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You gotta hear these great classic punk rock CDs! Some of the greatest punk rock tunes every collected!
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Wipers - The Herd - CD
With his best album since Over the Edge, and his second-best LP out of his ten releases (behind Youth of America), Phoenix guitarist-magician Greg Sage restakes his claim as America's most committed, most uncompromising, most important rock artist: After laying low through his last two refreshing, moody LPs, Sage and drummer Steve Plouf flex the old musical muscle for the first time in seven years and come out swinging. Raining blows all over the place, particularly on the first five songs, The Herd reveals a man with aural fire burning in his fingers. A mixture of aggression, moxie, mastery, and doomsday warnings, the LP thunders right from its opening snare crack, on the astonishing, staggering "Psychic Vampire." For the entire 43 minutes thereafter, Sage piles on outrageous, piercing guitar runs on feral, short passage after passage, the strings bending brutally under the strain of Sage's wild left hand. Apart from the daring ride of the melodic songs themselves, his striking, sensational, six-string manipulations transform already strong material into mini-epics. The delicately fingered leads are laced with reverb and feedback, trumpeting in paranoid, turbulent, and often indescribably beautiful fashion, mature themes of a society run amuck. Furthermore, Sage continues his knack for dive-bomb, dramatic chord changes (his penchant for non-traditional chord patterns is remarkable). Add Sage's voyeuristic, troubled, Father Time voice, and The Herd is a battering experience, a harsh, power-driven, insane wonder-record that compares well with the book/film On the Beach for its combination of intelligent sci-fi alarm and the raw, mainlined savageness of the music that reflects it. The Herd is a compelling triumph, a supreme accomplishment from one of the true giants of our generation.
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Violent Society - Not Enjoyin It - Compact Disc
Violent Society is a punk rock band that formed in 1990. The band was based out of Philadelphia, PA. Known for playing a style of punk that appealed to a variety of audiences, including fans of pop punk, hardcore punk, and late-70s style UK punk. The band stopped playing together in 2003.
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The Frogs - Bananimals - CD
Once again unexpectedly emerging with an official album after a long silence, the Frogs stepped back from the smooth sounds of Starjob with a new collection of often rough, perversely charming, and always entertainingly offensive tracks. A fair number of songs could easily constitute a part two of It's Only Right and Natural, mixing the same elements of sweet folkiness and gay-themed lyrics. "La Da Da Da, La Da Da Dee, La Da Da Dum Dum" -- indeed the title as well as the chorus -- talks about French kissing some guy and not minding his dentures. Meanwhile, "Love in the Sand" lazily describes a scenario with another fellow where he "blew me...a kiss." Not everything is quite so focused -- thus, of course, "Love Me or Die, Bitch" ("make up your mind which!"), with alternately beautiful and stomped piano. An even more perversely pretty example is "Golden Showers," where the music and tender singing are quite lovely, even if the water sports being celebrated aren't swimming and water polo. The hints of melancholia and distress which underpin a lot of the band's best work crop up more than once, sometimes in the simplest of ways, as they do in the lead piano on "One of Them Wore Wings, the Other Did the Painting." Dennis Flemion is still in fine, scraggly voice -- alternately breathy, aggressively camp, or just plain screwed up (refer to "Evil Arnold [With the Ugly Name]" for a good example of the latter). When he gets to slamming down some of the morons of the world -- thus, "U Bastards" ("you should be sent to hell/you rotten motherf*ckers") -- his singing is at its sweetest. "Fur z Musik Biz (10 Years to Waste)" is perhaps the perfect epitome of such an approach -- a sickly sweet, tenderly arranged "up yours" to the industry that is simply mind-blowing.
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The Jack Saints / The Idiots - Split - CD
Jack Saints is a garage Punk/Rock 'n Roll band formed in Palm Springs, California, in 1995. In 1996 they moved to San Francisco and became part of the underground music scene there, releasing three singles, three albums, and appearing on many compilations.
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The Cakekitchen - Far From The Sun - Compact Disc
With a reshuffled lineup (Keith McLean on bass, Huw Dainow on drums) and no guest appearances, Jefferies led the Cakekitchen back into the studio for Far From the Sun. The general aesthetic of the band having been long since established, nothing per se changes on this third group effort -- Jefferies is still the guy in charge, vocals tend towards the softly sung/spoken, and avoiding obvious conclusions in a rock format is still the name of the game. The anthemic lift of "Stranger Than Paradise" begins things, interestingly enough, with one of his most straightforward numbers -it's not that far off in feel from fellow Kiwis Bailter Space at that point in time, a massive guitar surge. Similar numbers where Jefferies gets to flex his underground guitar hero muscles crop up throughout. There's the coda of "Fahrenheit 451," an inspiring blast of sound, and the equally soaring conclusion of "Man In the Mirror" (nothing to do with the Michael Jackson of the same name). Plenty of points throughout, though, reconfirm that this is from Graeme Jefferies' mind -- "Overexcited" is a great example of same, its mechanical samples and clatters meshing with the screeching feedback deep in the mix. The sometimes nagging, sometimes lovely violas on the title track, matched with Jefferies' usual vocal approach, makes for another classic Cakekitchen moment, striking without being comfortable. The calmer fingerpicking guitar and folky singing up top makes for a great contrast. The band as a whole are quite fine -- the powerful performance on "Trouble in the Underworld" is as good an example as any. Jefferies' clever, often evocative way around lyrics remains happily intact -- thus the opening to the sweet strum and strings of "Greater Windmill Street Blues," "Across the river one more winter/Safe inside an air-raid shelter/Penny says, 'Please cross the border/Bring your clothes and taste the water.'"
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The Damned - Not The Captains Birthday Party - French Import CD
Titular claims aside, that is in fact precisely what this late-'77 show is documenting via a concert at London's Roundhouse. Featuring the original classic lineup running through Damned Damned Damned-era songs, and a smattering of new ones, Not the Captain's Birthday Party? is short but good smash-and-bash fun, capturing a time when punk was still an honest feeling of the age and not something to wear or refer back to. While the studio recordings the group did best show their considerable abilities at making fiery, kicking rock and roll, this entertaining record still blasts through enough performance and energy. The recording itself is fairly flat, but still is remarkably clear (aside from a number of mic feedback squeaks), making it a much better document of the era than many of the similar live releases from the same time. The tensions that would eventually cause the first collapse of the group aren't in immediate evidence here.
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Tar Babies - Honey Bubble - punk CD on SST Records
One of the lesser-known bands on the legendary SST roster, the Tar Babies emerged from Madison, WI, with a distinctive brand of punk-funk that often drew comparisons to their labelmates the Minutemen, as well as the Texas-based Big Boys. Colored with bits of psychedelia, jazz, and avant-noise skronk, their music quickly progressed beyond their roots in hardcore and evolved into a scratchy but danceable, groove-centered hybrid complete with horns and George Clinton-style jamming. The Tar Babies were formed out of the ashes of Madison hardcore punkers Mecht Mensch, who disbanded in 1982.
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SWA - Evolution 85-87 - CD
Blending the punk sounds of the SST label (Black Flag, Minutemen) with those of '70s hard rock sludgemeisters, SWA debuted in 1985 with Your Future (If You Have One). Led by former Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski and vocalist Merrill Ward, the group released Sex Dr. the following year and then added guitarist Sylvia Juncosa (also with To Damascus). XCIII followed in 1987, after which Evolution 85-87 summed up the first three albums. Juncosa left soon after to begin a solo career, with Phil Van Duyne replacing her on 1989's Winter. It was SWA's last album, though Juncosa released solo albums in 1988 and 1989.
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Stone Fox - Totally Burnt - Compact Disc
Produced by ex-4-Non Blonde leader Linda Perry, the San Francisco quintet Stone Fox bears similarities to their Bay Area predecessors who broke the proverbial bank with their hit "What's Up?" Primarily female, drummer Brent being the only male, Stone Fox cranks out an album's worth of riot grrrl rock.
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Sleepers - The Less An Object - Early San Francisco punk CD
One of the earliest San Francisco punk bands, the Sleepers were also one of the first U.S. outfits to stretch the boundaries of the style into what is recognized today as "post-punk." Featuring the deep vocals and inscrutable lyrics of singer Ricky Williams (formerly a drummer with Crime), the Sleepers' material stressed ominous atmosphere, throbbing bass lines, and quirky instrumental shifts that challenged the rigid bash-'em-out structures of early punk. Particularly in their later days, their recordings looked forward to elements of goth rock, in both Williams' increasingly Bowie-esque vocal delivery and the sophisticated electric guitar textures. The Sleepers' obscurity is mostly attributable to their sparse output, which was limited to a 1978 EP, a single, and a 1981 LP, all on small labels with limited distribution. Williams, an instable character who was thrown out of an embryonic lineup of Flipper for being too weird, later sang with the Toiling Midgets, and died in 1992. Drummer Tim Mooney, also a member of Toiling Midgets, went on to work with American Music Club
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