News

What’s up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone has had a nice week. It’s been cold and rainy here in Raleigh these last couple days. Winter has definitely arrived. This week I found myself listening to this Cramps 7” I picked up at the store a while ago, especially the B-side. Don’t get me wrong I definitely enjoy listening to Drug Train, but their cover of I Can’t Hardly Stand It on the flip side is really what does it for me. This song has such an infectious guitar riff that always gets stuck in my head after I hear it. Lux’s vocals also just fit right in perfectly as well. The Cramps really do this song justice and I usually listen to it a couple times in a row whenever I play it. I also really enjoy Love Me on the B-side as well. I think it serves as a nice precursor. Honestly, you could play just about any Cramps song around me and I’ll be happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k_TGaElmAI

Hi Sorry State fam! How is everyone doing? I’m leaving in a couple days to go to Ohio to see my family, so the pre-travel stress is in full effect. I’m not much of a planner, but I do lie to myself quite frequently about how this year is going to be different. It never is. So trust that I will be running around panic packing a few hours before I go to the airport, and frantically downloading music at the gate. Ugh, let’s get right off that topic.

At least a lot of cool shit is happening in Sorry State land! One of those things was the release of the ISS Spikes+ compilation album. It’s also my staff pick. I feel like I’ve really missed out because I hadn’t heard any ISS until a couple months ago on the American Idylls compilation that Sorry State released some time ago. So, the Spikes+ record allowed me to take a shortcut through their discography, and now I’m kinda working backwards and listening to individual releases.

Dude. I really love this record. It’s is a great way to get up to speed with a band you’re not that familiar with. It’s also a great way to journey through the many styles of ISS all on one convenient record. That’s all great but it makes it challenging for me to streamline my thoughts on the music.

Simply put, it’s just fun as hell to listen to and I really click with the music. I can’t imagine anyone (within reason) not enjoying the hell out of the anthemic opener, Spikes, Too Punk for Heavy Metal, or Wanna be Dated. All are fun, high-energy tracks. But there are many twists and turns on this compilation. You also get some darker, new wave sounds in songs like Sexts and Guidance, and more hardcore belters like Facemask. Basically, Spikes+ is like getting a gift basket of a bunch of cool stuff.

Prior to digging into ISS, I wasn’t aware of their use of samples from punk and other genres to construct new songs. So, its been fun for me to pick up on bits and pieces of some of the songs I recognize. I’m pretty sure I heard Siouxsie and the Banshees, and I definitely heard the Cure, Public Enemy, and the Dead Kennedys. And much more where those come from.

I think the use of sampling is a great way to enhance a song, but it’s also just a smart way to engage a new audience. That said, it’s definitely not something they have to rely on. It’s just another tool, and ISS happens to be really skilled at using it.

Besides that, there are some great beat drops, and catchy lines. The vocals are fantastically diverse, ranging from sometimes snotty, sometimes mean, sometimes serious, sometimes not. The lyrics are clever, and the the songs are thoughtfully and creatively structured. ISS has a talent for knowing what should go where. That sounds like a really caveman way to describe a difficult task, but it’s all I got.

Collectively, ISS Spikes+ is a bundle of energetic, dancy, punky, noisy, sometimes chaotic, sometimes more stripped down, but never ever boring songs. If you haven’t gotten your hands on one, I strongly recommend you give it a shot. Take a listen below!

As always, thanks for reading.

-Angela

https://sorrystaterecords.bandcamp.com/album/spikes

Hello Sorry State friends and family and a very happy holiday to you all. I wish you a happy and festive period and raise a glass to you all. Have a great time however or whether you celebrate.

I’ll finally be able to think about Christmas next week now that the World Cup is about to conclude with the final this coming Sunday. It’s been an exciting competition, and although there are lots of questions about issues off the pitch, the action on the field has been riveting.

This week I am excited to announce the beginning of a new partnership with a wonderful UK based label that I have been a big fan of since first discovering them. Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome to Sorry State, Big AC Records.

Big AC Records is an independent label from East London run by husband-and-wife team Nick Corbin and Sophie Heath. Nick is an accomplished and talented artist himself and, in addition to recording and performing, acts as the label’s A&R. Sophie manages the label and handles art direction and design. She also keeps busy as a radio and club DJ. Their focus is on new talent and delivering great sounding and beautifully packaged soul records to those of us out in the world that value and appreciate such things. If you are a modernist, soulie, rare-groover or a soul and funk DJ yourself, then this label is for you. Similar to other bespoke soul labels such as Big Crown or Colemine for instance, but less on the retro and more on the future soul sound.

I first became aware of Big AC through my involvement with The Face Radio. They host a radio show on the station and have been championed by station head Kurtis Powers from day one. My fellow station deejays are all big fans also and we always look forward to the next release.

Their roster of artists is small but delivers big. Currently they have released records from Nick Corbin and two fabulous singers, Abi Farrell and Carmy Love. If you click on their names, you’ll be linked to the titles we have available and can read some more detailed information about each one. To start us off here at Sorry State, we have brought in their most recent 45s and are expecting new records from Carmy Love very soon. Record manufacturing is just as hard and fraught with delays in England as it is here in America. I’ll definitely give you all the heads up when those arrive. What is exciting for all Stateside fans is that we are almost exclusively the only store with these releases available, which should help with overseas postal charges. Getting good records into the hands of those that want them at an affordable price is our shared goal.

Those fans lucky enough to catch the recent Big AC Records Revue shows that toured the UK were treated to the abundant talent on the label and hopefully in the future there might be similar magical nights for fans here in the US and other countries. In the meantime, check out these terrific 45s and find out why so many folks are falling in love with the label and the music they are producing.

Cheers everyone - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

The weather is nasty as hell today as Dom and I are standing behind the counter at the store trying to bang out some words for y’all to digest. Funny enough, we’ve been super busy early on today at the store, which is a nice shift from last couple weeks. I guess there’s not much to do in Raleigh on a rainy day besides shop for records. The holiday season usually yields a surge of people coming in looking for Elton John and shit like that, so maybe this last week or so we will be slammed.

So, I’ve got something different this time around. Rather than talking about a record we’re stocking here at Sorry State, I’m gonna talk about my indulgence in silly internet entertainment. I spend a lot of my downtime watching YouTube videos. Like, more than I’d like to admit. One new trend I’ve noticed that seems to be a total product of what you can do with technology these days is people remixing or reworking classic records. That sounds kinda vague, but does anyone know what I’m talking about?

I’ll try to get into this in a roundabout way. Has anyone heard the new Metallica song? It’s called “Lux Æterna,” and it’s admittedly not the greatest thing ever. I heard one person review the song and refer to the main riff in the song as a “boomer riff,” which I found funny for some reason. But honestly, I love the first 4 Metallica records. And knowing how awful their recorded output was in the 90s and onward, I always set a pretty low bar for expectations when a new Metallica track comes out. And with this new song, I didn’t love it, but I don’t exactly hate it. It’s just kinda phoned-in, I think. I bet it’s hard to make aggressive music when you’re sleeping on silk sheets. I immediately recognized the references to “Overkill” by Motorhead and Diamond Head, so at least it doesn’t sound like St. Anger or something.

But here’s the thing. Has anyone heard these things where people re-record band’s songs with tones to sound like they’re on a different record? Like for example, “What if ‘Enter Sandman’ was on Master of Puppets?” I’m not joking, people really make videos like this. To my knowledge, it seems like what these people do is totally reconstruct the songs from the ground up and re-record the performances themselves. Which is NUTS. Recording technology has come such a long way that I guess you can download a profile of a guitar tone that is pre-made and that sounds pretty damn accurate to the tone on the record. And I guess you can do that with drum sounds too. So what I assume happens is these dudes program a drum track with some sort of program like EZ drummer, then plug their guitar directly into an interface and use a plug-in to nail album-appropriate guitar sounds, and THEN take the vocal track from the original record and chop it up to fit their reworked track. Sorry, that’s a lot… You following what I’m saying? I gotta say, lots of YouTubers do this kinda thing, and the quality of people nailing the sound and character of different Metallica albums really varies. But this one I stumbled across recently, this YouTuber StateOfMercury took “Lux Æterna” and totally re-did the song so that it sounds as if it were on Kill ‘Em All. Now, James Hetfield’s vocals on this new song would probably sound out of place on Kill ‘Em All these days, so this dude got someone to do his best young Hetfield impression. It’s also interesting, because StateOfMercury in his reimaginings doesn’t necessarily replicate the riffs exactly like the original. He sort of alters them to sound more like something the band would write during the era which he’s trying to replicate. I find it super clever.

Anyway, this is all incredibly nerdy, but I find it pretty interesting. He has several videos where he totally reimagines Metallica songs as if they were on different albums. New songs on old albums, but also old songs on newer albums. It’s wild. And funny enough, “Lux Æterna” being redone as if it were done by a young and hungry early Metallica almost fools me into thinking it’s a rad song. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qONdZg95Vi8

I guess this is kind of a weird write-up for the newsletter, but I thought it’d be fun to talk about. That’s all I’ve got this week. As always, thanks for reading. Happy Holidays!

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Buzzcocks: Singles Going Steady 12” (IRS Records, 1979)

I try not to complain too much because I know my problems pale compared to so many others’, but it’s been a rough week for me. I feel like I keep getting beat up on, particularly financially. The heating system went out in the store last week and it cost over $3,000 to fix, my health insurance quintupled in price, my car crapped out on me, and every time I look at my email I seem to find either new bills or notifications that next month’s bills are going up. It’s been rough, but I’ve been trying to keep my head up and press on. This is a time of readjustment for many people, and while it’s difficult, hopefully I come out the other end stronger.

Honestly, I have spent little time listening to music this week, and what time I have spent hasn’t gotten my full attention. Usually I’m voraciously consuming new music, with a big stack of records I’m eager to dive into and explore. This week, though, that stack felt like another burden, another thing on my to do list that won’t receive the attention it needs or deserves. When it came time to write a staff pick for this week (or, more accurately, several hours after the time when I should have completed writing my staff pick), I had to think hard about what music can give me right now.

I decided what I wanted was musical comfort food. Something that felt familiar, stable, and reliable. After a quick scan of my shelf, I landed on the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady. This is one of the most listened-to records in my collection, and hearing it—particularly in its entirety—brings me back to so many places. I remember being on the plane for my first trip abroad in 1999, reading Jon Savage’s book England’s Dreaming and trying to bone up on 70s punk as much as possible before I hit London’s legendary record shops. I have a vivid memory of picking up a CD copy of Singles Going Steady at a flea market in Perth, Australia, because this was a time before cell phones and mp3s and I wanted to listen to it and couldn’t wait until I got home. It was only feasible to carry a few CDs along with you on a big trip like that, so Singles Going Steady kept me company for much of that time.

One downside of being such a restless music consumer is that I rarely learn all the words on a record, even one I really like. However, I know every note of Singles Going Steady backwards and forwards, and there isn’t a moment in the record when I’m not singing, air guitaring, or air drumming along. It is a participatory experience for me, the record taking over my body and my mind. I tend to live in my head, forgetting how important physicality is to living. But moving along to a record you know and love, whether it’s shuffling your feet or waving your arms or blowing air through your diaphragm, helps to take you somewhere else. That makes me think of sleepless nights in my late 20s, during one of the bleakest depressive episodes in my life, trying to shake off the sads with full-body writhing to the Fall’s Grotesque alone in the dark.

That makes me think of a lyric from another favorite, Killing Joke’s song “Eighties:” “I have to push / I have to struggle.” I constantly fall prey to the capitalist fiction that earning one more dollar, making one more sale, fine-tuning my morning routine, or tinkering with my budget is going to make everything OK. But what are we working toward? Are we getting anywhere? I’m thankful for music, and the Buzzcocks in particular, for reminding me that cycles don’t have to be vicious. Sometime you just need to come back to the chorus, or to put on your favorite album and let it take you home.

What’s up Sorry State readers, I hope everyone has had a nice week. Last week I wrote about Howlin Wolf and today I’d like to talk about a band that takes heavy influence from him as well as a lot of other blues artists and an assortment of other genres: The Gun Club, specifically their album Miami. This is their first record under Blondie guitarist Chris Stein’s label Animal Records, which was a bit of a full circle moment for front man Jeffrey Lee Pierce, as he used to be president of The U.S. Blondie Fan Club. Debbie Harry also contributed backing vocals to the album under the pseudonym D.H. Laurence Jr. I really love the sound of a steel guitar on the tracks Texas Serenade and Mother of Earth. My favorite song on this album, though, has to be their sick rendition of John Hardy, a traditional folk song first performed all the way back in the 1920s (and still covered today, 100 years later, by artists like Billy Strings). The song is a tale based on the life of a West Virginia railroad worker who killed a man in a drunken dispute one night, went on the run, and was caught and hanged in 1894. Gun Club also throws a verse from another one of my favorite folk songs, Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down, into it and it makes me just love the song even more. It’s so cool to listen to all the different iterations of a song through time and how different artists play it and add different things to it. That’s one of my favorite things about music. The copy of this record I have is a recent pressing, which is actually a double LP that contains all the demos, so that’s pretty interesting to listen to. Anyone reading this has definitely already listened to this album before, but maybe you haven’t in awhile, so if that’s the case, this is your reminder to listen to this amazing album!

Hi Sorry State readers! How’s it going? All is well on this end. Let’s jump into the fun stuff.

Powerplant’s EP A Spine/Evidence is one I’ve been enjoying for a while now, so it’s time to shine the spotlight on it. People in the Sun, their 2019 full length, has always been a popular one among our customers. I like it too, but I think this 2020 EP is my favorite in the Powerplant discography. It’s more simplistic, less animated, and overall just more accessible. It’s still synthy, but it’s more subtle and sounds more post-punk than their other stuff.

Evidence is the catchiest and most accessible track, which is probably why it’s placed right in the middle of the EP. It’s the most no frills post-punk sound of the bunch, and has the cleanest beat. I actually wish it was a little longer.

Prelude is what it sounds like. A prelude. It also sounds like the intro to a Goosebumps episode. But it sounds really cool paired with the super fast and frenzied album closer (Hurtwood). Hurtwood is the culmination of all the twists and turns up until this point, and it really ties everything together. I like the vocals best here because they’re the most raw, and that style juxtaposes the synthy sound nicely. If the vocals were dark and brooding like they are on the first track, Hurtwood would sound way too gothy and dated for me.

Anyway, I’d like to hear more of this style from Powerplant in the future. That’s all for now.

Thanks for reading!

-Angela

Hello and thanks for reading! I am tired as fuck today, so let me get right to it. This CHAINSAW debut is awesome. I am not quite sure why, but I didn’t like the cover art at first, and as a result I didn’t check it out. I’ve said this countless times in my Staff Pick, but the art does not really matter when it comes down to a release for me. Of course, it certainly enhances a release. It’s kind of funny the art didn’t strike me, cos the “theme” seems right up my alley. I will tell you though, the music was certainly right up my alley. I knew I was going to love this release like 5 seconds into the first song. There is a certain perfection to this record that doesn’t just happen overnight. They lay down seven tracks on this EP, and that is something I really appreciate. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am when bands put 4 songs on a 7". It’s 2023, records aren’t cheap anymore! The song-writing on this EP, alongside the guitar tone, reminds me so much of SUNSHINE WARD. Their Order 12" was so damn good. It was an instant classic in my mind. Anyway, I haven’t really described the EP at all but I’ve got to get going… looks like one of my bands is playing a last minute show tonite, hehe. Cheers and thanks to everyone for the support!

What’s up Sorry Staters? Glad to be back with you again with the newsletter. Thanks for peeking and reading. I must admit that I am still fully in World Cup mode. Jolly Ol’ England are playing well and still in the tournament, although that might end Saturday when we face France. It’s been a great competition football-wise, and quite exciting. With the Cup being played in December this time around and the weather here in Carolina nowhere near wintery cold, it’s been hard to think about Christmas and the holidays. It just doesn’t feel like it at all. North of the equator problems I know.

With the radio show I do, we have been playing lots of upbeat and sunnier sounding fare to suit the mood and countries playing. So, more soul, funk, samba and the like than grey, wet, cold weather music.

To get me in the mood for the Brazil game last week, I dug into a box of international CDs I have for something to spin in the car and pulled out one called Baile Funk 2: Agora E Moda.

It’s a terrific mix CD of all Brazilian artists with some nice deep cuts. The set was compiled and put together by an old DJ friend of mine, Greg Caz. Greg was a fellow record hound and DJ who promoted a Brazilian party at a great spot in Brooklyn called Black Betty that was run by a super nice, cool couple from Brazil. The party was part of my exposure to the great music from Brazil that I had only scratched the surface of prior to moving to New York. Right down the street from the store that I worked at was a great live venue, S.O.B.’s or Sound Of Brazil. A terrific spot and always hosting great Brazilian, Latin American and Afro artists. I was like a kid in a candy store throughout those years. I loved it. So much great music to enjoy and absorb. My record collection growing at a rapid rate. CDs too, as this was still the era when great lost albums and unreleased music was being issued on CD.

Greg had given me a few mix CDs and CDRs and they were all great, but this one was one of my faves. He squeezed over thirty tracks on the disc and mixed them well. The flow and transitions are really nice. There’s a good mix of artists and bands. Some legendary and some more obscure. I was introduced to many a name from this CD and hipped to some cool shit. Typical with these types of deep dives, a lot of these records would be tough to find as originals and if you did, you’d have to pay high for them. Perhaps now with the internet etc. some might be more easily available, but back in the late 90s/early 00s it was a much different landscape.

Musically speaking, the mix covers tunes cut between the mid-sixties through the late seventies for the most part. Over repeated listens I have got to love certain moments, but I still love how the first three or four tracks flow. Beginning with Os Incríveis who recorded a ton of records throughout the sixties and into the seventies, this tune came from a 45 they recorded to tie in with one of the Disney Herbie movies featuring the famous racing VW bug. It’s a cool beginning and then we hear from Rita Lee, one of a few names I did at least recognize at the time as Os Mutantes were on my radar by then. This cut is pulled from one of her later solo albums.

Third up is Rosa Maria with a cut from a single she released in 1972 that as an original goes for three figures. Luckily, over the years, the awesome Mr. Bongo label has reissued great tunes like this one, so a lot are at least accessible now. Again, twenty-plus years ago it was a different ball game. You had to work a lot harder to hear more obscure, deeper cuts. Now in 2022, a lot of these names on the mix are more widely known and many of the tunes themselves have become staples in DJ sets and compilation albums, but back in the early 00s hearing these songs for the first time was mind blowing and dare I say life altering.

There are so many more cool cuts later in the mix. Azymuth, the great jazz funk band, gives us the funky Zombie. Jorge Ben serves up some Jazz Potatoes and the great Tim Maia is represented with a cut taken from his self-titled late 70s album. All terrific.

You can click here for a link to listen to the mix. It’s not the actual mix unfortunately and a couple of tracks are missing, but you’ll get the music. It will make the perfect playlist to watch the football to. Obviously I am hoping England does well, but I’ll also be pulling for Brazil.

Oh, and I am aware that Brazil is spelled with an S, at least on their football jerseys, but for ease of writing, spell check etc., I have gone with the Z spelling here. Don’t get bent out of shape, please.

Okay, that’s my recommendation for you this week. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading and see you next time. Cheers and Via Brasil - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

It’s so funny that Daniel and I both wrote about the Stains last week. It was definitely kind of a face-palm moment for me. Especially because Daniel’s assessment of the hysteria surrounding the reissue was constructed much more eloquently than my usual sub-level-IQ ramblings.

This week, I think I’ve got something a little different. I’m even gonna talk about some Sorry State releases of years past! Sorry State has a work chat which we sometimes use for the sole purposes of bullshitting about music and turning each other onto new records. Former SSR employee, buddy, and all-around legend Seth still chimes in on our thread every once in a while. Recently, Seth brought up the UX Vileheads 7”, which admittedly I hadn’t listened to in yeeeears. I dug my copy out of my 7” bins and threw that sucker on and MAN, I forgot how good that record is! Listening to the record though, I can safely say that not only has it aged well, but it’s amazing. This made me feel… well, not nostalgic exactly, but listening to UX Vileheads made me want to revisit some other records I hadn’t listened to in a while. I just got a lil flutter in my stomach remembering being a teenager and loving hardcore circa 2007 or whenever it was.

I think about this all the time, but there was really something special going on with hardcore in the Scandinavian region during the early-to-mid 2000’s. I still listen to those Regulations records on the regular. And when I talk with friends of mine, it seems like Amde Petersen’s Arme has reached legendary status. But when I was breaking out my old 7”s the other day, I had forgotten how much I love those Instängd records. I listened to all 3 of them in a row the other day and was just raging in my living room. Funny enough, I’m pretty sure the band featured one of the dudes from Refused. But I remember Daniel telling me that conceptually, the band was formed with each member purposefully playing an instrument they’d never played—or at least playing the instrument they were least proficient at. And you can totally tell. Those records sound so sloppy, urgent and raw in the best possible way. I dunno man, I think about this a lot. Sometimes when punk bands are too good at their instruments, it reads as more stiff than it does exciting. The way those Instängd records sound is so intense, in part because it feels so primitive and like the band might fall apart at any second. It’s so awesome. But I think the main aspect the band did have going for them is they wrote really cool songs. Simple, but also fresh and with songwriting ideas that catch you off guard at times. On their first 7” Mitt Svar På Ingenting (released on Sorry State Records in 2007 😎), the first song “Vansinne” opens guns-a-blazing with this kinda nasty, hap-hazard guitar lead. And while I love the first 7” so much, I will say my favorite is probably the 2nd EP, Konkret Och Brutal. The opening riff on the title track just sounds like classic hardcore, but still played with that explosive, but cavemanish ferociousness. So damn catchy, too. I think all 3 of the bands 7”s are like modern classics.

You can still find these records used out in the wild for just a few bucks. To me that’s a more-than-worthy investment. I’ll probably be spending my weekend drinking beer and revisiting more Swedish punk of yesteryear and totally loving it. Hope you take some pride in your favorite dollar-bin 7”s this week as well. Who knows? Maybe one day those records will be hard to find.

Anyway, that’s really all I’ve got to say. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Raw Power: Screams from the Gutter LP (Toxic Shock Records, 1985)

Earlier this week I was listening to Raw Power’s phenomenal second album, Screams from the Gutter. It’s one of my all-time favorite records, and listening to it prompted some reflection about how my listening habits have changed over the years.

This is one of many records I picked up back in the 90s, when buying records was very different. I had a small collection of records when I moved to Richmond for college in 1997, but I started buying records in earnest once I got there. I’d visit Plan 9 Records at least once a week, often more, searching for anything that looked cool or interesting. Most used LPs were priced at $8… occasionally you’d see a collectible punk record for a premium price, but it was rare. I remember seeing a copy of Bad Religion’s Into the Unknown for $50 and thinking it was insane that anyone would pay that much money for a record. $8 was about my hourly wage at the time, and since my tuition and living expenses were covered by a scholarship, the money I made at my job went to Plan 9 (as well as Soundhole, the punk and metal-focused shop that was out in the west end of Richmond, which I didn’t get to as often). I bought aggressively, and while I ended up with plenty of records that sucked, I also found gems like Screams from the Gutter that form the backbone of my personal musical canon.

While I don’t miss paying hard-earned money for shitty records because I didn’t know any better, I miss discovering records like Screams from the Gutter free of anything but the most minimal context. Nowadays when I’m exploring music that’s new to me, I start researching its context as I’m hearing it, the record playing on the stereo while I sit on the couch with my phone or tablet. I start by going to rateyourmusic.com and Discogs to see where the record fits in the artist’s and the label’s discography. Rateyourmusic is helpful as you can see how the users on that site have rated that record versus other similar ones, and you can also skim through the user reviews on the site. A lot of them are trash, but many of them are perceptive, and the site’s display algorithm puts those more thorough reviews first. I’ve learned so much from that site that I never would have known otherwise.

However, if I’d had these tools when I discovered Screams from the Gutter, would I have taken in the record the same way? I’m pretty sure I bought the record just because it looked cool and punk. I doubt I even knew Raw Power was from Italy, though the back cover makes that pretty clear. More than the mystique of the band being from a far away land, though, it was the music that knocked me out when I first listened to it. Raw Power recorded Screams from the Gutter with Paul Mahern from the Zero Boys, and much like the Zero Boys’ Vicious Circle, it’s a beautifully produced record. The tones are clear, heavy, and powerful, the recording hi-fi but free of bells and whistles. It sounds like a well-done recording of the band ripping it up in the studio, which is presumably what it is. That’s still my favorite kind of recording for hardcore punk.

As tools like eBay, Kill from the Heart, Soulseek, and Discogs developed in the 21st century, my love for Screams from the Gutter sent me down a deep rabbit hole where I’m still discovering things. What else is on Toxic Shock Records? Whoa, this Corrosion of Conformity record called Eye for an Eye is pretty cool, as is Dayglo Abortions’ Feed Us a Fetus. What other hardcore bands are from Italy? Wretched and Negazione sound insane! (I already knew Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, as their Into the Void LP was another 90s Plan 9 used bin purchase.) Hold on, did Raw Power release any other records? Turns out Screams from the Gutter is their second album, and many (most?) people think their first one, You Are the Victim, is even better. Not to mention their demo tape, which Ugly Pop Records released on vinyl in 2019.

Of course I’m thrilled to hear all this stuff. My life is much richer for it. However, if I had access to all this when I first heard Screams from the Gutter, would it have hit the same way? I can imagine not even making it through an entire listen before I dialed up You Are the Victim on YouTube because that’s supposed to be the superior record. And I almost certainly would have thought it was too, because putting You Are the Victim side by side with Screams from the Gutter, the double-bass drumming on Screams would have been a deal-breaker, particularly since there’s so much track listing overlap between the two records. Since I heard Screams so much earlier, though, the double-bass drumming is how I hear these songs in my head.

Going further, would I have responded to Raw Power at all if I had the history of music at my fingertips? After reading so much chatter about music, I “know” that 80s Italian punk is characterized by a loose and unhinged sound. Aside from the wild lead guitar breaks, that’s not the vibe on Screams from the Gutter. The playing on the record is tight and powerful, and based on the sound of this record, Raw Power could stand toe to toe with any punk band in the world in terms of chops and, ahem, raw power. But it’s not what Italian hardcore is “supposed” to sound like, and if I was curious about that sound maybe I would have gravitated toward Wretched or Negazione’s early records because they are closer to what I would expect.

Or maybe not. Maybe Screams from the Gutter is just such a great fucking record that it would have knocked me out whenever and wherever I heard it. In this timeline, though, it serves as a reminder to be in the moment, to take music on its own terms, and to trust my ears above all else.

What’s up Sorry State readers. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving last week. I personally am a big fan of the sides when it comes to Thanksgiving, especially some good dressing and mac n cheese. Dessert wise I’m definitely going pecan pie, but most people I know prefer pumpkin. To each their own. Anyways, you’re not here to read about food. Let’s get to the music. This week I’d like to talk about the album that introduced me to the blues, Rockin’ Chair by Howlin’ Wolf. I actually was introduced to the music of Howlin’ Wolf through the Grateful Dead. I loved their versions of Spoonful and The Red Rooster and one day while listening my brother said to me, “man you need to listen to Howlin’ Wolf.” I can’t even lie, I didn’t even realize the songs were covers (written by Willie Dixon but first recorded by Howlin’ Wolf) when I was first listening to them, but when I heard these original versions, I instantly fell in love with them. The gruff and grit in Howlin’ Wolf’s voice is just unmatched by anyone else. It sounds so raw. It makes sense though. He was a mountain of a man, standing tall at 6 foot 3 inches and weighing around 300 pounds. You can really hear the pain and hurt behind his booming voice when he’s singing. When I find myself feeling down, I just throw on some Howlin’ Wolf. There’s something comforting about listening to a guy singing songs written 60+ years ago about the same feelings you’re feeling. It makes you feel less isolated in the way you feel, at least for me. That’s why I love the blues. It makes you feel better about feeling bad. It’s not all sad though. Songs like Wang-Dang-Doodle are just straight up fun to listen to and belt out (and fun to say). I can listen to this man in any mood, happy or sad, and still love it all the same. Howlin’ Wolf is a legend in pretty much every sense of the word, and I’m forever grateful for his contributions to music and the lasting impact he had on it.