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What’s up Sorry Staters?
I don’t know what’s going on with me lately… Sure, I wrote about some Mexican new wave last week, but beyond that, I do feel like I probably have sounded awfully sentimental for the last couple weeks. I hope all you reading this don’t mind me waxing nostalgic about hardcore. Is this what happens when you get to a certain age? I don’t think I’m unhappy with my current existence in the punk world, but whether it’s been talking about Big Boys or Career Suicide, I guess I have been reminiscing like a dum dum.
I’ve been listening to DRI a lot again recently. I know, big surprise, right? I’m pretty sure that about a year ago, I wrote about DRI in the newsletter when I finally scored an og copy of the Dirty Rotten EP. I’m worried that I’m just gonna regurgitate a bunch of the same shit I said in that newsletter from last year, so I’ll try to make this fresh. By pure coincidence, as I realized I might be repeating myself sitting down to gush about DRI, this young dude came into the store today with his dad. It was like the punk-metal universe was trying to tell me something! This dude must’ve been about 14 or 15, and he was wearing a vest just totally decked out in patches. And of course, right on the chest panel of his vest was a big DRI patch. I was like, “Hell yeah, kid.” I must’ve been about his age when I first became obsessed with DRI. While I was standing at the counter listening to this kid and his dad chat with Dom, it sounded like they go to gigs together… which is cool! I don’t recall ever going to see Circle Jerks and Negative Approach with my Pops haha, my dad is more into hard rock and metal. Then his dad bought a copy of Crossover, which admittedly is not my favorite DRI record. They’re not quite into the lyrical territory of “Don’t be tardy,” and shit like that yet, but even by this album, they’re already getting a little too thrashy for me. But THEN, the kid bought both Death Side CDs we had in stock. Didn’t matter that we didn’t have any copies on vinyl -- he was happy to buy them anyway. That got me stoked. He had never heard Wind of Pain by Bastard, so I told him to immediately go check that out.
Around the time I was first getting into DRI in high school, I was playing drums (badly, I might add) in my first real band called Feeble Minded. I recently stumbled across my old bass drumhead in my closet, which I’ve held onto after all these years. The drumhead had our band’s logo on it. I hand drew that skeleton design when I was around 16 or so. I also burned the screen and screen-printed the logo onto the drumhead myself. I was also skateboarding every single day around that time. Damn, I used to do so much cool shit… What the hell happened? Haha.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say this week. Go blast some Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, ya freaxxx. Speaking of which, a heads up for all you local punks: I’m putting out some DRI records this weekend for our used new arrivals. We’ve got an og 12” version of the Dirty Rotten LP going out. But if you crave that original format, I’ve also got a 7” version with all 22 tracks crammed onto a bite-size platter for ya (not an og, of course.) Plus, tons more killer used punk 7”s!
As always, thanks for reading.
‘Til next week,
-Jeff