Misfits - Legacy of Brutality

When I started writing this entry, I had a quick look at the release on Discogs and it looks like this second-hand, first pressing is worth about £50, which is considerably more than the £9 I paid for it one Saturday afternoon in Damaged. I can only imagine Welly didn't know it was of any real value - this was before Discogs was the resource it is now. There are coloured vinyl pressings that sell for much, much more, so I guess they're the ones people get really excited about. It was December, so the final instalment of my monthly-record-from-Damaged year and I'd covered a good selection of the punk that he stocked in there - older staples like Husker Du, Descendants, the Minutemen and Fugazi and newer bands like The Draft, Hot Water Music and The Loved Ones; I figured this was a worthy addition in the older staples category.

The first thing you notice about this record of how terrible it sounds. It's not a fault of the vinyl, it's just incredibly shittily recorded. But that's part of the charm - when you have songs like these, who needs production. I knew a bunch of these songs from covers I had, but that still doesn't really prepare for just how solid these songs are - Angelfuck, Where Eagles Dare, Hallowen, Hybrid Moments and Some Kind of Hate are all huge. Ridiculously huge songs. I think I have covers of all of them in my collection. Who wouldn't want to play those songs?

Despite all that, I've never bought another Misfits record. I just can't see myself getting any more enjoyment from their other albums than I get from this one.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 13
Cost: £9 second-hand
Bought: Damaged, Cardiff
When: 20/12/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Gameface + Errortype:11 - What's Up Bro?

Errortype:11 were a name I knew because some of the members ended up in a band called Instruction with one of the guys from Quicksand. Instruction supported Hundred Reasons in a great, sweaty gig we saw in the Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth in 2003 and mainly made an impression because they had the guy from Quicksand in, and I was (and still am) a big Quicksand fan. A year and a bit later I picked up their album God Doesn't Care and enjoyed about half of it.

Some years later, I found this in Damaged Records and picked it up because I was in a mood for spending money and not really finding much I wanted (I also got a record by The Sainte Catherines, which is equally an outlier in my collection). Gameface are a band I know literally nothing about, other than they did a split with Errortype:11. Their songs are fine I guess, but the crazy catchy hook in the Tom Petty song they do is the only really memorable part of their side (which I guess isn't a great review). It also ends with a pointlessly long drunk phone-call recording, for some reason. Who thought that was a good thing to put on the record, I don't know.

The Errortype:11 songs are nice, but sound appalling; so much so I was just checking my needle to make sure it wasn't broken. Maybe it's jut a bad pressing. I'm no audiophile, but it is hard to enjoy the songs when they sound so flat. I'm guessing the singer was in Instruction, because the vocals are very familiar from that record. Musically, they're a bit more upbeat, which works. They also offer a cover - I Got You by Split Enz - another song I don't know, but is catchy enough. I didn't need this record, but for £6 you can't really complain.

Format: 10", insert
Tracks: 6
Cost: £6 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 22/08/09
Colour: Orange
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Descendents - Milo Goes to College

Part of the reason I bought a copy of Milo Goes to College is because it's one of those records people just own, pretty much regardless of how they actually feel about the Descendents. It was also the first record in what would become the monthly-record-from-Damaged year, a companion to my Tuesday-record-from-Spillers year, which only really came about because we kept going into Damaged on a Saturday and I felt bad that we'd just chat to Welly for a while and buy nothing. I used those Saturdays to dig deeper into a lot of the 80's punk bands that were so influential and that I was reading about in Our Band Could Be Your Life. Descendents only ticked the first box, but this was a record I'd known about for years, so figured I should pick up.

I don't love the Descendents, but do enjoy what they do. There are some great moments across these 16 songs - Parents, I'm Not a Punk, Suburban Home and Jean is Dead all have huge choruses. And by huge, I mean really wonderful choruses. Their ability to writing such a soaring chorus is really the best thing about this album. Hope is basically a whole song of such moments. I particularly remember putting this album whilst walking around the Statue of Liberty when I was in New York a few months later, just for the song Statue of Liberty; it was a pretty nice moment.

I saw the Descendents twice, and the first time remains one of the worst concerts I've ever seen. I'm not sure I've written about it on here before (can't think why I would have) so here goes. In the April of 2011 Descendents were playing a handful of shows for the first time in a very long time and a lot of people were extremely excited, in particular all of the punks I'd got to know in Cardiff. I was living in London by this point, so figured the shows would be a good chance to see a lot of familiar faces. They sold out pretty quickly, but I managed to grab a ticket on the day from some friend of a friend. It seemed that most of Cardiff had spent the afternoon drinking and smoking on the park into front of Shepherd's Bush Empire and I remember vividly walking through the mess and smell, seeing people we knew and looking forward to the show.

Annoyingly, the ticket was for the first floor area of the venue, but it was more annoying when we realised that Hugh and Chris (who were staying with me that night) had tickets for the third floor. In a story that I feel should have (if it hasn't already) gone down in history, Hugh and Chris managed to smuggle their way onto the second floor when the guy on the door wasn't looking, and I stood at the very front of the first floor, climbed up on the barrier and passed my first floor ticket up to Hugh, so he could come down, give it back to me and then pass it back up to Chris. From the front right balcony of Shepherd's Bush Empire we watched a car crash of a show.

Milo had lost his voice, and quickly became frustrated with his inability to sing songs. From where we were stood, we could see that the front few rows of the ground floor were still having a good time, but the rest of the audience wasn't enjoying it. After just a few songs, Milo threw his mic to the ground and stormed off the stage. The rest of the band weren't sure what to do, went off stage for a bit, came back and did a variety of All songs, Black Flag covers and Descendents songs with singers from the support bands helping out. It was painful to watch and far from enjoyable (but also one of the best Black Flag tribute sets I've seen). I remember Chris reading out some of the best tweets about the show on the train back to my house.

They were due to play again the next night and my brother-in-law's band were (inexplicably) supporting, but stories of how bad the show was began to spread and by early afternoon the show was cancelled. I think Si's band had already begun their journey down from Birmingham, so managed to find another show to jump on somewhere else in the city. I saw the Descendents play a very good show at Reading Festival just four months later. It would have been easy to skip it based on the show we saw, but I was keen to give them another chance and it paid off - they were great fun. However, no matter how great they were, it'll never take away from my main memory of the Descendents being that horrific show in Shepherd's Bush.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 16
Cost: £9.75 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 02/02/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Hot Water Music - Never Ender

I consider myself a fairly big Hot Water Music fan, but my ability to remember which order their albums came out in, or which one is which (other than Fuel, Flight and Caution) is shockingly bad. Never Ender was, apparently, the third HWM album I got, after the three I just mentioned (in reverse order). I had no idea I'd started so strong, nor did I know that my fourth album would be a collection of songs from 7"s and not a traditional album; you'd definitely not know by just looking at the sleeve, which was all I had to go on that Saturday in Damaged.

I like Never Ender, but it doesn't get a huge amount of play. As is my usual excuse, I don't have mp3s for the album, but on top of that I couldn't tell you which HWM albums I do and don't have digital copies of, so it doesn't immediately jump out at me when I'm browsing my records as one I should give more time. Still, it's a nice album - I doubt I'll ever reach a point where I'm seeking out all the HWM 7"s and splits, so I'd probably not have heard these songs otherwise.

The first two songs are from the Alachua 7" from 1997, but aren't quite as heavy as their sound on Fuel for the Hate Game, despite being from around the same time (the two songs from the You Can Take the Boy Out of Bradenton 7" have a lot more in common with that album). Both of the title tracks from those 7"s are great and have that perfect mix of huge HWM choruses and both Chuck and Chris singing completely unintelligible lyrics at the same time. Sandwiched between those 7"s are the songs from two splits - The Bitter End is a particularly great song, and sounds like The Loved Ones tried to steal it entirely for the title track of Build & Burn.

Apparently Elektra and Things on a Dashboard are on an 8" record, which I'm quite tempted to try to pick up just for the unusual size (I wonder if there are many 11" records around?). The final four songs are from the Push for Coin cassette from 1995, which are excellent given that they must be some of the first songs they recorded.

I, of course, have no idea what colour this record is. Based on the variants they pressed of it in 2008 (when I bought it), and a rough idea of colours, I'm going to say this is the "pink mix", which is apparently one of 131 in that colour from that pressing. It's pointless getting excited about any particular colour of any particular pressing because there are so many variations it all basically becomes the same. (Update: I asked my wife and she reckons it's the "dark purple with pink", but there were only 9 pressed in that colour, so it seems too unlikely. But I guess someone has to own them.)

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £9 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 25/10/08
Colour: Pink mix
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing

Steady Diet of Nothing is the only Fugazi album I don't have a digital copy of, which means it's had far, far less play then the others. It was also the last of their albums I heard having gradually picked them all up over the course of a couple of years. Beyond Repeater and the self-titled EP (the first two Fugazi albums I heard), I'd always found that each album had a handful of songs I really loved and a lot that I was basically a bit indifferent towards. The album I heard before this one, End Hits, I struggled with a lot, and looking at the tracklisting here, I'm not seeing any I've ever taken a particular shine to. Maybe I'd just rushed through their back-catalogue a bit too fast.

Recently I made a Fugazi mix cd for the car. I went through and found all my favourite songs and put them into a playlist. Just the ones I knew to be great songs took up 90 minutes, so I didn't even revisit the albums to see if I'd missed any (and had to find 10 minutes to remove). But because I didn't have mp3s of this album, none of them made the cut. The mix has been getting a lot of play in the car - they wrote some truly incredible songs.

Listening to Steady Diet of Nothing now, I'm aware of two things: I should play this album far more often and Reclamation, Latin Roots and Polish all would have made the mix cd if I'd had mp3s - they're all great songs. Reclamation in particular has this huge wall of guitars, and Polish is one of those slower Fugazi songs that works perfectly with Ian's tortured vocals. The fade out between Latin Roots and Long Division straddling the two sides of vinyl is strange, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.

I say this a few times a year, but the point of this blog was to make sure I revisit all my records at some point, and every now and again that process unearths a forgotten classic. I should have given this album a lot more time in the past.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 25/10/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Don't worry" Side B: "This is the last one"
mp3s: none

The Loved Ones - Build & Burn

I wrote about The Loved Ones a couple of years ago when I wrote about their perfectly fine debut album. The following summer their name came up again - they played a fun set at Leeds Festival and they released their second album, Build & Burn. 2008 was the year I was doing my Tuesday-record-from-Spillers, but also my Monthly-record-from-Damaged year, so this was my purchase that month; at £9, Welly was basically giving it away.

The first half of Build & Burn is good - Pretty Good Year is a really strong opener and The Bridge is huge, possibly the best song they wrote. But the second side of the album it all goes to pot - Selfish Masquerade ruins everything with a piano and some slow ballad nonsense, and Louisiana is even stranger - some sort of country working song. It's hard to take them seriously when they're trying hard to do these sorts of songs. I Swear is another strong song to close the album, but it's always tainted by Selfish Masquerade and Louisiana.

I think I wanted The Loved Ones to just be a solid punk band, but they clearly wanted to be Springsteen. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be Springsteen, but you can't go from songs like the ones on the first half to those two strange ones. After this album they sort of just disappeared and Dave Hause began his solo career. I saw him a few times, although it was mostly by accident. I remember him doing a solo cover of either Remedy or Trusty Chords by Hot Water Music, which was fun but once again reminded me that I have no idea what any of the HWM lyrics are.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £9 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 20/09/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: cd included

The Clash - The Story of The Clash, Volume 1

Every now and again, I write something on here that is very controversial (luckily few people who read this take me up on those controversies, or maybe they're just not as controversial as I think they are). They're mostly things I'd be very wary of saying aloud in a crowd because you know at least one person within earshot will strongly disagree. Here is one such controversial thing: I don't care for The Clash.

I know I'm supposed to. My teenage years were dominated by the Manic Street Preachers who owe a lot to The Clash - all the books I read about the Manics constantly reminded me that The Clash are a band I should check out. Of course I knew the big songs from the radio - Rock the Casbah, Should I Stay or Should I Go and I Thought the Law - but for years I never made any effort to check them out properly. I'd see their cds in record stores and occasionally toyed with the idea of buying a best-of, but I didn't buy anything until 2007, when I got this second-hand, well-loved (or not, since it was in a second hand shop) compilation. It was a lot of The Clash to take in in one go.

I wonder if this collection is just too long. I know there are good songs in there - and great ones like London Calling, the highlight for me by a long way - but there's a lot of songs that I could really take or leave: Straight to Hell drags on far too long and Lost in the Supermarket is just a really bad song; I don't know if I'm missing something with that one, but every time I hear it I wonder how it made it onto an album, let alone a greatest hits album. London Calling doesn't appear until the last side, which is a long wait.

Guns of Brixton is another great song and (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais is quite fun - shows off their varied influences and you can see where Rancid stole at least half of their songs from. Tommy Gun has a good chorus and English Civil War would be an excellent way to end the album (but they don't end it there). Train in Vain I know well from the Manics cover, but I genuinely prefer their version - I couldn't tell you who is singing on any particular song, but I don't care for either Mick of Joe's voice - one has a sneer I find deeply off-putting. Safe European Home makes me want to listen to Suburban Home by The Descendents - the direction of influence is an easy one to follow there.

I wanted to like The Clash, but it just didn't work out. I feel that if you can't be convinced by a greatest hits album, then you really stand no chance with the albums themselves (Bob Dylan, a case in point, although that was another compilation that was far too long for an introduction). A lot of people would probably be amazed by the lack of "classic" albums in my record collection, but really I think I just love music from the late-80's/90's onwards (Sabbath, Zeppelin, Floyd and Springsteen being notable examples) - I get that a lot of these bands and albums from before that paved the way - I appreciate it and I'm thankful for it - but I just don't get the same enjoyment from them. That's no bad thing to realise.

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves
Tracks: 28
Cost: £6 second hand
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 14/04/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: None

The Draft - In A Million Pieces

I listen to this album quite a lot, but haven't got very much to say about it. That sounds mean - it's a really good album, but I just have no interesting stories about it. If this blog were more about music reviews than it is me reminiscing about music then I might be able to comment on the things that make it a record I like to play a lot, but it's not.

The Draft were the band that guys in Hot Water Music who aren't Chuck Ragan formed after he left the band. I heard about them around the end of university, as a friend's band got a spot supporting them in Cardiff, or possibly Newport or Swansea; South Wales for sure. They were pretty excited, all being big HWM fans. The comparisons to HWM are easy to make, but I'd say it's a much easier listen than a lot of HWM records - there are big choruses and hooks and I know what they're singing some of the time. New Eyes Open is a huge way to start the album, and Alive or Dead, Bordering and Longshot are all brilliantly catchy. The highlight for me is Wired with the horn section lifting the chorus even further. Days after listening to In A Million Pieces, I find the chorus of Wired in my head, but that's never a bad thing. All We Can Count On is a strangely positive and upbeat song given that the chorus is "All we can all count on is death". There are great songs throughout, which is probably why I turn to it so often. I have no idea if it has as high a standing in the punk community in general as it does within my record collection.

I picked this copy up in Damaged Record in March of 2008, the second in my monthly-record-from-Damaged year (I didn't start it until February it seems). At £9 it was a bargain then and even moreso now. The vinyl is a purple-ish marble, which doesn't remotely narrow down which pressing it's from, not that it really matters.

I got a chance to see The Draft at Fest in 2013 which was great fun. I'd been listening to these songs for five years at that point and I really enjoyed jumping around to them. We'd already watched Lemuria, Paul Baribeau and The Underground Railroad to Candyland, and afterwards watched Obits, Toys That Kill and The Bouncing Souls. It was quite a day.

Format: 12", A3 insert

Tracks: 12

Cost: £9 new

Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff

When: 01/03/08

Colour: Purple marble

Etching: Side A: "Welcome to the zoo" Side B: "The zoo needs you"

mp3s: no

Minutemen - What Makes a Man Start Fires?

I've always wanted to like Minutemen more than I ever have done; it's one of those shockingly un-punk things to say, but I just don't get that much enjoyment from this band. There is one exception to this, which I'll come to later.

Rewind 10 years and I was reading the excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life on holiday in Colorado. I was already a fan of a lot of the bands it covered, but was learning about a few for the first time. The Minutemen were one such band. Their story was fascinating - childhood friends form band with a moral and ethical belief at the forefront and tour in a way that has become legendary. Then one tragically dies in a car crash and they cease to be. I was gutted when D. Boon died - I was just getting to know them (on paper) and he was taken away too soon.

Like with so many bands in that book, I decided to check them out afterwards. That summer I was in Damaged Records in Cardiff to buy what had become my Monthly Record From Damaged. I decided that was the day to check out Minutemen and asked the advice of an acquaintance who was also there hanging out (I've forgotten his name, but he was in a bunch of South Wales hardcore bands and quite pretentious). He recommended What Makes a Man Start Fires? and I went with it. They also had Double Nickels on the Dime, an album I knew to be their most well-known, but was steered away by that guy's advice, the fact that there was no way I could start with an album that has 40+ songs, and the fact it was a double, so more expensive.

I found the album very hard work on first listen, and that hasn't really changed in the ten years that have followed. Seven songs into Side A you get the first hint of any melody in the chorus of '99, but its pretty brief. The style is very stripped back, as you'd expect from a band that prided themselves on sparsity. The guitar playing is very distinctive and the bass quite central. The vocals are rarely sung with adds to the jangly feel. It's not an easy listen. or a relaxing one, but I guess that wasn't what they wanted. '99 is a highlight, along with Plight which has some interesting layered vocals and Polarity where they seem to be really thrashing at their instruments for its very short duration.

Roll on another three years and I decided to try out Double Nickels on the Dime, but struggled with that too. As I suspected, being 40+ songs long, it's not the easiest record to get into. I have it on cd, which is a shame, as I think breaking into the four distinct sides (D., Mike, George and Chaff) would probably help. Numerous attempts over the years haven't helped with that one either. I've not tried any more since. If anyone reading this has any top tips of where to try beyond these two albums, please let me know. Or perhaps I'm just a lost cause.

The one thing that makes me think that maybe I'm not is something that happened in 2012. At the Jeff Mangum All Tomorrow's Parties I was lucky to see Mike Watt and George Hurley perform "The Songs of the Minutemen", something I don't think they do too often. It was just the two of them on stage, late at night on the first day and on the "third" stage (Reds, I think it was called - it was the smallest, but had a good staggered layout so you could see from quite far back). They were excellent and I enjoyed every minute of the set, something I wasn't really expecting given the two albums I'd struggled so much with. I don't know what songs they were playing and didn't recognise any from the two albums I have (but can't say "knew") - but that might be because without the guitar they would sound dramatically different anyway. Jeff Mangum was stood next to me during the performance, but I couldn't bring myself to talk to him; he looked to be enjoying it also, so didn't need yet another scrawny guy in his 20's telling him how big a fan he was of Neutral Milk Hotel.

Afterwards, I tried again with my Minutemen records, but made no further progress into getting into them. Every now and again I try again, but with no luck. I suspect I'll be doing so every couple of years until I die. Maybe one day I'll get there.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 18
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Damaged Records
When: 12/07/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Bones - the list... the list in the dream? (of echos)" Side B: "...and the guests came in through little funnels - dripping"
mp3s: no

Fugazi - End Hits

My Fugazi collection is complete in that I have all the releases on at least one format, however I'd quite like to have them all on vinyl one day - I started out that way with the self-titled EP and Repeater, but then started buying them on cd for some reason; it was 2005/2006 and LPs weren't as easy to find as cds (even routinely in-print Discord releases, in the UK at least). I keep meaning to buy the albums I only have on cd on vinyl, and I'm sure I will one day, but it's far from a challenge, so I keep putting it off.

I bought End Hits from Damaged Records in the spring of 2007. I was buying an LP every week from Spillers, but felt like I should spread my business more widely, and Damaged seemed like a very complimentary record shop - I could only get punk there, but they always had all the punk records anyone could want. So I would go there once a month and buy an LP and have a nice chat with Welly, the guy who ran it. In April, I bought End Hits.

I've never got along with End Hits as well as I'd have liked to. It's still very much a Fugazi album, but focuses more on the areas I enjoyed less (free-jazz) and less on the areas I enjoyed more (shouty punk). Vocally, few songs have the ferocity of some of the early records, which is a shame. No Surprise is the first really good song on the album for me (mainly because of the guitar riff). I remember hearing a lot about Five Corporations before hearing the song and it's definitely a great song. It's certainly nice to hear Ian's vocals on such a frantic song. Closed Captioned is another highlight, as is Foreman's Dog. Pink Frosty and Recap Modotti, on the other hand, are good examples of the sort of songs here that I'm not fussed by.

End Hits hasn't had the amount of play as it probably should have, but that's a function of it being the era before mp3 download codes and me not having the songs digitally. That, combined with the fact that when I want to listen to Fugazi I tend to pick the self-titled or Repeater, means that I really don't know it as well as I should. Quite a few of the songs are familiar from the Instrument soundtrack, so always make me think I know them better than I do, but I don't know them that well at all. Anyway, a solid Fugazi album, but I doubt it's anyone's favourite.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 05/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Jello Biafra with The Melvins - Sieg Howdy!

I consider myself a very low-level fan of The Melvins: I have a few albums that I rarely play because I find them a bit too abrasive in a way I can't put my finger but doesn't do it for me (abrasive in itself isn't bad, but something about The Melvins doesn't make me often want to listen to them). On the other hand, I love seeing them live. What they have works brilliantly on stage - it cuts through the thing that makes me want to not listen to their records and I love it. I will tell anyone who'll listen how brilliant it was when they played ATP and rolled out two extra drummers (from Modest Mouse) for the last song, leaving four drummers on stage bashing away. We were all floored. (Side note: I'm a big fan of Big Business, so maybe it's just the rhythm section I enjoy.)

Jello Biafra, on the other hand, I've had very little to do with. My introduction to him was via Pitchshifter, who collaborated with him on a song for Deviant. I ended up seeing them play together at a strange festival in Bristol, which was Jello's first show in the UK with a band for a very long time. I knew he was from the Dead Kennedys and had heard California Über Alles on the Radio 1 Rock Show at least once. Many years later, I've never sought out any other Dead Kennedys songs.

The reason for that ambivalence towards a legendary punk band is that I really don't like Jello's voice at all. I hadn't had that realisation when I bought this collaboration on something of a whim (I was making myself buy an LP once a month from Damaged in Cardiff and this was the only thing that caught my eye that month). The first two minutes of this album started out ok - The Melvins covering an Alice Cooper song that I'm not familiar with. Then Jello starts singing and I lost interest. He's a very hard man to listen to. On top of that, a lot of the songs are kinda sprawling, which is hard work. I wonder if that's a function of Jello's many years of spoken word - he's used to rambling on at tangents. The irony of Jello singing about bands reuniting and playing songs from the "good old days" only to then offer a re-working of his old band most famous song seems lost. Voted Off the Island is terrible but thankfully short. The final remix is spread across two sides of a 7" (with a half-hearted fade-out between the two), which feels like a chore by that point.

It's not all bad: Lessons in What Not To Become is quite cool (musically) and there's a great break before the chorus. Despite what I just said, the reworking Kalifornia Über Alles 21st Century is alright too and it's nice to hear The Melvins smashing out a punk song. Dälek do a surprisingly good remix of Dawn of the Locusts (of which I've never heard the original) - I'm normally against rock remixes, but I'm a fan of Dälek, so maybe that's why I enjoy it.

When I bought the album I hadn't realised that it was a collection of odds and ends from the actual album they recorded together (of which I think heard good things). I should have noticed the word "remix" in small font on the back after three of the songs. Had I known, this might not be sat in my record collection, somewhat neglected; knowing the stock in Damaged, a Black Flag album would probably take its place.

Format: 12", 7", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Damaged, Cardiff
When: 07/06/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Sainte Catherines - Dancing for Decadence

I can't fully remember how I came to know about The Sainte Catherines. Given the timing I suspect I was introduced to them, at least by name, by my housemate Nicky (and given that Tom Gabel provides guest vocals here, I'd say that's a certainty). Other factors involved in buying this album were that I was in Damaged Records (so felt I ought to buy something) and that it was only £7.50. I've got a vague feeling that I'd heard at least one song before buying it, so I knew roughly what sort of punk to expect. I think I knew enough about them to know that I'd probably enjoy the album; it was on Fat Wreck Chords, which usually narrows down the sound a little.

Dancing for Decadence is basically a perfectly enjoyable gruff-punk record. It's a bit more Fat Wreck gruff-punk than No Idea gruff-punk (splitting very fine hairs here), but that's OK. I really like the singer's voice and they have some good songs; in fact, side B is where they really shine in my opinion - The Shape of Drunks to Come, I'd Rather Be Part of the Dying Bungee Scene and If There's Black Smoke Over A Bridge, It's Over are all great songs. The latter in particular has the best chorus on the album. The songs are mostly about politics, drinking and being in a band, which is fine by me. I don't have mp3s of the album (it was 2009 and download codes weren't commonplace) so I've not listened to this album a great deal over the years. I've also not kept up with the band at all.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £7.50 new
Bought: Damaged Records
When: 22/08/09
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

American Steel - Destroy Their Future

I don't have a great deal to say about this record. I used to regularly visit a record shop in Cardiff called Damaged and in 2008 I decided that I'd go there once a month and buy an LP (this was the same year I bought an LP every Tuesday from Spillers). Damaged mostly stocked punk records and I picked up a good supply that year. In 2009 however, my visits became much less frequent because I wasn't forcing myself to go there. However I still popped in occasionally, and on one trip I bought this record.

I don't think I'd consciously heard American Steel at the time I bought Destroy Their Future, but I'd heard plenty about them and for £7 it seemed like a safe gamble. The fact it was on Fat Wreck Chords should have been my first clue that it wasn't going to be entirely my thing, but I didn't have much to lose.

It's not a bad record but, as far as the punk I like goes, American Steel are a little less exciting. The sound is quite clean and they're not doing much here that hasn't been done before. On the other hand, there are more hooks and catchy moments than I can count. Dead and Gone is a particularly great song, Smile on Me is pretty nice and most of them have some redeeming features but overall there's not much to write home about.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £7 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 13/06/09
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Avail - Front Porch Stories

In 2008, alongside my Tuesday-records-from-Spillers, I had my monthly-records-from-Damaged. Damaged Records was a small shop in the antiques market in Cardiff that sold punk records and was only open at the weekend. If you wanted any record Black Flag ever put out, Damaged was the place to go. The monthly-records-from-Damaged grew out of the fact that you'd go into Damaged, spend a while chatting to Welly, the guy who ran it, and then feel kinda guilty if you weren't buying anything, so I decided that I'd go in monthly and find something I wanted. He had plenty of good records so I probably could've stepped it up to fortnightly and still not run out of things to buy. I bought this Avail record on one of those Saturdays.

Rewinding a bit, the first time I really listened to Avail was on a tribute to Sublime (I'm not counting their song on Short Music for Short People, because 30 seconds isn't the best way to hear a band). I was never really into Sublime, but a friend had brought one of their albums on a road trip in Australia and we all enjoyed it. A year later I found the tribute album for £3 in the January sales and it had some interesting names on the tracklisting, so I bought it. The highlight of the whole album by far was Avail's cover of Santeria, which I'd easily rank in my all-time top 20 covers (and made it onto a mixtape I made with that exact theme). From that point on I made a note to check Avail out.

However, this album is the extent to which I checked Avail out. I like it, but I've simply not seen any of their other records since. I've heard the earlier ones are the place to start, so maybe one day I'll pick one of those up and it'll encourage me to get more. Verses is probably my favourite song here, ironically, for the chorus alone.

Anyway, my favourite Avail-based story is that once shared a taxi with Tim Barry. It was the Sunday morning of Fest, he had been staying in the same hotel as us and we were all heading into town. I think he started talking to us, possibly because of our British accents and we talked for a while about the riots that summer and some other things. Eventually it transpired that he was Tim Barry and I was reasonably, but not 100%, sure that he was the singer in Avail. I wanted to say how great I thought Avail's cover of Santeria was but a) I wasn't sure enough that he was definitely in Avail to say it without running the risk of embarrassing myself and b) I'm not sure if you're allowed to compliment someone on a song they didn't actually write, and I couldn't remember any of the names of the songs on this album. So I didn't say anything Avail related. He was a really decent guy though and was genuinely interested in what we had to say, which was nice. I'm looking forward to his upcoming tour with Sam Russo.


Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £9 new
Bought: Damaged Records
When: 29/11/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The No WTO Combo - Live from the Battle in Seattle

Here is a record I spent quite a while looking for, almost entirely because of the line up. The idea of Krist Novoselic and Kim Thayil playing in the same band definitely appealed to me. By then I hadn't come to dislike Jello Biafra's voice quite so much so I probably considered that a pro too. I think Mary-Ann Hobbs played a song on the Radio One Rock Show around when it came out and I guess I enjoyed it, but it was definitely the Nirvana/Soundgarden connection that kept the record in my mind.

Anyway, years passed (many years, nearly 8 of them) and I eventually found this in Damaged Records in Cardiff for a mere £6, so excitedly took it home to finally hear the whole thing. The problem is that in those nearly 8 years, I'd discovered that Jello Biafra's voice winds me up no end. I have one of the albums he did with the Melvins and I find that equally hard on the ears. Unfortunately the record starts with a sprawling spoken word rant by Jello, in which he makes some perfectly reasonable points if you can get past his voice. The four songs that follow are plenty nice enough, again despite Jello's voice, and make for an interesting listen on their own.

Whilst in 2000 I was at an age where I really should have known a lot more about what was going on in the world than I did, the politics and meaning behind this record are a bit lost on me. Worse still, I'm yet to sit down and read the lengthy essays inside the book (which I'm sure will fill me in greatly). There's no excuse for ignorance, but it's not high on my priorities right now. I have a rough idea of the history and this record is certainly captures the time and place nicely, even though I was neither there nor involved.


Format: 12", 8-page 10" booklet
Tracks: 5
Cost: £6 new
Bought: Damaged Records
When: 16/08/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Hüsker Dü - Land Speed Record

I wanted to write about a short record today (in the the hope I might get some work done sooner) and they don't come much shorter than this: Land Speed Record crams 17 songs in just over 25 minutes and it is relentless. I'd just come back from a holiday where I'd been reading the excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life, a book chronicling the lives of 13 indie/punk/hardcore bands on independent labels and a very good read if that sort of thing interests you. I knew about some of the bands (Mudhoney, Black Flag, Fugazi,...) but there were some who I'd only ever heard about. One of those bands was Hüsker Dü and when I got back to Cardiff I decided to pick up a record of theirs.

I can't remember why I chose Land Speed Record as the first (and, for my sins, so far the only) Hüsker Dü album I bought. We listened to and went to see a lot of hardcore bands whilst I was in Wales so it might have been because I knew it was their hardcore album. I also remember reading in Our Band... that they used to play loud and fast and without gaps between songs so that people couldn't discuss them between songs, which I thought was pretty cool. I knew Land Speed Record was a live album so maybe I bought it because I wanted to hear this idea in action. It also might have been that Land Speed Records was the name of my favourite record shop in Canberra.

Whatever the reasons, I bought it one Saturday and it definitely is a hardcore record (and the title could hardly be more appropriate). The ones are brutally short and violent and it's pretty abrasive on the ears. I like it, but I spin it rarely; it's a good record for packing or tidying or any task you want to get done quickly, but not so great for a casual listen. I know that Hüsker Dü's later work was very different and I've been meaning to buy Zen Arcade for ages, but somehow it's never quite happened.

As for the no-gaps-between-songs thing, everything you've heard is true. One song has barely ended before the next one stops and the only slight breather comes in the intro to Data Control. The two sides of the vinyl are continuous and any attempts to figure out which song you're listening to can only be done by listening to lyrics, if you can figure them out. The quality is great though, especially considering it was recorded straight to the mixing-desk of a gig 30 years ago.



Format: 12"
Tracks: 17
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 03/05/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no