Use Your Fists

A couple of used acquisitions this past week. Revisiting old punk like this is precisely why I want to stick an egg beater in my ear canal whenever some little twerp gets nostalgic for Blink 182.

The 1983 Death Church album from UK Anarcho-punksters Rudimentary Peni was probably the record that really brought the trio together as a complete, cohesive band, and one of the early avatars (along with the similar Crass) of the British hardcore movement of the early 80's. Primarily the brainchild of guitarist, lyricist, and lead singer Nick Blinko, who also drew all of the cover art for his albums (Blinko had spent some time in a mental institution, and his artwork was often the result of the times when we wasn't taking his medication), the music may herald from the Orange County California hardcore sound, but there is something still so intrinsically British about Peni's sound. Something they just have to touch once and make it their own.

Radio Schizo by Rudimentary Peni

(m4a file, available for 7 days)

Purchase this CD here.

And I suppose these Long Beach, California natives The Humpers aren't so much "old punk" as revisiting old punk themselves -- but in a good way (and there is a difference). Their first full-length 1993 album Postively Sick On 4th St. is a throwback to the sleazy good fun of the Dead Boys and Heartbreakers era of punk, and knit together with a tightness that isn't always necessary in punk, but welcome as hell when it's done so deliciously.

Murder City Revolution by The Humpers

(m4a file, available for 7 days)

Purchase this CD here.

Not to mention that I lucked out in also getting The Humpers 6-track EP from the 10" vinyl The Dionysus Years, which includes murkier productions of Positively's "Insect Liberation" and "Cops And Robbers". Nice to finally have so much Humpers, when all I've have since the mid 1990's was a little 7" single that I bought at their show, which by the way was probably the last ever concert I ever saw at the legendary old King's Head Inn in Norfolk (not counting The Candysnatchers, since I was in the parking lot the entire time that night). I think I even have that entire night written down in one of my old journals. I should find that and reprint it. If I'm not too horrified by my own youthfully florid prose from that time.

Black Cats by The Humpers

(m4a file, available for 7 days)

Purchase this CD here.

And now for something relatively different, yet probably punker than anything I have bought in the last few weeks. Yes, that legendary jazz pianist who once performed for President Carter at the White House -- Cecil Taylor and his 1966 release Unit Structures, which compiles some of his most noted free jazz works from the 1950's through 60's. Also includes Eddie Gale Stevens Jr on trumpet, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ken McIntyre on alto sax, oboe, and bass clarinet, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva on bass, and Andrew Cyrille on drums.

Steps by Cecil Taylor

(m4a file, available for 7 days)

Purchase this CD here.