Archive for January, 2005

Beaver - 7″ EP (1981 Choice Cuts)

Many years ago, my immense love for Government Issue would lead me to discover a little known 7″ that featured Tom Lyle in his pre-GI punk days. I didn’t know a thing about the band. They on the Bouncing Babies compilation, but I didn’t even notice it until after I took possession of a copy of this record. I’ll admit to owning that compilation since I was a kid in high school, yet not playing it much (as an aside, does anyone know what band it is that is the unlisted final track on the record?).

Beaver started out as a solo project of Tom Lyle’s. Then it became a real band, albeit short lived. Here’s a brief story Tom shared with me.

I was in a DC progressive/new waver band, but became VERY bored with the whole scene. After seeing the Dead Kennedys in April 81 at the 9:30, and then the Government Issue/Youth Brigade/Minor Threat show in June 81 at the 9:30 I started making home demo tapes of me playing all the instruments in the most hardcore style I could come up with. I wanted to get a band together to play out live and used they rhythm section from Square One, the awful band I was in at the time. Then we got asked to record a record for Choice Cuts.

Choice Cuts was a record store in DC back then that started a label and I’m pretty sure this was the only thing they released.

It wasn’t long before Beaver disbanded and Tom Lyle joined Government Issue. GI is a story for another day of course. I do not know what became of the other two guys.

As always if you have any additional information or were one of the other members of Beaver please get in touch.

Click here to hear “Trendy” from the record (right click and “save target as…”)

I am looking for anyone that can put me in touch with anyone who was in the following bands…

Corpsicles, No Thanks, Misguided, Armed Citizens, Token Entry, Salvation Army, Meaty Buys, Catatonics, False Prophets, Kids For Cash, The Next.

Aside from those, I’m always looking to get stories direct from the source so if anyone reading this was in an old punk or hardcore band from the 70s and 80s, please get in touch.

This one is a unique entry as it is featuring two records by the same band, which covers different eras of the band’s existence.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. It all started with a compilation….

While not an overly original way to start one of these features, it is a testament to just how important compilations were back then. For awhile I’d discover more bands through compilations than I would through fanzines and simple word of mouth. Of course these days the compilation is all but useless. This particular compilations was called Let’s Die and it was one of the many Mystic Records comps. It was here that I discovered the White Pigs. I liked the song so much that I’d seek out their other recordings, which at the time was a pair of 7″s and a demo tape (which I still have).

I contacted Keith Grave, founding member and bass player for the White Pigs story and he chimed in with some info regarding these particular releases. He also penned the White Pigs history on the Kill From The Heart website, which I lifted part of for this band history.

The White Pigs formed in CT in 1980 out of the ashes of Zak and the Soda Boys. Lead singer Dave Death came up with the name as a goof on a neighborhood dog that used to shit all over the place. That line up did one Shamrock Pub show, then because of inner band problems disbanded.

In 1982 singer Brian Ripthroat and original founding member bassist Keith Grave agreed to reform the band, but it took until the summer of 1983 to locate drummer George Butterrick (formerly of the Separates) and guitarist Chuck Duncan, to get the band rolling again.
They then released their self-titled 7″ EP on Switch Kwilson Productions.

They released a second 7″ in 1984 called Evil Stalks the Innocent on their Songs Of Sin label. It was recorded live and they came on red vinyl. At the end of that year is when they appeared on the aforementioned compilation and had recorded the demo tape.

That leads us to their final release as a band, an EP on Combat Records that featured a different lineup than on the earlier works. After this came out, the band called it quits. It would be a few years before the posthumous 7″ on Mystic Records and the LP on Walkthrufyre would be released.

Keith had the following to say about these particular records chosen for this entry.

White Pigs - Combat Boot Camp 12″ EP (1987 Combat Records)

The poor bastards, I get them a full Metal Blade LP. deal, which included an appearance also on an upcoming Metal Massacre compilation LP. What do they do? They go with the bootcamp series that only offered them a 12″ EP. release. On top of that, the jacket is all camouflaged that didn’t even print the members names or contact addresses etc.

I was booted out of my own band by then because of personal differences, mostly with guitarist Steve Bertrand, so I had no say on which deal to go with. My replacement on bass, Dave Flannery, couldn’t play my bass lines on most of the recordings that made up the 1987 bootcamp release, so Steve played both guitar and bass on this record.

The remake of “Deathway” is lifeless and sterile. The Munsters Theme remake is slightly better then the original demo recording I played on, but boy that no fills allowed bass playing on the record grades on my nerves. Some new tunes were added in “Body Parts”, “Unholy Trinity” that sucked and a studio version of “Blood Sucking Freaks” that was good, but for my money, buy 1990’s Songs of Sin on Walkthrufyre Records. It has the full 1985 demo plus a few cuts from the Combat EP.

In their full bootcamp reissue, Century Media Records ,that owns the Combat catalog now, failed to include the White Pigs bootcamp EP with this reissued box set. Singer Brian Ripthroat told me years later he almost cried when he saw the finished release of the bootcamp record, it was so cheaply packaged and cheesy looking.

Click here to hear “Deathway from the record (right click and “save target as…”)

White Pigs - Hit Bonanza 7″ (1989 Mystic Records)

Doug Moody by now was running out of money and on the run. I used to call him to inquire on when this record was coming out and he used to disguise his voice as his mother and say “Doug isn’t in” but the bastard took pity on me and actually sent me the 100 copy payoff he promised me of this record.

In a nut shell Mystic went through Bill Smith pressing plant, first mistake, colored vinyl copies sounded horrible. Mistake number two, Doug strays from the original master I sent him and deletes some unreleased songs that are listed on the cover of the record. Nice packaging though, I like this record the best out of all the White Pigs releases.

This single came on both blue and purple vinyls. I believe there was 500 of each color.

Click here to hear “A.P.O.W.” from the record (right click and “save target as…)

As always, if you have any information you’d like to share or were one of the other members of White Pigs, please get in touch.

I still have some Gmail invites to give away. If you want one, post a comment here.

In my never ending effort to contact people from punk bands of the past, I figure it was due time to start to prepare some entries for some of the Nardcore bands, such as Dr. Know and Ill Repute. So I went on the nardcore website, which is where these old timers gather. I found their message board and after being assaulted by popup ads, I posted to it asking for members of Dr. Know and Ill Repute to please get in touch as I’d like to do some features on them for this site.

The first person to respond was some kid who I assume has never felt the touch of a woman and was sitting at his computer with a bottle of lotion and his pants around his ankles. He instanty posted to “watch out for this guy, he works for Doug Moody”. Then someone else tried to defend me, and then Brandon Cruz chimed in asking who the hell I was.

Completely annoyed, I responded to the message and layed out the facts. I do indeed do some work for Doug which is no secret, I do not have anything to do with whatever problem they have with him, I was not in the room, the town or the state when they signed whatever contracts they sign, and where I earn some side money has no bearing on this whatsover. I also assured them I was not working on a Mystic project regarding them and my interest was soley related to the Selections from The Punk Vault series.

The same annonymous guy challenged me to come to the 805, which I assume is some sort of club in Oxnard, if I was brave and get the story in person, which I would do, if it wasn’t a couple thousand miles away. Then Brandon Cruz chimed in how he won’t tell another journalist the stories about his beef with Mystic ever again, how he’s a media whore and its all well documented and how I was smug but if I was looking for memories that would be ok or something to that effect.

Throughout the years I have read plenty of stories by bands about how they got ripped off by Mystic. Now they could be true, or they could not be, I don’t know. There is two sides to every story and I’m not passing judgment on either side. What I do know is all I remember ever reading was the vague “he ripped us off” with no detail given to what they signed, what they received, etc. It would be nice to hear a detailed account of how they remember things going down. I have also heard a few stories about how the band was told up front they were not getting a royalty, and that they would be provided with copies of the records as payment and were given as much, if not more than they were promised. So the story is different depending on who you ask and 20+ year old booze and drug damaged memories sometimes can get fuzzy and lost as time continues to pass by.

What would be nicer still, is if they don’t judge someone based soley on who they do some side work for, and that they share some of their band memories for the readers here to enjoy. Whether that will happen now or not remains to be seen.

If one were to follow this flawed logic of not associating with anyone who has ties to Mystic, then they by right should be against any record store who sells their records as well as these bands’ non-Mystic Records, any distributor who sells both their Mystic and non-Mystic releases, and any fan who bought those records, because in some way, they all have a tie.

Seems pretty silly if you ask me.

In an effort to further fist you up the backside in fees like its parent company, ebay, apparently paypal has instituted some sort of receiving limit per month on personal accounts. I am sure this was done to force people to upgrade to the type of account that they get to fuck you on in transaction fees as the personal account is free. When did this start?

If their fees weren’t so outrageous, I’d just upgrade, but ebay gets to double penetrate you between their multiple fees in the auctions plus the fees paypal takes for their “premier” accounts. If they did the right thing and only charged you for recieving a credit card payment that would be one thing, but the greedy whores will pimp you on someone sending money from existing funds in their paypal account or from a bank transfer.