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What’s up Sorry Staters?

Another week, another newsletter, amirite? I remember feeling like I was being kind of a downer in the opening of my newsletter write-up last week. Sorry about that. I feel very much the opposite today. I feel like I’ve made some healthy choices for myself lately. But, this isn’t my journal, so y’all don’t care! Ha.

Some exciting news: Public Acid announced that we’re playing K-Town Hardcore Fest in Copenhagen in June. I’m so pumped. Last year’s K-Town was one of the best weekends my life, no joke. So yeah, I’m ready to do it all over again. I don’t even think I’ve mentioned, but Public Acid is also playing Noise Annoys in the UK in May, so the beginning of summer is lookin’ to be a good time.

I’m predicting that my line of thinking while writing this staff pick will be kinda all over the place this week. Apologies in advance. I’m kinda not picking one record specifically. Actually, I wanna begin by talking about a couple movies. If you read my staff pick last week, you’ll know I talked about The Outcasts singles collection on Radiation. In that write-up, I talked about Northern Ireland and the whole scene revolving around Good Vibrations Records. After that newsletter came out, Daniel approaches me at work and says, “Man, have you seen the Good Vibrations movie?” Of course, me being the uncultured neanderthal that I am, I had not seen it nor did I have any idea that the movie existed. That night, I watched it on streaming. And I loved it! For my money, Good Vibrations is one of the better music-related biopics I’ve seen in recent memory.

The movie mainly centers around the owner of Good Vibrations, Terri Hooley. I’ve seen so many music biopics not unlike Good Vibrations where the acting is super cringey. As opposed to like the CBGB’s movie, which comes across as so corny. It annoys me that the costuming of how people are dressed and how the actors portraying the band look while performing feels cartoony or like parody. But on the contrary, the club scene where Terri goes and sees Rudi play for the first time actually feels pretty believable! Well, maybe not, but it didn’t make me wince. It captured how uplifting and exciting it was for Hooley to discover something new. Also, the backdrop of social unrest and “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland didn’t feel too heavy-handed, but rather provided a strong sense of atmosphere, giving context for what the feeling on street was like behind the music scene. I just thought it was really well done. I recommend checking it out if you’ve never seen it.

So, I guess this will be kind of a twofer. Watching that Good Vibrations movie has been making me crave super melodic punk that puts me in good spirits. And dare I say… power pop? Oof, that term is just the kiss of death, isn’t it? I’ve used that line before. Don’t care. I always think it’s funny. Unrelated, I was revisiting my Die Kreuzen records a couple weeks ago, and randomly stumbled across this documentary on YouTube called Taking The City By Storm. The subtitle is the “birth of punk in Milwaukee’s punk scene.” I watched the movie on a whim. Funny enough, the movie cold opens with grainy footage of Die Kreuzen on tour in 1985, stranded at a hotel in the middle of nowhere with a tour van that won’t start. Very relatable haha. But this opening was a bit misleading, I’d say. I assumed a good chunk of the movie would be about hardcore. Die Kreuzen does appear in the movie of course, but the emergence of hardcore doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie. If I’m being honest, I think I would probably categorize a grand majority of the bands featured in the movie as “power pop” or more underground music than straight punk.

The documentary takes the viewer way back to the vibe of the music scene in Milwaukee in 1972. The movie starts off talking about a band called Death (not to be confused with the Detroit band). As I might’ve guessed, all the members of Death met because they were fans of The Stooges. The documentary establishes Death as the catalyst for the underground music exploding. The way the narrative evolves is super interesting, stitching together key figures in the community in a manner that feels incredibly in-depth and personal. The movie talks about this guy Jerome Brish, who seems like he was a strong personality and real instigator in the music scene. A lot of the bands discussed in the movie I had never heard of, one of them being Jerome’s band In A Hot Coma. Funny enough, even before the movie mentions this, I recognized the keyboard player from In A Hot Coma. Turns out, this woman Jill Kossoris would end up leaving In A Hot Coma and become the lead singer for The Shivvers! Much like many other cities, the scene in Milwaukee seems like it was incestuous. While watching the movie, I was like “I called it!” I remember loving The Shivvers reissue on Sing Sing Records when I first heard it many years back. So needless to say, watching this documentary got me on a binge of jamming The Shivvers once again. And tying it into the Good Vibrations theme, Sing Sing also did reissues of Rudi, Protex, etc. It’s all connected, my friends.

What point am I trying to make exactly? I dunno. This is where my head’s been at with music, I suppose. So yeah, check out these movies and jam some Rudi, Protex, and The Shivvers. I highly recommend the Shivvers song “Please Stand By”. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Various: Greetings from Bulgaria cassette (Aon Productions, 1996)

This week I have another item from the big haul I picked up at Vinyl Conflict a couple of weeks ago. Now, I’m not a big collector of vintage cassettes. They’re too easily counterfeited, and even if they are truly what they purport to be, magnetic tape is prone to oxidation and other types of decay and damage that make me wary of sinking money into them. But there have been a few occasions when I’ve lucked into a stash of old tapes, and they’re definitely fun to pore over. While records feel like a mass market medium—you usually have to make at least a few hundred of them, which changes the way the artist interacts with their audience—tapes are more intimate. While a personalized mix tape is like a letter from one person to another, looking at and listening to hand-duplicated tapes can feel like the pre-internet version of eavesdropping on a group chat, getting a window into a small community with its own in-jokes and idioms. I love that so many 80s and 90s metal bands circulated rehearsal tapes, workshopping their ideas and getting feedback from trusted sources before they took their ideas to the masses.

The cassette I’m writing about today is called Greetings from Bulgaria, and it’s one of several hand-duplicated compilation tapes I picked up from Vinyl Conflict. According to Discogs, it was released in 1996, and from what I can tell the tape was compiled by Ivailo Tonchev, the person behind Aon Productions, who primarily released cassettes by Bulgarian bands, though they also put out a couple of compilation 7”s and cassettes by Scandinavian bands like S.O.D. (the Swedish one) and Valse Triste. The “pay no more than £2” note on the j-card flap indicates this copy reached me via Mitsey Distro, a tape distro apparently based in Sheffield. I’m curious about how that connection was formed and how this tape found its way into the world (maybe at some point I’ll find an ad for it in an old MRR when I’m scanning ads for the newsletter), but that information may be lost to the sands of time. It seems, though, that there have always been people like me who are interested in music from off the beaten path, and I probably picked it up used for the same reasons someone would have picked it up from Mitsey Distro thirty years ago.

The tape starts with a recording of an old Bulgarian political song, meant to set the background atmosphere as an example of the only music one could hear in behind-the-iron-curtain Bulgaria. It’s kind of what you’d expect, somewhere between a religious hymn and a military march, and it’s hard to imagine how it might excite anyone. It’s sounds like music not meant to express anything really, but merely to lend authority and mystique to the state. After hearing nothing but that all your life, hearing raw and expressive rock and roll must have felt like a total revelation.

The liner notes don’t say this explicitly, but the tape’s a-side features Bulgarian bands from before the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989. Most bands have two tracks, and the tape’s liner notes give some basic information about each band. A lot of them sound like second-wave UK punk bands, making the music it seems natural to make when you first pick up electric guitars and drums: basic beats and chord changes and a ton of passion. D.D.T. sounds kind of like Warsaw-era Joy Division, and Aon Productions later released a more extensive compilation of their recordings. U.Z.Z.U. is a little more complex, reminding me of Post Regiment’s early recordings with their commanding vocals and darkly melodic guitar riffs. Review is another standout who actually released an album on the state-run label Балкантон. The recordings are all very raw, and some of the masters are clearly damaged with drop-outs and other problems, but I don’t mind at all. It feels like these are transmissions from another world, and I’m grateful to have them at all.

The b-side of the tape features bands who, by and large, were contemporary with the compilation and presumably still active when it came out in 1996. I hate to say it, but this side of the tape is a lot less interesting. The bands on the a-side are all punk bands and they don’t sound all that different from the punk bands rich western countries produced, but there’s something special there. I’m really projecting here, but I’m guessing maybe the 80s bands had heard a few examples of punk rock, but mostly they knew punk rock was loud, fast, and angry, and they filled in whatever other gaps they needed to make their music with their intuition and with knowledge they inherited from their own cultures and backgrounds. The 90s bands, on the other hand, sound kind of like carbon copies of western bands. Several of them are straight edge bands playing various styles of youth crew and mosh-oriented hardcore, and there’s a band called Just a Product that sounds like they were weaned on the same Lookout! and Epitaph catalogs we Americans were choking down. I was going to shows by 1996, and by and large these bands sound exactly like the local and regional bands I was seeing as a teenager. I’m sure it was great for Bulgarians to have access to so much more music after their 1989 revolution, but I can’t help but feel like something was lost. I guess that’s capitalism’s main rub: it opens up a theoretical world of choice, but somehow that always gets reduced down to just a few generic-ass options.

So yeah, Bulgarian punk… who even knew it was a thing? I’m thrilled to know even this little bit about it, so kudos to the folks who originally made this cassette and to all the people exploring the wide world of music, homogenization be damned!

Olho Seco: Botas Fuzis Capacetes 7" (Morrer Discos) The new label Morrer Discos brings us a pitch-perfect reissue of this raw hardcore monster from early 80s Brazil. While Olho Seco debuted alongside Inocentes and Cólera on 1982’s Grito Suburbano compilation LP, 1983’s Botas Fuzis Capacetes is their first stand-alone record, and if you like raw, Discharge-inspired hardcore, there’s a good chance you consider it the best record ever to come from Brazil. Olho Seco’s vocalist Fábio Sampaio ran the influential record store Punk Rock Discos and was deeply plugged into the international hardcore scene, forging connections with scenes as far away as Finland (you can see “Tampere SS” painted on his leather jacket in a photo on this record’s insert), and while the first generation or two of Discharge-inspired hardcore must have been hugely influential on Olho Seco, what strikes me most about Botas Fuzis Capacetes is how alive with discovery it feels. The a-side, “Nada,” in particular just fizzes with energy, and while its three-chord riff is almost absurdly primitive, the performance conveys a similar excitement level to Minor Threat’s first EP or Discharge’s Decontrol. It feels impossible for me to sit still while it’s playing. The two tracks on the b-side are no slouch either, with “Muito Obrigado” leaning toward the savage aggression of Shitlickers and the title track closing things out on an ever-so-slightly more tuneful, UK82-inspired note. Botas Fuzis Capacetes is a clear highlight in the history of hardcore punk, and this reissue does exactly what it should by getting out of the way and letting the record speak for itself. I don’t have an original to compare it to, but the sound is clear, loud, and powerful, and the sleeve reproduction so dead-on that it almost looks like dead stock (that pocket sleeve on thin goldenrod paper is drool-worthy). If you’re an 80s international hardcore manic, you need this one in your collection, so kudos to Morrer Discos for bringing this stylish and affordable new pressing to the punx.

Hello Sorry Staters! We have seen some great weather and sun and I think we have finally gotten rid of the snow for this winter season. I hope everyone can go outside and get some sun on their face and enjoy some great weather! We have been restocking a lot of great records for ya’ll this past week, including one of my favorites, the Prison Affair EPs and the split with Research Reactor Corporation! After reading Daniel’s pick last week talking about about watching old videos of Headbanger’s Ball on YouTube, I thought it would be fun to chat about some skate videos that bridged the gap between me listening to christian punk in my early formative years to watching skate videos on the weekend and discovering bands like the Sonic Youth and The Sundays.

One of my favorite videos that I always go back to watch even in my early 40s is “Welcome To Hell” by the mighty Toy Machine Skateboards. The video starts out with an animation of the Toy Machine logo laughing in slow motion and sounding very creepy, and I know as a 16 year old watching this video with friends I thought “oh hell yes, this is going to kick ass.” Out of nowhere Lard starting playing the background and the video blasts into non stop back to back clips of the Toy Machine skate team flying off of ramps and rails. I was hooked by not only how fucking cool skateboarding looked, but the power of the music behind the scenes.

The soundtrack of this video included so many great bands and songs that I had never heard before. It was my first introduction to bands like Sonic Youth, The Sundays and Lard. It was the first time I had ever heard Black Sabbath outside of hearing it or seeing it on MTV. Even though I could not skateboard, I was obsessed with the culture and the music scene that pushed all the music that I still love today.

What’s up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone has had a nice week. As spring approaches and the weather heats up, I find my listening habits start to change too. It’s hard not to crave some good rhythm and warm sounds while enjoying a nice sunny and 70 day. This past week I picked up the newest release from Analog Africa, Gnonnas Pedro & His Dadjes Band - Roi De L’Agbadja Moderne 1974-1983. I’m a sucker for the world/international section in a record store and we had just got in some cool new arrivals at Sorry State, but this one really caught my eye/ear. A very high quality 2LP release that includes a nice gatefold jacket and an incredible booklet that includes a bunch of great interviews, photos and biography about the man himself. Not that I’m usually super in depth with my reviews, but I don’t have much to say about this one other than it’s really good music and I’m glad I discovered it. My favorite tracks on here would probably be Agbadja Moderne No2 and Gbeto Enon Mon. I wasn’t too familiar with Analog Africa before this other than the African Scream Contest compilation, but their releases are definitely gonna be on my radar going forward. I’ve already found some past releases that definitely catch my attention like the Cameroon Garage Funk compilation. Luckily, it seems the label has most, if not all, their releases available on their Bandcamp for your listening pleasure. Definitely check this out so you have some fresh new tunes to enjoy this spring/summer.

Hello and thanks for reading. I recently acquired this AVSKUM tape, and I wanted to write about it. This is the kinda shit that gets me weak in the knees! I never thought I would see a copy of this in real life, let alone have a copy of my own! I have no idea how many of these tapes were made, but I know it’s at least around 200. The tapes are numbered on the inside, and I have seen up to the number 198 online. I feel like AVSKUM is a band that needs no introduction. They began during the first wave of Swedish hardcore and have (more or less) kept it up since. I previously wrote about them when Prank did the recent reissue of Crucified By The System. I talked about how essential I consider that record, but I also mentioned how much I LOVE their unreleased material. They recorded for their 7” in February of 1984, but there were several recording sessions between July 1984 and September 1985 that were never properly released. Luckily, all that stuff was later compiled onto LP and CD releases, though. If this is all new to you, you can listen to most of these unreleased and early sessions here.

Anyways, this tape is a live AVSKUM performance recorded at Blitz, legendary Norwegian squat. The audio is not from the soundboard, but if you love AVSKUM, it will certainly hit the spot. Yeah, you can hear the crowd sometimes between songs, but AVKSUM sounds like they are on fire!! When I actually got this tape in my hands, and I realized this gig was recorded April 1985 - my mind started to race! I wondered, “Would they play any tracks from the unreleased Mortarhate 12”?” That session was recorded only five months later, and they are some of my favorite songs AVSKUM has done. I thought more as I examined the j-card, “Would they play stuff I have never even heard before…?” Between the 7” and the Mortarhate session they recorded several times, but just like the Mortarhate session, none of this stuff was released. Ah actually, Really Fast Vol 3 features AVSKUM, and they didn’t use any 7” tracks. I am not sure which session those songs are from without looking it up, which I won’t do right now... I know they appeared on a ton of cassette compilations as well, but I am not that familiar with these comps off-hand either. Anyways, most of this unreleased stuff was compiled onto a CD in the 90s by Finn Records, so luckily it could be heard and in one place. Then, later in the 2010s, Skrammel released a double disc compilation that included everything on that Finn comp plus even more unreleased shit that I didn’t know existed. Some double disc compilations like that can get old, but I don’t think AVSKUM is a band I could ever get tired of.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hear any tracks from the Mortarhate session on the Live at Blitz tape. They play the entire Nov. ’84 session, two songs from the July ’84 session, plus two songs from the 7”. But oh baby… there sure was a song I had never heard before! On the Skrammel comp there were a bunch of songs or alternate versions of songs I have never heard, but this track “Violence is Solution to Create Peace” doesn’t seem to appear anywhere aside from this cassette. I dropped that link above to the cassette, so you can hear it as well if you have not. I could be crazy, but the song sounds really similar to “Gold Digger,” which is recorded later on the Mortarhate session. I know it’s not the same structure, and they drop the guitar solo, but maybe they decided to rework the song or something. They play “Glöm Aldrig Hiroshima” a bit differently than they did on the record as well. Alright, I should wrap this up. Before I go, I wanted to drop this link to this translated interview with AVSKUM. It doesn’t look like I shared it last time, and if you don’t know about it already, it’s a fun read. Cheers and thanks for reading.

Hi Sorry Staters, thanks for clicking on our newsletter and checking in with us.

It’s been another crazy week and honestly what happened in the White House on Friday still has me in shock. Really? This is the America we live in now? Aligning with the dictators of the world. My God! To think of all the people who have given their lives for their country to protect democracy here and around the world only to have these horrible traitors act so shamefully. It is beyond comprehension. We are in a constitutional crisis in America and a third of the population at least seems to be cheering on as the place burns. Sad. Very sad.

With all that in mind, trying to think straight and write a pick for the newsletter is even tougher than normal. I honestly couldn’t even write home for money right now, but I’ll give it a go.

Just quickly first, a mention about a record that has been out for a few months now but was missed by me when it came to the store originally. It seems we had a color variant which sold out quickly and a black vinyl version which, although listed on our webstore, didn’t make its way to the store bins. Shame on us for missing that. Anyway, last week Jeff and I were talking about the popularity of the Alvilda record, and he mentioned he thought that another French language record we got in was just as good or even, dare he say, better. That was Coeur A L’Index from Belgium and their debut titled Adieu Minette. As soon as I put it on, I knew instantly that I liked it. Great C86 style DIY pop-punk which should easily appeal to fans of Chin Chin, Dolly Mixture and bands on Slumberland Records, just to give you a rough idea. As always, Jeff called it. If you were slow on the ball like I was, we still have copies on black vinyl in stock. Check it out.

Okay, for my main pick this week I had to go with a terrific collection of reggae and dub that is focused on the productions of Dennis Bovell. It’s called Sufferrer Sounds and is out on the Disciples label, a subsidiary of Warp Records in the U.K. The compilation concentrates on tracks that were produced and released during and around the time that Dennis Bovell was involved with the South London sound system known as Sufferer Sound in the late 1970s. It’s a wonderfully curated compilation and sequenced to play as an album almost, even though tracks are pulled from different releases. There are rare B-side version dubs, lovers rock beauties, powerful rockers and roots cuts, all with the genius production touch from Dennis Bovell. I think it is great and will certainly be one of my faves of the year, I am sure. I won’t go into a deep dive on Bovell here, as I have neither the time nor the brain power to do him justice, but Lord Daniel is a big fan also and I know he picked a Dennis Bovell record before for a staff pick here in the Sorry State newsletter, so perhaps pull that one up to read a more in-depth history. Suffice to say, if you have listened to a Slits record or watched the film Babylon or loved the dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson, then, whether you realized it or not, you have experienced the magic of Dennis Bovell.

Back to this collection. The label has done a great job in the sound restoration and the pressing is a good one. I have been cranking it at home and at the store and can testify to the top job done by the mastering engineer. These cuts potentially have never sounded so good. Many of them are rare and hard to find (and expensive) so it’s a blessing to have them compiled here. For those wondering how things might have played and sounded at Sufferer Sound with DB at the controls all those years ago, this is a fantastic approximation. Comes with liner notes and a few photos along with track-by-track recollections from Dennis himself. Killer stuff and essential for all lovers of 70s dub reggae. I’m loving the dub version of Take Five and Angelique’s Cry with the DB version that closes out the album. Beauty and toughness combined.

Okay, short and to the point this week. Thanks for reading and supporting music and the arts.

Cheers - Dom

What’s up Sorry Staters?

I’m kinda in a weird mood today. But I won’t use this vehicle to shout my thoughts into the void. Not much to report on the personal front this week. I’ll dive right in:

Honestly, sometimes I feel guilty when I do these write-ups for the newsletter and don’t take the time to write more about new releases by current bands. It’s not that I’m disinterested… or am I? I can’t tell anymore. For some reason my brain capacity feels dedicated to digging deeper into classic punk at the moment. Maybe it’s because hearing these records elicits a feeling of time capsule-esque nostalgia I’m craving that I won’t be able to obtain from current punk? No idea.

This week, I’m talking about yet another reissue from the batch of stuff we got from Radiation a couple weeks ago. I don’t know what it is about The Outcasts that has deterred me over the years. Maybe it’s because whenever I would see the black and white band photos on the cover of their records, there’s the one skinhead looking dude and I assumed that The Outcasts sounded like Last Resort or something. The band doesn’t even look like skinheads in every photo. And don’t get me wrong, I can tolerate some Oi!, but I’m extremely picky. First of all, learning that they were from Belfast in Northern Ireland was a surprise to me. I don’t know why. There’s no reason I should be expecting a proud display of the Union Jack anywhere near this band’s artwork. At some point in my early 20s, I heard “Self-Conscious Over You” for the first time and I was totally baffled by it. I was like, “WHAT? This is what The Outcasts sound like??”

While I liked that 7” single just fine, I didn’t dig much deeper into the band’s catalog for a while. Funny enough though, I was watching yet another episode of Analog Attack’s What Are You Listening To? podcast a couple weeks ago. I’ll be honest, currently I can’t remember which episode it was or who the guests were ha. But there was a discussion about the early Belfast punk and power pop scene. And specifically, someone was talking about Good Vibrations Records. Of course, I have familiarity with this label—The Undertones and Protex have always been big favorites of mine. Now, I wish I were smarter. I never think to run down the list of releases on a label’s catalog. Good Vibrations’ handful of 15 or so singles from 1978 to 1979 is just an amazing run of tunes. To some of you reading this, you’re probably like, “Duh, Jeff.” Haha. But here I am in my 30s hearing Xdreamysts for the first time being like “Fuuuuck this rules.”

Anyway, back to The Outcasts: I think I had a total misconception about this band. Not only is a song like “Self-Conscious Over You” poppy, but some of the choruses almost sort of have the feel of a 60s doo-wop hit. Funny enough I’d never heard the band’s single on IT with “Fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-frustration”, along with the first several tracks on this Radiation comp. They kinda sound like a rougher, more rockin’ 999 to me. But then the band’s other Good Vibrations single “Justa Nother Teenage Rebel” is so great. The production and songwriting on this single feels immediately “sweeter” to me. Proclaimed the “bad boys of Ulster” on Radiation’s hype sticker, it’s kinda funny and interesting to think about this incredibly hooky and earnest teenage anthem being the backdrop for a genuinely rough and gnarly street scene. Aside from the “street anthems”, I think I was just surprised by the sort of shameless love song aesthetic of the band. Still with sort of a “tough guy” approach to love songs though, like “Love Is For Sops” and “Love You For Never”. For NEVER, ha. They have a sentiment in common with the Dead Boys in one of those songs. Come to think of it, I do need lunch pretty soon… But then digging into some of the songs I was less familiar with, one of the more aggressive tracks “Gangland Warfare” has this ending refrain that got me raging, pumping my fist and singing along: “Gang fights! Saturday Night! Whoa-oh!” It rules.

When you flip to the B-side of this singles collection, you get into the band’s singles from the early-to-mid 80s. This side of the record definitely feels like a distinct era from the band’s earlier material. More minor key, more anthemic UK82 style songs. I remember getting to the track “Mania” and I was like, “oh fuck, I know this song.” Wouldn’t haven’t even guessed it was the same band. I start to lose interest slightly, at least compared to the bangers from the early singles. But there are some cool tracks on side B for sure. “Angel Face” is a little rough for me… but hey, to each their own. When I looked up the cover art for “Angel Face”, with its super new wave looking color scheme, and homeboy with his Teen Beat looking photo sporting charged hair and flexing his gun, I was like, “ah, I see.” A little extra cheese sprinkled on top compared to the earlier material.

This record was a super fun listen, and cool for someone rather uninitiated like me to dig into. The LP comes with a big foldout poster. On the back cover, there’s fine print that provides some info about the release dates of each single. My only complaint about this collection is that I would have loved an insert with all the cover art from each single and maybe a little more information. But hey, why complain? I’ll leave it there. Thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Various: Finnish Drunks: Punks Is Hippies 12” (1995, no label)

As I mentioned at the top of the newsletter, I had a busy week last week. Poison Ruin and Beton Arme played here in North Carolina on Tuesday, we squeezed in a Scarecrow practice on the same night, and first thing the next morning I was off on a trip to buy a collection. The collection was in the northwestern part of Virginia, so of course I made a pit stop in Richmond on my way back. If you follow Vinyl Conflict’s social media, you know they recently bought a huge punk collection, and their bins and walls were lit up with international hardcore punk. I picked up a big stack for myself that I’m still going through, and I’m sure I’ll cover a bunch of my scores in future staff picks.

Since I was writing about bootlegs just a few weeks ago, this compilation LP seems like a great place to start. I’ve always been partial to LPs that compile several rare punk EPs in their entirety. A few of these compilations were crucial in developing my taste: Dischord’s Four Old 7”s on a 12”; the bootleg New York hardcore LP that compiled seminal EPs by Antidote, Urban Waste, the Abused, and the Mob; and the similar 4-way split with Mecht Mensch, Clitboys, Active Ingredients, and the Catatonics. I listened to all these to death when I first got them. At the time, it was the only way to hear these records, other than friends making mixes for you. And while bootlegs typically pale compared to official reissues, they beat the hell out of a dubbed cassette, especially when reproductions of the original artwork are included.

According to Discogs, Finnish Drunks: Punks Is Hippies came out in 1995, and the LP compiles 5 Finnish hardcore EPs: Mellakka’s Ei and Itsenäisyyspäivä EPs, Äpärät’s Häiriköt Tulee EP, Painajainen’s Todistusaineistoa EP, and Rutto’s Ilmastoitu Painajainen. The LP says “Made in Japan,” and while you should never trust a bootleg’s proclaimed point of origin, there could be some truth to this one. Certainly Finnish Drunks is the type of high-quality record I expect from Japan. The sound quality is excellent—as good as I would expect from an official reissue (which is impressive since this bootleg came out before any of these EPs came out on CD)—and the artwork is clean and well-executed, including insert sheets with full reproductions of the original EPs’ layouts. While all these records save the Painajainen EP have been officially reissued, I’m still going to play the hell out of this LP because it’s so convenient and it looks and sounds so great.

Speaking of reissues, if you want to get the music compiled here, it shouldn’t be too hard. I believe Havoc Records’ Mellakka discography CD is still in print, and just a few years ago Svart Records did a box set containing beautiful reproductions of both their EPs alongside a previously unreleased demo from 1986. Mellakka is one of the greatest Finnish punk bands ever, so these songs should be in your collection in some form or another. Äpärät’s EP got a repress in 2022 on Voltage Records, and the Rutto EP’s reissue on Final Doomsday Records is still in stock at Sorry State (along with their reissue of the band’s other EP). As I mentioned, the Painajainen EP hasn’t been reissued… not sure why, but it’s a missed opportunity… I love the unhinged vocal performance and quirky, Rattus-esque sound on this one.

In 2025, a bootleg like this should be obsolete. Just about everything worth hearing has seen an official reissue, and what hasn’t is usually easy to find on youtube. Yet there’s something about the way this record’s creators put it together, the care they put into selecting these five records and presenting them to their audience, that feels significant to me. And assuming this was made and distributed mostly in Japan, to think this LP may have directly inspired some killer Japanese hardcore in the latter half of the 90s is pretty cool, too.

What’s up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone has had a nice week. I can’t believe I’m sitting here writing this while Raleigh gets another snow day, woohoo! What better time to lounge around and listen to some cozy music. Today I decided to throw on a record I got for my Valentine (although maybe it was secretly also for myself) the Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. Even though the holiday has already passed, this music can be enjoyed throughout the year. Dom put me on to these Peanuts holiday special soundtracks they’ve been putting out recently and they’re all awesome. I especially like It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown. I hadn’t snagged any of them yet though, so when I heard this one and really dug it, I had to pick a copy up. It comes with a nice insert that gives lots of info about the special and the recording of the soundtrack, and the vinyl is a very fitting Valentines red. It’s perfect relaxing background music that you can get some real good thinking done with, but also if you do kinda zone out and snap back to it you’re like, “damn this is really good.” Great for staring out your window and watching the snow fall. Dom and I both are fans of the track Woodstock’s Mambo. Badass name aside, it kinda comes out of nowhere on the soundtrack, sounding like something that came out like 20 years after everything else on there with a funky ass synth line. Woodstock is kooky like that, so he gets a funky song. For more of the kinda straightforward stuff on here, I really like Freddie’s Mood, which is based on Chopin’s Nocturne op.9 No.2. My favorite track on here though, is Jennie L. I don’t know how to describe it accurately, but it just makes me feel very happy. It has this kinda dreamlike sound to it with the synth and I just can’t get enough of it. I always find myself playing that one back. Also, I have to give a shoutout to the Music Supervisor on this, John Scott Trotter, simply because I don’t come across many other John Scotts. If you like Peanuts and good music, then these soundtracks will be right up your alley.

Hello and thanks for reading. This week I wanted I write briefly about this No Genocide compilation we’ve had it stock for a little while. This was originally released on cassette format and we had copies of that as well. I can’t remember how many sold, but after that they decided to press it to 12” as well. They made 300 of these and all proceeds are directed to mutual aid in Gaza. I know they’ve sent over a ton of money before the 12”s were made and that was great to hear. SCARECROW was asked to be on the compilation. They were looking for exclusive songs mostly, which we don’t really have, haha. We have done a number or cover songs though, and those can only be heard on cassette or flexi, so we went with one of those. A while back we covered Raleigh’s own C.O.C. for a tour tape, and now you can hear our version of “Rabid Dogs” on this No Genocide 12”. They properly mastered all the songs too, so it sounds a lot better than what we released on tape, haha. I was surprised how good it sounded, since we recorded with a portable recorder. The 12” compilation comes with a booklet that the cassette version did not, and Jeff did a sick page for us ripping off some old C.O.C. shit. On the compilation you can find some great contemporary bands, but they also featured some classics like OI POLLOI, THE MOB, and PART 1. Those bands probably don’t give a shit, but I can’t believe my band is on a record with them!! Haha. I was stoked to see RAT CAGE on the compilation too, as we’ve already done stuff with them. They also did a cover, by VARUKERS. While the comp is comprised of punk bands, the sound is all over the place. Actually, the final track is not a punk band at all, it’s a choir singing an anti-war song. That might sound cheesy to some, but I find stuff like that awesome. Anyways, I’m sure most everyone already knows about this compilation, but I wanted to take some time to mention it. If you’re not interested in buying the comp, you can stream the entire thing here. Of course you could donate by buying a digital version, but there are also a ton of links at the bottom of the page for direct ways to send funds to Gaza. Alright, I think that’s about it for the week. Cheers and thanks for your support. We really appreciate all the Sorry State customers.