later for only a couple bucks. This record is one of the records that really got me out and inspired to go to shows. I would always go to the Cactus Club on Sundays for their all ages punk shows and when the Forgotten would head line it would be all sold out. I got introduced to alot of my favorite music through the Forgotten, since because of them I bought the "TKO Records Punch Drunk Vol. 1" sampler which introduced me to many of my all time favorite bands. That sampler had the likes of The Beltones, Anti-Heros, The Bodies, The Templars, Pressure Point, Reducers SF, Swingin' Utters, The Workin' Stiffs, The Randumbs, Dead End Cruisers, The Truents and even US Bombs and Dropkick Murphy's were on that damn thing. This was probably the most influential CD on me ever and these are the bands that always have and always will mean the most to me. If anyone from TKO is reading this, PLEASE reissue that compilation on Vinyl! It is far too important to be wasting away on CD format. So there you go... Many of you grew up on hardcore but this is what meant everything to me and made me what I am today. Long live that Oi! punk sound. Check out the title track from this 7" below:
"The common man's screaming down in the halls, while Oi! Boy kicks down the fuckin walls"
Here is the Young Offender's 7" that Deranged put out. The artwork and layout is pretty much a snooze fest. The front and back are exactly the same, except one side has Deranged Records 2008. It doesn't even have the band name on it or anything. What this release lacks in design, it makes up for in music. The Young Offenders are one of the Bay Area's more exciting bands in the Punk/Oi! scene, playing a similar style to other Bay Area heavyweights like Factory Minds and Sydney Ducks. Some people insist this is Oi!, but to me it is more a power pop/'77 punk band that plays with Oi! bands. This definitely reminds me of the late 90's/early 00's era TKO Records bands. Either way, these guys are really great and definitely a breath of fresh air. But check them out for yourself below:
Sometimes I have to sit back and trip out on all the straight edge stuff I have. I have never been straight edge, not even close. But something about the music has always appealed to me. I just love this shit. Maybe it's because opposites attract? This is a classic album, but it really has some of the funniest straight edge lyrics I've ever heard. Some straight edge lyrics pump me up, with classics like Project X ("I'm as hard as the booze that you swill down your throat") or Judge lyrics ("Those drugs are gonna kill you, if I don't get to you first"), Now those are hard as hell. Then you have the lyrics from get it away... "Think I'm joking about your smoking? Think its fair to steal my air?" Really? SSD will get a pass for those because they fucking rule so it really doesn't matter, plus its pretty hard to understand the lyrics anyways.
I had originally ordered this Step Aside 7" knowing nothing about it or Life to Live Records. This is one of those releases I bought purely based on the artwork. I figured if it sucked, atleast I would be paying $5 for some sick ass art work, right? After hearing it and getting completely knocked off my chair by this Arizona straight edge power house, I did a quick search for Life to Live records and realized they had it on two other colors and a bunch of other cool stuff to boot. I watched their stock for a while and didn't see it moving too much, until one day I saw they posted Provider pre orders, including 5 test presses that they were selling to the public. I jumped on it quickly and got my Provider test press, these and one or two other items and waited for my Blue and Green copies to come in.
The pressing info is /125 on blue with the pre order cover (which as you can see is different because it is black and white), /150 on green and I think it was /250 black. So I wait a month or two for my order to come in (it got held up because of the Provider pre order) and over time I see that this thing goes OOP. Cool, glad I got my copies. Finally when my order comes in, I am shocked and horrified when I go to the mailbox and the package looked like it had been the ball in an all day soccer tournament. I open it and realize that all of my record sleeves were damaged with bent corners and creases. What the hell! So I take some pictures of the package and send over an email to Dan at Life to Live...
So Dan tells me don't even trip, I'll make it up to you. A few days later a package arrives with a bunch of free vinyl and this being the gem, a Step Aside test press! I damn near lost my shit when I seen this in there. Being a collector, customer service makes a huge difference to me. This gesture has just ensured a life long customer to LTL records as far as I am concerned. And for you people that own labels, keep this in mind: record collectors like myself and other bloggers on here are the kind to not only buy one copy, but buy every damn copy on every color and feel this insatiable need to own every vinyl that you ever press. So don't fuck us over, we are the ones paying your bills. More on Life to Live, this is a record label that is clearly on the rise that you should be paying attention to. They got some great promising young bands right now, including Losin' It and Provider. Last night when I was at a show, I saw a handful of kids running around wearing Step Aside, Losin' It and Life to Live shirts. That's how I know this labels about to blow the fuck up!
