I Can't Eat This

Archive for April, 2010

Melodic Orange County Hardcore as its best! Their selftitled debut album is a must have. Full of catching melodies, rock’n'roll influenced guitars played by Rikk and Frank Agnew, straight, melodic bass playing by Steve Soto, and the perfect fitting voice of Tony Cadena, a.k.a. Tony Montana, who formed the often underrated and overlooked Flower Leperds after the Adolescents split. They were reformed in the 1990′s, but changed their name to Adz, maybe ‘coz they were no adolescents anymore. The first Adz album was recorded with the original line-up (Tony, Casey, Rikk & Steve, not Frank), but has no real great songs on it. But the second one “Piper At The Gates of Downey“, comes very close to “Brats in Battalions“. That’s remarkable, because Tony was the only left original member.

But back to 1981:

This is nearly the original line-up w/ Casey Royer (the guy who wears the selfmade swastika-sweater (yeah!) on the first LP) on drums. He later became singer for D.I.. Rikk Agnew was replaced by Steve Roberts, what I find strange, because I think the guy with the military cap on the cover is Rikk. Does anyone know what has happened?
They play three songs that were also issued on the second album “Brats in Battalions” in 1986. The versions featured here sound as they were recorded at the same session as the first LP, but there is nothing mentioned on the cover. Maybe someone who knows more about it could post some infos?

This EP came in nice dark purple vinyl. I think it’s a repress, because it has number 2056 on its back.

Enjoy!

Welcome To Reality
Losing Battle
Things Start Moving

I finally did some research and found this out: The Adolescents and the Adz are both (still) playing (again). You can find more Infos on the Adolescents-Website or on their myspace profile.

Why, oh why did I do this?

My 12-yr old daughter wanted to take a look at the so popular teenie-vampire-love-drama. So me, my wife and two of my daughters (12 and 18) decided to waste one whole evening completely:

We did watch Twilight and New Moon one after another.
As I was afraid, that both movies would bore us to death, I set up some rules:

1. No fast forward
2. Noone leaves the room before the movie is paused
3. No sleeping whatsoever
4. Noone looks at walls or ceiling instead of watching the screen
5. Audible or visible commentaries by the audience allowed

Just to calm you down: We all survived!

So I spent over 3 hours watching a pretended 17-year old girl leaving her mouth half open most of the time.
What’s supposed to look like passion, devotion, despair or dejection becomes looking totally gaga and like she isn’t able to count to three. Next question: What kind of vampire is that? Standing around, hang his head for 3/4 of the first movie. Maybe I cannot understand how depressive it is to be a vampire nowadays. Or how attractive someone can be, who isn’t able to form just one complete sentence. Then you can see the powder on it’s face, that makes him so pale and let him look like a vampire so much! What a poor-done make-up job! That guy is definetely NO vampire to me (did you notice he even has no fangs?)

In my world vampires have to be like Christopher Lee, the ones from “Fearless Vampire Killers“, Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Dracula“, and F.W.Murnau‘s “Nosferatu“. The latter two make us really believe that they suffer from being a vampire!

What else can I remember? First movie: Girl and vampire sitting or standing around, NOT looking at each other. Nice vegetarian vampire family (how dumb is that?). Bad other vampires, one of them has to be killed by the “good” ones later. Slightly depressive father of girl.
Second movie: Vampires must leave town. Vampire leaves girl. Girl meets werewolfe. Girl does dangerous things to be warned by vampire ex-boyfriend. Werewolves fight the two left bad vampires of first movie. Vampire fights werewolf. Girl wants to be a vampire. Vampire wants to die, because he can’t be in love with girl. Girl wants peace between vampires and werewolfes. Hush-hush CGI werewolves (Ask Rick Baker the next time. He’s responsible for the creature design of John Landis‘ “An American Werewolf in London“).

Oh, what a pile of shit!

The big mistake made here is that the author (or the filmmaker, I don’t care) tries to mix fantasy – what else are vampires and werewolves? – with reality (e.g. depressed teenagers) and fails! Next mistake: Too Long. Definitely too long. The ideal length for the first part would be about 30 min., for the second one about 45 min.
But reality looks different to me: Twilight – 121 min., New Moon – 130 min.
That made me yawn, made me dither around on the couch.

I will watch part 3 and 4, too!

A short time after I had the great luck to hear Kina‘s “Questi Anni” (featured in the post before), I came over this release from Japan’s Voice of Angel Tapes & Records. Simple coverart that seems to be made in a hasty way of work, which stands opposite to the somehow well designed VOA-Logo. Strange! I wonder if there where any other releases…? I don’t think so, but I didn’t crawl the web for more info. So if someone did, please let me know.

As far as I know this is the only record that features the “Questi Anni”-Punkrock-Version beside the recording featured on their “Se ho vinto…se ho perso”-LP.

So that was the only reason for me to buy this record. The other tracks were nothing special in de olden days:

Instigators‘ “Full Circle” was on nearly every sampler, tape or record, around these days.
Flitox from France bring out a hectic, rudimentary kind of a hardcore tune combined with strange lyrics.
Political Asylum‘s “Olive Groves” was also featured on their “Someday”-Mini-LP.

So, once again I bought an expensive import record for just one song.

Instigators – Full Circle
Flitox – No Yogurt
Kina – Questi Anni
Political Asylum – Down Amongst The Olive Groves

Back in the late 1980′s Italian Hardcore was fast, loud, and had this special sort of uncontrollable power.
I think you know what I mean, Raw Power, Negazione, Indigesti, Peggio Punx, CCM, etc.
Kina were different and quite a phenomenon for me.  Their songs pass despair and lust for life at the same time. They had this power, they were fast, but they had a special emotional edge. Whether they were influenced from Washington D.C. Hardcore or from Italian Folkmusic or both or whatever, I don’t know.
With this tune featured here they took it to the extreme. It was the first time for me that I heard a political influenced hardcore band playing an unplugged, acoustic song. As I had a depressive period of life in these times (you know Weltschmerz, don’t you?), this was the absolute right thing for me.
When I hear it today it’s still nice, but it doesn’t give me the creeps anymore. Nonetheless this is still an outstanding tune from an outstanding band.

The B-Side features The Sphere. A little punkrock rumbler with a country-, folk-like drumming. Not bad.

Kina – Questi Anni (acoustic)
The Sphere – Proviamo Ancora

Take a look at the official website from Kina and Frontiera. You can can download the two songs there, too.
But remember my mp3s come directly from the old plastic!

This 7″ came with a big poster insert. Quite too big to scan (or am I just lazy?). Perhaps I’ll try it again.