Well if you are going to finish off compilation week (such a big success it will be back), you may as well do it right. Technically this CD was released by Alternative Tentacles, which is slightly too large a label to be featured on Indie Monkey. That said it’s just a CD release of a formerly vinyl only piece of history, which was definitely Indie Monkey material, so using logic only I need to understand, Ladies and Gentlemen I present maybe the most important album of American Punk to ever be released.
Released in 1982 (re-released on CD in 1999), it features an award winning essay on the Southern Californian Punk scene of the time as its liner notes, which the CD updates by getting the author, Jeff Bale, to look back at his own thoughts seventeen years later. It features 47 bands with 47 songs, and yet fits onto a standard 74 minute CD, you do the math. Pure Punk attitude, when a 3-minute song is seen as being a huge extravagance.
The music here is garage at its very purest, it would be hard to claim there was any production on most, if not all, of these tracks, everything is raw and bleeding. The result is magic, musical lightning captured in a bottle for future generations to hear and learn from. Politics, violence, sex, drugs, Marxism, Fascism and beer are all recurring topics, as of course is being young and pissed. Reagan is used again and again by these bands as a visual (the exceptional CD booklet features flyers and the like for every band, and is worth the CDs price on its own); this is the youth of America from the early 80s that didn’t appear in Family Ties or any of the John Hughes movies.
It would be impossible to go through this CD track by track, and really it would serve no purpose. Some tracks stand the test of time better than others, but this album is really about a feeling, an era, a concept, that is so brilliantly captured it hard to not just bow before it.
Most of the bands have long since faded into obscurity, and in reality most of them never actually left obscurity. Sure track 18 is the Dead Kennedys, but the great thing about the album is they are no better than any of the other bands here, they are just another simple, pure punk band spitting attitude and turning up the amps.
If I had to pick a track to represent this whole album, and era, I would probably choose ‘Bad Posture’ whose track GDMFSOB, a minute thirty seconds of pure angry expletives, backed by rushing drums, and about two chords. If it doesn’t get at least one part of your body moving in a fast rhythmic manner then there is something wrong with you.
Or maybe I should choose ‘Demented Youth’ with their minute twenty seconds wall of sound, which represents an attempt to assassinate the President. Politics may seem like a really complex issue, but obviously it doesn’t have to be.
Oh well I promised I wouldn’t descend into a song by song review, instead lets keep this really simple, if you have any interest in punk, alternative music, 80’s music history, 80s political history, garage music or creative underground artwork then you really should own this CD. Thank you and have a nice day.

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