AWESOME POP PUNK ALBUMS
by Mitch Clem
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Part three of my list of (mostly) pop punk albums that I think are great. Going over my list earlier, I realized this might actually stretch out to be a seven-parter? I'll keep you posted. Go here to start at the beginning. Otherwise, have at it:
THE EPOXIES - self-titled - [2002, Dirtnap Records]
Generally, while perusing the music at Extreme Noise, the punk rock record store in Minneapolis, I'd tune out the music being played overhead. Nothing against the staff picks or anything, don't get me wrong. People like what they like. But, you know, punk shop, it always kinda seemed like the staff were trying to outpunk one another with their picks. Trying to pick the loudest, fastest, most devoid-of-any-semblance-of-melody hardcore horseshit they could find to blow everyone else's feeble mind. And, yes, I am factoring in when I say this that I listen primarily to the wussiest shit ever. Even still.
Now HEY! Again, I mean no offense by that! Hell, I haven't lived in Minneapolis for like eight years now, so the people who were working there when I was a regular customer have more than likely already dropped out of punk rock and joined the army and come back and have kids by now. This is OLD NEWS! But, I'm saying, for my money, when I was still living there and shopping there all the time, you know... No thanks on the staff picks.
An exception came one day when I went with my friend and heard kinda crazy awesome shit on the speakers. Gone was the aharmonic noisy hullabaloo, and, in its stead, some super fucking catchy poppy fun awesomeness, replete with wild keyboards super present in the mix. This was FUN! This was COOL! I dug it, and so I, for the first time ever, actually went up to the guy working behind the counter at a record store and said, "Excuse me, but what are you listening to?" He tells me it's brand new, that he and the other guy working were just going through all the new stuff that had come in that week. "This one is some band called the Epoxies," he says. Yeah. You know what? I'll take a copy of that, please. Thank you.
It was easy to fall in love with. While the backup band's roots were clearly pop punk (in fact, I think the backup band was just more or less the Automatics, right?) frontwoman Roxy Epoxy was clearly schooled more in 80s goth and new wave, adding a really fresh and exciting dynamic to the old pop punk formula. Me, I fucking love 80s goth. LOVE. And, sure, the Epoxies didn't have the downtrodden and drab sorrow of your Bauhaus or your Siouxsie and the Banshees, but there was a feeling there, a hint at an aesthetic, that yielded something fun and unique that I just couldn't help but love.
Only one other time did I ever ask about what was playing over the speakers at Extreme Noise. My friend and I had just seen the Explosion at the 7th Street Entry downtown (this was after the release of their awesome Jade Tree LP but before their horrifyingly bad major label debut), and we were kinda high and elated on the good times. Since it was an all-ages matinee show, we still had time to swing through the record store before we headed back to St. Cloud. My friend (actually, my St. Cloud roommate I've alluded to a couple times thus far) knew one of the guys working, and was chatting him up about the show and about whatever else while I thumbed through used CDs. My turntable had recently bit the dust, and so it was all CDs for me at that point.
My friend mentioned to the employee where we had just been, and the employee was excited to throw on an LP recently received at the store of an Explosion member's side-project (I don't recall the name). Though a 12" record, the whole thing was actually just an EP, and was over quickly, as quickly as it took for the guy to explain what we were listening to. Not having noticed that I didn't approach until the song selection had changed, I went up and asked if they had any copies of what was currently playing. Deurr. The one dude was crazy excited, all "I told you so! I told you if we put this on someone would want a copy!" to his coworker, and procured for me a CD copy of Misery Loves Company by the Freeze. In hindsight, yeah, I woulda been fine just buying that, but I wanted the Explosion side-project thing. I explained that to the guy working, who was disheartened, but dutifully procured the 12" record I requested. "Oh no," I explained, "I actually wanted it on CD?" Sorry. Vinyl only.
I was embarrassed, and we left. AND THAT'S THAT STORY!
THE ERGS! - Dorkrockcorkrod - [2005, Don Giovanni Records]
I used to go to comic conventions a lot more often. I'd get a table in artist's alley, rent a hotel, buy plane tickets, the works. Lately, however, I haven't been able to scrape together the funds to do such a thing, which is especially disheartening now that I actually have BOOKS I can sell, and am aware of more indie-friendly cons where people who would potentially be actually interested in my work would be. Previously I'd just sold the one book I had out at the time and maybe a shirt or something at a bigger, more mainstream superhero-centric convention. Not a match made in heaven.
The problem with not presenting my work at a convention that would more likely cater to my potential (or existing) fans or readers was that, every time I'd go to a con out of town, people would come to see just me. And I mean, like, JUST me. I was the only cartoonist they ever liked. Which, sure, that's flattering, but it's uncomfortable to think that someone dropped thirty bucks for admission to some huge convention that, apart from me, doesn't actually interest them at all, and now the onus falls on me to give them their thirty dollars worth of, what, companionship? They'd often just linger around my table, all of us super awkward. Seriously, this happened at every con I went to back then. It was kind of a bummer.
So my solution was, when traveling out of town to conventions, to try and get in touch with some locals and set up a punk show the same weekend so my fans who were into punk rock but were otherwise not big on comics could just come out to a show instead and be awkward around me in an environment where I could at least get drunk first.
One such convention and accompanying show was New York Comic Con in, you guessed it, New York City. I'd gotten in touch with Frank from the Unlovables who helped me (read: did 100% of the work) get a venue and put the show together (honestly, I just suggested the lineup and drew the flyer). It was the Ergs, the Steinways, the Unlovables, the Measure [SA], and Short Attention. And it was so awesome, all the bands were just killer. The Ergs fucking DESTROYED IT at the end. All these people crammed into the tiniest Brooklyn basement, everyone singing along, everyone moving. Really fucking great. I had such a blast.
However, it seems NYC is not an all-ages-friendly city. It was super important to me, for the purposes of sitting at a table of my own merch, that the show be all-ages because, you know, that matters, that's a big deal. I don't think people should be turned away from a punk show because they're not old enough to drink, I think that's total horseshit and I've missed out on too many awesome shows myself to ever wish to be implicit in a 21+ booking. ALSO, let's be real, I drew comics on the internet. My fans weren't all drinking age. I don't know, it's not a big deal for everyone, but it's always been a big deal to me, I don't think 21+ shows should be a thing and so I didn't want to have any part in booking one or presenting at one.
Unfortunately, like I said, NYC doesn't give a shit about punk rock ethics or whatever, and they, at least at the time, weren't gonna allow any all-ages show nonsense. As much as I pushed for it, the show being all-ages was off the table, totally out of the question, it was 21+ or nothing. Okay, fine, I guess. But, at that point, I didn't wanna have a merch table there anymore. And, seriously, not in a crybaby "I didn't get my way so I'm gonna take my toys and go home" way, not like that. But just, as I said, most of my fans back then were under 21, it wouldn't have been worth carrying a big box of shit on the subway all the way from Manhattan for nothing. So, no big. I'll still go, but, just, I won't set up a merch table.
And, let's be real, it's weird for me to be at a show selling merch not related to the bands on stage, right? Doing so was an idea put into my head by a friend of mine who would book shows around Texas and who insisted it wasn't weird at all, but, come on, it's a LITTLE weird. I always felt so, anyhow, and only ever did this for about a year before scrapping the whole concept of selling my shit at shows altogether. Yes, it's entirely possible that I'm just fucking nuts.
So I wasn't gonna have my table there anymore, opting instead to just be at the con and deal with the thirty-dollar-weirdness. I said as much on my website. Now, I don't THINK that I was putting down Frank and the effort he put into booking the show. I still did the flyer, I still plugged it, I still WENT. Frank himself didn't seem particularly peeved by my deciding not to sell merch at the show. In fact, I talked to him a bit, thanked him for putting on the show and all that, and he seemed like nothing short of the nicest man alive. Cool. But one person from one of the bands was SO. PISSED. They wrote me a very angry email saying that I was a dick for shit-talking the show after Frank had put so much work into it, that I was ungrateful and wishy-washy and was just all around a piece of shit. I tried apologizing for the miscommunication and clarifying my actual point, but it was too late. They hated me.
This is a person in a not-irrelevant band. Someone who shares a lot of mutual friends and fans as me. Someone whose band I LIKED. Someone who I wanted nothing more than to be cool with. They wouldn't talk to me at the show. Their final, furious email was the last correspondence we had with one another. I can't even listen to their band anymore, it just makes me think of the whole uncomfortable situation.
Sometimes these things happen, someone gets pissed at me or we get into a fight, and my assumption is just that this is over, this is awkward forever. I'm dead to this person. But I sometimes wonder, really, do you think they even still really care? The odds are immense that they don't even remember who I am, or that there was ever any beef to begin with. Is the feud all in my head?
But then I think, if I'm still thinking about it, if I still think about the conflict when I'm reminded of their band's existence and my chest feels tight and I get short of breath, why wouldn't they still harbor some negative feelings as well? Shit, THEY were the ones who were pissed off in the first place!
Anyhow. This person in question isn't in the Ergs. As far as I know, none of the Ergs hate me. But, honestly, who the fuck even knows at this point.
EXPLODING HEARTS - Guitar Romantic - [2002, Dirtnap Records]
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper, three of the biggest rock acts around in 1959, shockingly and tragically all died together when their plane fell from the sky above Iowa. The Big Bopper wasn't even supposed to be on the flight, but their tour up to that point, which consisted of cruising around in a bus with no heat in the upper midwest in January, had him with the flu. Waylon Jennings, who was playing bass for all three acts on that tour and who actually had a ticket for the flight, graciously traded his spot for the Big Bopper's seat on the bus. Holly, upon learning Waylon wouldn't be flying with him, jokingly chided his tour mate, "I hope your bus freezes up," to which Waylon replied, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes."
Rock and roll is filled with bizarre and tragic deaths. Sid murdering Nancy. Kurt Cobain blowing his brains out in a shed at the height of his band's popularity. The horrifying case of Great White playing a Rhode Island show where their pyrotechnics caught the venue's soundproofing on fire, causing what was effectively napalm to rain down from the ceiling, killing a hundred people. Can you imagine? Going out on a Thursday night to have fun at a rock show and ending up burning alive under a storm of liquid fire? Terrifying.
But death affects us all. Obviously. It's the one constant, the one inescapable factor in all our lives, that they will eventually end. For some of us, unfortunately, that end can come early, and in a tragic way.
I had a friend who died young and tragically, after just having graduated high school in the small farm town of Melrose, Minnesota.
There is a romanticism about life in a small town in America that I feel, from experience, is beyond misinformed. All these country songs about dirt roads and simple, salt-of-the-earth folk just livin' their lives, yeehaw and all that... I went to three different high schools: One in a small, farm town, one in the suburbs, and one in a kind of typical medium-large midwestern city. You know what teenagers do in small towns? Drugs. Like, seriously, a ton of drugs. More So than in the suburbs, more so than in the city. And by a significant margin. Those pickup trucks on those dirt roads are full of teenagers smoking pot, drinking beer, the works.
And, you know, there is a certain type of person that doesn't fare well in such an environment. My friend just succumbed to that world of drugs. His parents were apparently somewhat wealthy, but died when he was young, and he was slated to inherit some insane amount of money upon turning 21. Of course, as is often the case in such a scenario, that knowledge that he'd eventually come into money no matter what took from him any desire to, you know, TRY and stuff when it came to life. But then, I guess we were all kinda fuck-ups, right? This guy, though, he went off the rails. From doing drugs to selling them, from weed to crack, he kept going and going, always fucking with crazier and harder stuff than before, seemingly fueled by the knowledge that, eventually, his pay day would come. There was a contract and everything.
He had a girlfriend, by the way, through all this. Even after he'd descended into full-on junkie status, he was dating for real one of the hottest girls in the entire school by a long shot. And fortunately so, because she was the one who finally got him to lay off the drugs. She got him clean and even got him to start applying for jobs. Early one morning he left his house in Melrose and hit the road, heading into St. Cloud where he had a job interview at Best Buy. He didn't make it, instead hitting a parked semi truck on the side of the road. His body was thrown clear of the accident. He spent a couple days in a coma, and finally died.
People blamed drugs. For the crash, I mean, people were very callously, "Oh, he was probably high." These fucking farm kids, these little rednecks that didn't know anything about anything, casting their judgement. I was so mad. Fuck them.
A year later another friend of mine from Melrose died in a car accident. We'd spent an entire Summer driving around in his car, listening to music, talking about girls. He was sort of this self-appointed mentor of mine in a funny way. We were friends, yeah, but he saw some sort of untapped potential in me that I was always too scared to meet. He thought it was cool that I was into drawing comics and that I listened to "weird music" (he pretty much exclusively listened to rap) and gave me advice and encouragement on girls. We got high and drove around or we sat in his room and played Twisted Metal 2 on his PlayStation. His father was the chief of police in Melrose, but was actually a really cool guy. When his family learned I was leaving town for Duluth after the end of tenth grade, they legitimately offered to let me come live with them. Really great people.
The following Winter he was driving his little red car on the New Munich overpass. A semi truck was approaching from the opposite direction, and he judged that he could turn left in front of it and still make it to the highway. And I'm sure he could have, had the road not been slick with ice. The truck hit him, and he died there in his car. Worst of all, as his father was the chief of police, his father was the first one at the scene. Imagine that, pulling up to an accident and slowly realizing the mangled car you see on the road belongs to your son.
Death. There's no escaping it. The Exploding Hearts had so much potential by the end. In their short career as a band they'd revamped a stagnant genre, that 70s glammy power pop thing, and breathed new life into it with the release of Guitar Romantic, a gorgeous and flawless album. They headed out on tour, no doubt to become one of the bigger punk bands around, and then, tragically, crashed their van on the highway. All but one of them died.
Life is hard sometimes, being around people, having friends. Watching them go, one way or another. It doesn't always seem fair or just. And yet here we are, pushing forward, waiting for our turn. At least we have music. Music helps.
F.Y.P - Toys That Kill - [2000, Recess Records]
F.Y.P was an unusual case for a band in that they kept getting better and better every time they put out a new album. This isn't just uncommon, this is absolutely unheard of. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single other band I can say that about. This helped them become and remain one of my favorite bands all through high school.
Their final moment as a group was an amusing nod to one of my other high school favorites, the Descendents. You know the story, of course, that the Descendents recorded what was to be their final album, entitled ALL, after which a new band was formed from the Descendents' ashes called, you guessed it, ALL. F.Y.P followed suit in that fun "name your new band after the old band's last album" game by breaking up more or less exactly as this album came out and reforming (with a slightly altered lineup) as Toys That Kill. I've always maintained that, in what would certainly prove to be an amusing wrench to throw in the filesharing machine, Toys That Kill should name their next album F.Y.P.
F.Y.P reunited for Chaos in Tejas in Austin a couple years back, and I was lucky enough to attend. God, what an amazing show. Obviously frontman Todd Congelliereellgereiere has been keeping very active ever since the fall of F.Y.P, between fronting Toys That Kill, Underground Railroad to Candyland, Stoned At Heart, and his own solo stuff, it's not like playing live was some lost skill he had to relearn, and so that reunion set fared much, MUCH better than a lot of reunion shows I've seen. F.Y.P smartly themed their set list primarily, it seemed, around songs that had appeared on comps before, which is, in punk rock terms, about as close as you get to a single, making it a sort of live best-of. Alcohol was consumed in copious amounts in preparation for their set, which was still buried a couple bands below the headliners, the Marked Men, which meant that, by the actual show's end, my blood was more alcohol than it was actual blood.
Through this haze I saw this guy that I sort of knew who worked at this label in California, a guy I hadn't seen in about a year or two, but with whom I had hung out at a Shang-A-Lang show in Austin and we drank beers and talked about STUFF, and we'd had a good time and he was a cool guy, so I went up to say hi to him, and, literally, as I approached him, he SHOVED me away from him, like HARD. I staggered back, confused, and he walked away amidst a crew of friends more worth his time.
THE GAIN - Sing Ready Steady Smash [1997, Mighty Recording]
My roommate in St. Cloud, when he was younger, worked one Summer caddying at a golf course in town. As he was never predisposed to drug use or spending any time with Rodney Dangerfield, his tales were sadly not of the calibur any Caddyshack fans would expect to hear from such a gig, but there you have it, a Summer spent in the sun, handing rich people their sticks. We've all had worse jobs.
Back before every kid with a trust fund and a passing interest in punk rock bought a screen printer and started their own company, the go-to guy for stickers in punk rock was Pete Sticker Guy. Hell, he may still be the go-to, I know he's still doing it. His sticker company had once made a claim via an ad in Maximum Rockandroll that you could stick one of his stickers to the inside of a toilet and it wouldn't fade or fall off.
It was with this ad in mind that my then-roommate-to-be took a sticker he'd acquired from the Sticker Guy featuring The Gain and their cool logo, and stuck in right on one of the urinals in the golf club's restroom. Right in the sweet spot, where it wouldn't miss a splash of water or urine, and where Sticker Guy's claims could truly be put to the test.
It remained. His position ended when the school year started back up and, upon the dawn of the next Summer, he went to inspect his handiwork, in no way expecting it to still be there. And yet there it was, right in the center of the urinal, an oval sticker, still inexplicably white, the words "THE GAIN" printed across the center.
GO SAILOR - self titled - [1996, Lookout! Records]
Cuddlecore, I think they called it. Go Sailor was another band like Cub that played kinda pretty, jangly pop tunes. Except, where Cub would often delve into kinda strange, almost experimental stuff here and there, Go Sailor were perfectly content just singing these pretty songs about love. Nothing wrong with that. Plus, brownie points and GLBT cred for being a female-fronted band that sang about being in love with other females. Their biggest claim to fame, I think, was having one of their songs over the opening credits of But I'm a Cheerleader. This album is terrific.
GOOD LUCK - Into Lake Griffy - [2009, No Idea Records]
It's a running joke amongst fans of punk music that technical skill is not only not required to start a punk band, it's frowned upon. The Ramones would supposedly stop practicing for a couple months leading up to a tour so they'd sound good and sloppy at their live shows. And of course, we'll all point to a group like Metallica, whose musicianship is nearly unmatched in all rock music, but who haven't put out a listenable album in like twenty years.
And yet, when all the ingredients are there: The technical skill, the quality songwriting, and that Hip Punk Rock Sound that's makin' it happen... We are left with something extraordinary.
Good Luck are breathtaking in their beauty. Their albums are modern masterpieces, the things you listen to and just know, in twenty years, will still sound as fresh and exciting as the day they were recorded.
Admittedly, upon first listen, I didn't know what to make of this band. Ginger, one of the group's two singers and their bassist, had previously played bass and supplied half of the vocals to a group called One Reason. One Reason were also extraordinary, blurring the lines between punk and hardcore, screaming and singing in a cacophony of beautiful noise. I loved their album. I mean, I still do, you know. But, when Good Luck was billed to me as "Ginger from One Reason's new band," I have to admit I was expecting something louder, something screamier. I guess I just wanted another One Reason album.
And this certainly isn't that. Where One Reason could, at times, pass as anarcho punk or something like it, Good Luck sounds more like a couple kids sitting around in their sparse home reading poetry and listening to old Weakerthans records on repeat. They sound like a living room band, a band who play to a group of close friends, everyone clad in jorts, trying to keep their ten thousand dogs out of the room while the band is playing. They're modern and nostalgic at the same time. Great lyrics, great melodies, great instrumentation... This is the real deal. Good Luck are one of the best bands to come out of punk rock in the past decade, but also quite probably one of the best bands to come out of punk rock ever.
GREEN DAY - Kerplunk - [1992, Lookout! Records]
Green Day first broke huge when I was like twelve years old and just on the cusp of being able to want to listen to dark, scary rock music. It's funny to think of it as that now, "dark and scary," but, to a child that young, songs about suicide bombing your enemies or being locked up in an attic are pretty goddamn dark, especially when you're used to Simon & Garfunkel. But the singles on Dookie couldn't help but creep into my head, however slowly, and, once Insomniac came out, I was ready. I was hooked.
Andover, Minnesota, a suburb just outside of Minneapolis. I'd walk to my friend's house across the street. He played guitar, I played bass, and we'd sit in his basement playing Green Day songs in our "band." Our band name changed every week. We'd draw new logos and album covers. But, you know, we were kids, we were playing. We weren't gonna get a gig at a local coffee shop let alone put out an album. Who wants to hear a couple suburban kids in their basement playing Green Day covers?
Sometimes I think about what it must have been like to be older. Maybe ten years older than I am, and to have already been into punk in the early 90s. Picture whatever club in your town is your favorite. For me, here in San Antonio, it's the Ten Eleven. Now picture an average show, or even a big show. And now picture if just some random band, doesn't really matter who, all of a sudden has a #1 song on the radio and a video looping constantly on MTV, and all of a sudden you can't even get into your favorite club because nine thousand new people in your town decided they were into punk rock too. And they wanted to slam dance like they saw on TV, and do cool stage dives like they saw on TV. They wanted to be PUNX like they'd read about in that Rolling Stone article all about the "next big thing." You can't begrudge a band their success, of course, but goddamn that must have been a fucking nightmare. The birth of pop punk as a mainstream trend.
The only thing I can think of that would be worse would be a few years later when ska broke, and all of a sudden you couldn't go to any show without a fucking SKA BAND playing. Gross.
GROOVIE GHOULIES - Re-Animation Festival - [1997, Lookout! Records]
Hanging out in the coffee shop I more or less lived at in St. Cloud once, a girl I barely knew at all invited me to come with her to San Francisco.
She'd had a tumultuous relationship with a friend some time before, where they were in constant competition with one another, primarily, it seemed, over guys, and eventually had a crazy falling out. After whatever amount of time had passed, her ex-friend invited her to accompany her on a trip to San Francisco so they could rekindle their friendship. I was invited along as a safety net, someone the St. Cloud girl could go off and hang out with instead if this friendship rekindling didn't pan out.
Of course, it ended up panning out quite well, the two girls got along famously, as though not a day had passed since they'd last hung out, and I was left to wander the streets of San Francisco alone.
My roommate back in St. Cloud knew the guy who put out the first American Steel record, and so he got the two of us in touch with one another as a means of getting me something fun to do. I took the BART out to his apartment and we drove in his car about an hour outside of the city to go see the Groovie Ghoulies play a rec center out in the middle of nowhere with Lucky Strike and a couple other openers I don't remember at all.
I guess, if you've read this far, you know I'm a bit of an awkward person. Not the extroverted social butterfly one would want to accompany them for an hour's car ride out to the middle of nowhere. But, alas, this kind gentleman who brought me out to that show didn't know that going into it, and was treated to an hour's worth of intensely awkward, stilted conversation the whole drive out. At the show itself, we didn't much talk to each other (he knew people at the show who were actually, you know, FRIENDLY, while I sat by myself in the back and was just, you know, a weirdo). I don't think we exchanged a single word on the drive back.
GUNMOLL - Board of Rejection - [2004, No Idea Records]
Sure, this can count as pop punk, why the hell not? No Idea Records out of Gainesville, through they and their followers' obsession with Hot Water Music, kinda bolstered the growth of a distinct "No Idea Sound," giving overweight, bearded white dudes a scene all their own. As an overweight, bearded white dude, it's hard to be angry about such a thing, even if I do think the formula is a bit played-out at this point. Plus that beardpunk credo of "Shirts off, dudes on" always rubbed me the wrong way, seeming a bit, if unintentionally, misogynistic. I'd prefer we all became gentlemanpunks: "Shirts on, dudes off, pinkies out."
Still, no genre is without its standouts, and Gunmoll are nothing if not an exemplary example of beardpunk, that No Idea Sound, done to perfection. You'll note the gruff, growly vocals, the clean production. You'll note the band has no fear of jamming into a slow song here and there, or of tossing a jammy breakdown into an otherwise fast song. But, above all, you'll note an extraordinary competence in singer Mike Hale's ability to craft just a fucking great melody. The opening track, "Less Than You Hoped For," is nothing short of one of the best punk songs ever written, and I say that with no intent of hyperbole. This album is killer, and it's killer within a subgenre that, like I said, I'm not always on board for. But, when something works, fuck it, it works. This works.
AWESOME POP PUNK ALBUMS
by Mitch Clem
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