I love making kitschy mixes and what better an opportunity than Halloween. It was unsurprisingly easy and fun to make so hopefully you have as good a time listening to it as I did making it. Enjoy!
I've always wondered why this band never got more recognition. Coming out of the South Bay in the same era as Black Flag, Descendents, Minutemen, etc., this band had a style a little different than what those other bands were doing but in a good way. They blended slower melodic guitar parts with straight punk and made it sound great. "We Don't Need Freedom" is probably their most well known song and the lyrics play on the idea that freedom in this country only causes more problems. I saw an interview with Henry Rollins where he says that this is one of his favorite songs and that Saccharine Trust was one of his favorite bands. Also, to make this record even more rad, Mike Watt produced it.
My girlfriend's dad ("Earl Liberty" while he was in the band) played bass on this record and actually does the "Monday Night Football" part in the Black Flag song TV Party. He left Saccharine Trust after this record to join Circle Jerks. He has some crazy stories to say the least. He has the bands logo tattooed on his arm (the cross making a T and a snake wrapped around it making an S). He was telling me that he got it with Henry Rollins. They were sitting at some house and they decided to get their bands logo's tattooed on their arms. So, Henry got the Black Flag bars and "Earl" got the cross and the snake. He was telling me about one night when he was at a Black Flag show at a house party and ended up in the hospital. I'll post what he said in an interview in 1982 after it happened: "This party with Black Flag in Carson. Cops came and broke it up. One of the cops asked me if I knew the girls whose house it was, went out front, tried to look for her. Cops out front told me to go home. My ride was in the backyard. One cop put a stick in my stomach. The two other cops came up and started pulling out their night sticks, so I ran for it. It was a dead end street. I jumped a brick wall and hit a fence behind that, and fell 20 feet. Broke my leg. Knocked my teeth out. Opened up a hole in my jaw." He told me he saw Descendents, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, and just about every other great punk band of that era. He also played shows with Minutemen and Black Flag. Awesome.
Along with the record I'm posting a video of "Earl Liberty" playing bass on "Live Fast Die Young" with Circle Jerks in 1984. I'll also post the TV Party video.
The new record by Groundation "Here I Am" has some differences from its predecessors but is still a phenomenal record. The all white reggae band from Northern California is hands down one of the best reggae bands right now. This record, unlike past Groundation records, has longer songs that go from Dub to Jazz to Reggae. With members that are top of the line musicians (Saxophone player Jason Robinson heads the Jazz program at UC San Diego) and knowledgeable in the history of the genre (Singer Harrison Stafford taught Reggae History at Sonoma State), you know you're getting great music everytime these guys release a record. This record also features members of The Congos and Pablo Moses. I got a chance to see them the other night and it was a seriously genius performance. If you get a chance you should check out a show as well. These guys are not only great musicans but great song writers and great performers. What more could you ask for? Also check out their other records, especially Hebron Gate.
For whatever reason Boyracer kind of reminds me of a british equivalent to Jawbreaker on this record. Even the cover art kind of reminds me of the bay area aesthetic that punk bands like Jawbreaker, Crimpshrine and Green Day were using back in the early nineties. As you probably know by now, around these parts we love Jawbreaker so these are all good things in my world. Although its not out of the question that Boyracer did get some influences from Jawbreaker and their peers I think they are actually a great representation of the quality things about lo-fi independent music at that time. I think a good measuring mark in the history of the band is that "More Songs About Frustration and Self Hate" was released first on Sarah records and then later on Slumberland. I know that both of these labels have a lot in common but the reason I pointed it out is because I always interpreted them as being interested in the same types of music but with a different set of artists. I think the fact that Boyracer are one of the few groups to release records on both labels kind of just illustrates what I was talking about when I said they seem like they really understood what was going on in America at the time from the sound to the aesthetic. There is nothing groundbreaking on "More Songs.." but I think it is one of the better artifacts from the awkward early nineties. Personally, its one of my favorites from the Sarah records catalogue and I think it stands up today just as well as it ever did maybe even better.
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