If you have been paying attention you would have read Mark Murrmann’s column last month where he raved about the comp Ride To Live. He has great taste so I picked the sucker up quicksmart. To some of you folks the idea of a comp devoted to the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” would make yer toes curl, but trust me, there are some bangers hidden in there. A lot of it is kinda KBD bluesy pub rock. The opener though? Epic. The track is pretty fantastic…but the video? Holy shit.

Agony Bag – “Rabies Is a Killer”

In venues across the city – several shows each night – a joint benefit for MRR and a new all ages show space in San Francisco. Bands confirmed include Crime,  50 Million, Bananas, Never Healed, Skin Like Iron, Screaming Females, Conquest for Death, Tuberculosis, NN, Young Offenders, Underground Railroad to Candyland, Shellshag, Acephalix, Rank Xerox, Contaminators, Love Songs, Airfix Kits, Descarados, Adelitas, Younger Lovers, Parasites Go!, Wild Thing, Primativas, Here Comes a Big Black Cloud, Pretty Boy Thorson. Plus a 625/Six Weeks/Deep Six show! (LIMP WRIST CANCELLED! SORRY!)
And many, many more surprises in the works! Contact mrr {at} maximumrocknroll(.)com for more info.

So last Sunday I was on the way to a party when I stopped off at the wonderful 1-2-3-4-GO! record shop down the street from my house to meet Phil and Lauren. When I got there, local up-and-coming trio Shannon and the Clams were bringing the house down. I soon found out that SO COW from Ireland were going to follow them, so I stuck around and ended up blowing off the party I was headed to, because they were so good. One of the best bands I’ve seen in ages, in fact, and a lovely bunch of lads. Classic herky-jerky DIY punk in the vein of XTC, Wire, Television Personalities, all the greats. They even did a cover of TVP’s ‘This Angry Silence’ which they claimed they messed up. Hey, it wasn’t perfect but at least they’re not sleeping in bus shelters like Dan Treacy. Highlight of the afternoon was their cover of the Only Fools and Horses theme tune. I believe they’re still on tour for a while so check out their tour dates on MySpace…
So Cow myspace

TOUCH AND GO MAGAZINE: The Complete Years, by Tesco Vee, Dave Stimson, and Steve Miller

http://www.bazillionpoints.com/?p=200

“The complete series 1979—1983. Twenty-two issues in one loud, fast volume.

“Touch and Go fanzine was the brainchild of Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson and was launched in Lansing, Michigan in 1979. Major fanatics of the new punk happenings in the late ’70s, TV and DS set out to chronicle, lambaste, ridicule, and heap praise on all they arbitrarily loved or hated in the music communities in the US and abroad. Inspired by magazines such as Slash and Search and Destroy and writers like Claude Bessey and Chris DesJardines, TV and DS pumped out seventeen issues together with TV doing the last five solo. In laughably miniscule press runs by today’s standards, T&G was made by guys within the Midwest scene strictly for the edification of scenesters and pals in other cities like DC, Philly, Boston, LA, SF, Chicago, et al. Magazines like Forced Exposure and Your Flesh among others were soon inspired by T&G to fire up the Xerox machine themselves, and the rest is history. So is the legendary independent record label launched from this ‘zine, and so are the bands covered inside: Black Flag, Minor Threat, the Misfits, Negative Approach, the Fix, the Avengers, the Necros, Discharge, Iron Cross, Youth Brigade, Faith, Die Kreuzen, Crucifix, Poison Idea, and all the other punks worth print.

“Touch and Go was what it was—a naughty, irreverent bird walkin’ trip thru the punk, hardcore, industrial, and indie of the late ’70s and early ’80s. And oh what a fun trip it was!”

Not only is Dezerter the best HC band from Poland, but they’re one of the greatest bands from any country, ever. Well, in this blogger’s opinion, anyway. They were one of the first Eastern European hardcore bands to release vinyl, and they’re still around today! Check out there website here: www.dezerter.most.org.pl/

Earlier this year, MRR shitworker “Willie Nelson” informed me that he had inherited an old punk’s tape collection (a story that really deserves its own post) and invited me over to his place to check them out and drink some fancy vodka he brought back from a recent trip to Europe. This being my idea of a perfect date, I gladly accepted… About several boxes of demos (and at least as many shots) into the evening, we came across one with a strangely homemade case. On closer inspection, it was a split between two bands: one whose name was written in Cyrillic characters, the other—Dezerter. I flipped! This was their 1985 split tape with a band from the (former) USSR that I had been trying to track down a recording of for years! We popped whatever was playing out of the stereo and threw it on… The first song was one I’d never heard before, and it was KILLER. What a find! The live recording had that slight echo—it was like listening to some kind of long-lost transmission from another planet. (One where they play raging hardcore, I guess.) Now here’s the tragedy: A few tracks into the tape, the music just stopped. Right in the middle of the song. What the hell? I flipped it over to side two… Nothing. I pulled it out to look at the actual magnetic tape… FUCK!!! It was so old, the tape inside had broken. Goddamn it! Well, at least I had gotten the chance to hear a couple tracks, right??

Fast-forward to the next day: Willie’s got a close personal friend who, when he’s not winning international air-guitar competitions, does digital audio editing. So it turns out this story has a happy ending… The tape was professionally repaired and transfered to digital format. Thank you Craigums!

[After hosting the MP3 of the split tape for several months, we took it down... Thanks to Dezerter for letting us share their music! Check out the Underground Out of Poland album on CD and the upcoming vinyl reissue out soon...]

At KPFA studios in Berkeley.  At least two of the faces should be familiar…

Photo by Mark Berlin

Dan posted this on the radio site, who is who?

JULY 2009 • MRR #314
The July issue of MRR is just about to hit the newsstands! We’ve got some killer interviews and scene reports this month from around the world. But Boston and DC are in the spotlight—we get the skinny on female-fronted Boston hardcore punks, THE LIBYANS. The current wave of DC straightedge hardcore bands is represented with COKE BUST, and we’ve got an interview with the raging, non-sxe, but DC based all-girl hardcore punk band, TURBOSLUT. We’ve also got interviews with Austin’s garage flavor of the month, STRANGE BOYS, who dish about brotherly love, and another with the elusive Belgian hardcore band, VOGUE. The controversial early ’80s styled Italian band, SMART COPS weigh in, and ZYANOSE also get a feature, true sounds of noise damage from Japan. There’s an extensive scene report, a recap of all that has happened in Canada’s fine city of Toronto over the past couple of years, from the break up of THE BAYONETTES to CAREER SUICIDE’s upcoming LP to bands like URBAN BLIGHT and BAD CHOICE. We also cover the political and social history of squatting in Italy, from the communist uprisings of the late ’60s and punks in the early ’80s right through to the current situation. Finally, we catch up with one of punk’s most striking artists, Portland’s Dennis Dread, whose stunning and provocative artwork has graced the covers of punk and hardcore records for years. All this plus the usual columns, news, and the most extensive review section in punk—all the recently released records, zines, demos, books and films!

Go to our BACK ISSUES page to order.

Younger Lovers – “Danny”