Way back in 1986 I had a promo copy of the first Skulls album, Dress Up and Die, sent to me from Buy Our Records. They used to send me records to review in my fanzine, Spontaneous Combustion. I played that record and became an instant fan. While it...

The first place that I ever heard of White Flag was in one of two places: the We Got Power compilation or Flipside Vinyl Fanzine Volume One. A much younger me would have been able to tell you which of the two it was but the current me isn’t as...

I was digging through the Spontaneous Combustion office last night and pulled out my boxes of DATs of shows I recorded. In the early 1990s I used to go to a ton of shows and I used to audio record them. I first had a Sony Professional Walkman D3 but...

Back in the early 1990s, I spent a hell of a lot of time going to shows at Lounge Ax in Chicago. That place was one of the best clubs ever in the world and at that time they were getting the coolest bands. During the late 1980s/early 1990s I was...

This particular feature has been a long time coming. When I was a freshman in high school I heard a Peace Corpse song on Kathy and Shrub’s radio show on our high school radio station. The song was called “Jocko Macho” and I was an...

Toothpaste – EP (1983 Schwa Records) Toothpaste were a band from my own city that I really didn’t know anything about until recently. I had heard the name mentioned a couple of times over the years but never gave it much thought. It...

Various Artists – Seattle Syndrome Volume One (1981 Engram Records)  It has been ages since I’ve done one of these and of course when inspiration strikes, it ends up being a record on a label that I know very little about and was unable...

The Matchheads – Cadillac 7″ (1981 Artiste Records) My first exposure to The Matchheads didn’t happen until about 20 years after this record was released. In fact if it wasn’t for a couple of songs from this single being...