Archive for June, 2006

At long last, there is a new episode of LFCM that I just posted. Hopefully we’ll be back on a regular schedule of getting these things out there again.

If you want to subscribe to the podcast feed, you can do so by copying this link into your iTunes.

To download the show the old fashioned way, visit the LFCM site.

Final Conflict - Ashes to Ashes CD
SOS Records

Final Conflict was a hardcore band from CA who started in 1983 but didn’t put out this, their first album, until 1987 on Pushead’s label, Pusmort Records. It wasn’t in print for more than a year or two before it vanished. It was reissued once in the 1990s on CD by Relapse Records, then again by Cargo/Tacklebox and eventually went out of print again. Now for the third time, it is once again available on CD.

The music is pretty straight-forward mid 80’s hardcore with surprisingly very little metal influence considering the time period this was based in. They lyrics were fairly political in nature and pretty well thought out and certainly appealed to the general feeling of punks in that decade and in many ways are still as pertinent 19 years after they were first presented.

The packaging contains lyrics to the entire album, a little message from the band and a small collage of photos on the last page. On top of the original album, this CD contains bonus tracks from the band’s 1984 demo doing covers of “Love Song” by The Damned and “Warhead” by UK Subs. I wish they would have included the band’s original material from said demo if any existed, but still it was better than no bonus material. Overall a pretty wise purchase for fans of 1980s hardcore and its nice to see it preserved once again in a nice package.

Charged G.B.H. - On Stage: City Baby Attacked by Rats DVD
Music Video Distributors

G.B.H. (who somehow have put the “Charged” back in their name) has been around longer than a lot of modern punks have been alive! Through good times and some bad ones (*cough*metal*cough*), they’ve been at it well over two decades and show no sign of quitting. As far as I know, they never called it quits. They went metal when everyone else did, but then when that fad passed they “came back” and started doing what they did best and that was playing punk rock, though they’ve always had a bit of a metal tinge to their sound even early on.

This DVD was recorded at The Coronet in London, England in summer of 2004. I saw the band play around here a year prior to this one. When I saw them I thought they were alright and hadn’t really lost anything in their old age, however the sound was so loud and poorly mixed that it really put a damper on any kind of enjoyment I could get from their set since it was a muddy mess. Luckily this DVD does not suffer that affliction and thus by watching this, I pretty much get to see and hear what I missed due to the faults of when I saw them. They pretty much play all the “hits”, at least every song I really liked was played at this show anyway. Between songs there is some banter with the audience and with each other and the set wasn’t without its share of mistakes (one song ended in the middle because it appeared some forgot what song they were playing!). Overall it was a pretty good set played with a fairly high amount of energy. The songs I liked growing up sounded really good in most cases (”Give Me Fire” sadly being the exception to that statement) considering these guys are more than 20 years older than when I first heard them playing them (and saw them in live videos I had).

The DVD was digitally filmed on multiple cameras. The picture is quite sharp, though a bit dark at times. The editing was pretty clean and does a good job of showing all the action on stage, with very little shots of the crowd outside some wide shots taken from the back of the club. The show was 55 minutes long with a total of 19 songs. There is two audio options, stereo and 5.1 surround. The 5.1 sounded thin to me and not very loud. The stereo mix on the other hand sounded great and had a lot of “oomph” to it, especially in the low end which is likely the reason it is the default audio setting when you put in the disc. There is a couple of bonus features; one features the band on the road (in the van, hotel, etc) as shot by themselves and crew with a portable camera, and the other is an interview. The bonus features total about an hour in length, bringing the entire viewing experience a bit shy of two hours.

A long time hardcore G.B.H. fan will likely want to have this in their collection. It’s a good representation of their modern day live show with excellent audio/video quality and a decent performance. New fans might want to check out their early works on Clay Records as a means of hearing what they sound like for the first time before taking the plunge, but likely would if they become fans.

Related links:

Order the DVD from amazon.com

Music Video Distributors website

GBH official website

Violent Midnight - DVD
Dark Sky Films

Violent Midnight was the first film made by low-budget horror director Del Tenney. It came out in 1962 and featured a younger Dick Van Patton (later of Eight is Enough TV fame). The movie tells the story of Elliot, a Korean war vet turned artist who is living in semi-seclusion and painting a nude model. He had a fling with her in the past and upon driving her home, ends up getting in a fight with her current boyfriend. The next thing you know, she is stabbed to death by an unknown assailant and Elliot is suddenly a prime suspect. Not too long after that, his sister comes to town to start college and one of her friends takes a liking to Elliot (as well as the deceased model’s boyfriend) and suffers a similar fate. Things look bad for both Elliot and Charlie as they are both suspects now, but who really did it?

The film is full frame and in black and white. The picture has been restored and looks really sharp with great contrast. The audio is very clean and in the original mono mix it was recorded in. The movie runs just over 90 minutes long and the bonus features consist of a commentary track, a photo gallery, and trailers for the other Del Tenney films (reviewed previously on this site). Overall it was an enjoyable film that was well worth watching, and a good showing from a first-time director. Any one who like a good murder-mystery would probably find some enjoyment here.

Related links:

Order the DVD from amazon.com

Dark Sky Films website

Buzzcocks - Flat-pack Philosophy - CD
Cooking Vinyl

The Buzzcocks have been a punk rock institution for three decades now. Sure they took some time off here and there but it seems that even time off didn’t result in them losing it. They’d come back at will, tour the country playing nothing short of amazing sets and occasionally put out a new record that actually is worth buying instead of just opting to only listen to the old records. A few years ago they resurfaced and put out an enjoyable album, toured, and then went silent for a couple years.

Now they are back with a new album and a new tour and I’m happy to report that now a few years later, they still can deliver the goods in the new song department. If there is one thing that Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle have mastered in the past three decades is the ability to craft energetic pop punk songs with simple choruses that have such a good hook that you can’t help but get the songs stuck in your head. This new album is no different.

Aside from Shelley’s voice being perhaps an octave lower than on the early Buzzcocks records, not much has changed in the vocal and lyrics department, which is a blessing because there lies part of the Buzzcocks charm. The songs are still under three and a half minutes long and while still quite melodic, a few such as the title track have a bit more punch in the guitar department, resulting in a bit heavier sound without sacrificing the melodicism. Songs like “Wish I Never Loved You”, my personal favorite on the disc, even make use of some interesting guitar effects which is something I don’t recall them doing on the early records I grew up with. Its nice to see them be able to blend the formula of what made them so good in the past with some new techniques that keeps them from sounding dated.

There is fourteen songs on this disc. About 3/4 of them were written by Pete Shelley and the rest were by Steve Diggle. I personally prefer the Shelley composed ones, but in reality there isn’t a bad song on here. The songs rate from average to really catchy, so I can listen to the whole thing without wanting to skip songs, or when I’m in the mood there are my “go-to” songs that I just put on repeat because they’d get stuck in my head.

Its refreshing to see a band who has been around so long be able to still deliver the goods in the new music department. It is a rare thing indeed and I can’t wait to see them again and hear how these new tunes sound live, while being mixed in a set full of my long-time favorites.

Related links:

Order the CD from amazon.com

Buzzcocks on myspace

Cooking Vinyl official website

My 3 Sons - 7″ (1984 Buy Our Records)

I first heard My 3 Sons on the New Jersey’s Got It compilation on the long defunct, Buy Our Records. I had a big thing for New Jersey punk back then so I bought everything I could find on that label and then some. If it was from NJ, I’d buy it just because the state had a good track record for punk rock in my eyes. That line of thinking of course led me to purchasing this 7″, the only one the band released in their short time together.

Recently I happened across one of the former members of the band, Joe Saggese, and he was kind enough to share some My 3 Sons history with me, which was much needed since the 7″ barely gave you any information except the name of the band and the names of the songs!

My 3 Sons - By Joe Saggese

It was with deliberate intent that there was no information on this band from its formation. We just wanted it to be known that there was a punk band from NJ called My 3 Sons and that they left a few recordings and the listener either appreciated it or didn’t. We came to agreement very early on that the band would not be about any one of us but rather represent the NJ punk scene of 1982, which we believed very strongly in and still do till this day.

The Band Members

With the passing of almost 25 years since the band from Union, NJ first played together, it’s time to reveal some facts about My 3 Sons. My 3 Sons were founded at the end of the summer of 1982. The original band line-up is as follows:

Joe Saggese-bass & vocals-(X bass & vocals for early NJ punk band Cribdeath 1981-1982)
Chris Frieri-guitar & vocals-(X bass player for early NJ punk band Black Sambo 1981-1982)
Scott Frank-drums & vocals-(X drummer for early NJ punk band black Sambo & Bedlam)

Influences

Although My 3 Sons played to the hardcore crowd, we were anything but. The band was very influenced by a few different genres of music such as the San Francisco bands on the Subterranean record label, Noise/Art/Industrial bands of the early 1980s & the heavy psychedelic bands from the 1960s featured on the Pebbles compilation albums. All of these different likes in music lead My 3 Sons into having two distinct and confusing styles.

After buying his Roland Synthesizer, Chris Frieri is credited with the noise songs such as “In The Beginning” (B-side to “Starving Artist”) and “Happy Valley” (never released). Whereas I wrote the Acid Punk sounding songs like “Starving Artist” & People Who Bleed” (New Jerseys Got It compilation). There were a few songs where we combined both noise and acid such as “Untitled 13” (New Jerseys Got It compilation) and “The UFO Song” (never released).

The Starving Artist 45 RPM

We selected “Starving Artist” and “In The Beginning” for our first and only single because at the time these two songs best represented the bands attitude. Where other bands at the time played more of a politics of the day type songs, My 3 Sons were truly on the edge of the started Emo movement. The lyrics of these two songs and all the other songs deal with inner pain, self defeat and having no sense of self worth. The character in “Starving Artist” might be that anti-social artist who makes one masterpiece after another but cannot see past his own inadequacies. He might be that person who chooses to have no friends but fabricates an imaginary reason for his lonely lot in life. Then there was the extreme with “In The Beginning”, the story of a young man dealing with his inner thoughts after a female’s rejection and what goes on in his mind when he’s at a party and he leans against a wall watching the girl he loves being friendly with another man. Thoughts we all feel but never reveal to anyone.

Needless to say, the excitement of recording this single disappeared after we heard the actual 7″. The sound quality of this record was a big disappointment for us as a band and still haunts us today.

Live Shows

My 3 Sons played with most of the New Jersey bands found on the NJ compilation album at a host of venues up to the release of the single like Patrick’s and the Court Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ, The Union Recreation Center, A7 in NYC and The Dirt Club in Bloomfield, NJ.

If our single was a failure, our shows made up for it. Something always happened and we never knew what it was until it happened. Weather it was me throwing up in the middle of a song or getting beat up by a patriot during a song. Chris would do his Jimmy Page impersonation with a violin bow, or Scott passing out during a gig while trying to play drums while wearing a gas mask. Most of the My 3 Sons shows ended in some type of riot or were removed from the stage by the club owner.

In Conclusion

My 3 Sons never officially broke up. The last gig was during the summer of 1985 at Johnny Dirt’s Slime Fest in Newark NJ. We just never called each other again

My 3 Sons circa 2004

A bit of record nerd trivia: This 7″ came with either a pink sleeve (as shown) or a green sleeve.

Many thanks to Joe for the great history of the band!

Listen to “Starving Artist” from the record (right click it and save!)