Review Archive: Various Artists

Better Read than Dead  

This is a compilation to benefit ararchic press/records AK Press. I'm not going to talk about anarchy, AK Press, or how (or why) Epitaph fits in to all this; I'm here to review the music. And it's a pretty wide assortment: some punk (Chocolate), speed metal/thrash noise (Napalm Death), rock (Wayne Kramer), pop-punk (Zoinks!, J Church), blues (Gary Floyd Band), crap (Tribes of Neurot), and an apparantly misplaced Abba cover (Bjorn Baby Bjorn). There's pretty much something here for everyone — which means that there's a damn good chance that there's stuff here you won't like, too (like the metal, noise, and Snuff's unnecessary cover of "I Can See Clearly Now"). Cain, NOFX, Hooton 3 Car, Larry Byrrds, and the aforementioned Zoinks and J Church make this a decent compilation.

Bored Generation  

I hate the stupid Gen-X/slacker stereotype art on the cover, but the title is supposed to be a play on words: in addition to almost an hour of music (including a good Black Flag/Circle Jerks medly by Pennywise, and new songs from NOFX and Rancid), you CD-ROM-equipped computer geeks also get skate/snow/surfboard videos from Transworld. The rest of the songs include previously-released songs from The Offspring (damn, I hate his voice!), Daredevils, Beastie Boys, Helmet, and Primus. It's not all punk/alt rock: Souls of Mischief and Casual provide some rap — good stuff, too, with more of an old-school style, not the R&B (rap & bullshit) popular with the kids today.

A good follow-up to the original, California Skaquake 2: The Aftershock is basically divided into two parts: the first half is pretty much pure ska, while the second half is composed of ska-hybrid bands. Normally, I would've guessed that the ska-core songs would be my favorites, but there's no beating the classic ska found here! Chico & the Hornets serve up a damn tasty old-school flavored instrumental, Venice Shoreline Chris does a rad acoustic song, and Undercover S.K.A. and Checkmate also contribute some real winners. And if ska-core is what you like, Janitors Against Apartheid, Out of Order, and The Hippos will cover you. It's obvious that Cali's got some great bands; if you're not on the West coast, get this, hit play and stand in a doorway!

It's become apparent to me that Jon Clark (who runs Ringing Ear) and I have very similar taste in music. Either that or he's paying me off to give good reviews for everything he sends me...but don't bet on that. Flex Your Specs is an 11 song (12 if you count the hidden Bugjuice track) sampler of RER bands, including Sinkhole, Doc Hopper, New Sweet Breath, and Bender. There's no way to go wrong for this $3 (postpaid!) disc.

Give 'em the Boot  

Tim Armstrong and Brett Gurewitz have started a new record label focusing on ska and '77 style punk (a pretty good combination), and this compilation is the first release. The CD is made up of upcoming Hellcat bands, plus some bands from Epitaph, Moon, and others, too; most of the songs are unreleased or rare cuts. But this is a really good compilation, with some really great bands: The Skatalites, Rancid, Hepcat (SO fuckin' smooth!), Swingin' Utters, The Silencers (ska band including Rancid's Tim & Lars — a GREAT song, too), and more (20 in all). A good mix of punk and ska, but the classic-ska bands rule this comp.

Life in the Fat Lane  

Fat Music Vol. IV: Life in the Fat Lane is one of those sampler compilation CDs that have a bunch of Fat Wreck bands on it doing a song from their most recent album. (The exception of Avail, whose track "Taken" is previosly unreleased.) Needless to say (so why say it?), if you dig on Fat Wreck bands, you'll dig on this CD. Among the "Fat band" pop-punk contributors are Lagwagon, No Use for a Name, Snuff, the Ataris, and of course NOFX. Mad Caddies add some horns to the album, Sick of it All toss in some hardcore, Swingin' Utters play one of their Pogues-y tunes, which help mix up the CD a bit. It was also good to hear Tilt and Screeching Weasel here, and the cover of "My Favorite Things" (with Bad Religion-style intro) by Me First & The Gimme Gimmes was pretty cool, too.

Music From and Inspired by Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3

Love and Affection: Ska in the Key of Love  

This compilation brings together various ska bands performing love-related songs...might sound kind of cheesy, but it's good. It starts off a little weak with an okay song (nothing really groundbreaking or anything) by the Screaming Orgasms, but quickly pulls itself together on track 2: a cool, mellow cover of the Toasters' "Thrill Me Up" by (Venice Shoreline) Chris Murray. Most of this comp is very strong, assembling some pretty big names in ska: Bim Skala Bim, Skinnerbox, the Toasters, and the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble. Other standouts include offerings by the Articles, the Porkers, and Critical Mass' version of Paul Simon's "Cecilia". Not every song is great (in my opinion), but with 18 tracks to choose from (plus Bim Skala Bim and Chris Murray each toss in a dub version of their song) there's good stuff here.

More Bounce to the Ounce  

Usually compilations have about 75% worth of listenable songs on them (at best), filled in with a lot of crap. More Bounce to the Ounce, a double-CD, bumps the amount of good stuff way up: 39 songs by (mainly) pop-punk bands (Lookout and otherwise), and only one I don't like. Put together by Joe King, it has some of the best bands of the genre: The Queers, Mr. T Experience, Parasites, Sicko, Doc Hopper, The Hi-Fives, Sinkhole, The Lillingtons (who sound like the Smoking Popes) -- 22 bands in all. And -- typical of compilations -- there are a handful of covers: Pink Lincolns do a Black Flag medley, cub does Sicko's "FB Song", The Muffs do a decent version of "No Action" (but it can't hold a candle to Elvis' original), the Queers do justice to "The Kids are Alright", The Smugglers cover a Brady Bunch tune (really!), and there are a few others, too. Quite a rad compilation.

Twenty-one bands from New York make up this new Moon Records compilation, and it shows NYC's strong foothold in the ska scene. Although not quite as diverse as some other comps (the bands mainly play traditional, and third-wave, and dub), I for one prefer "real" ska over ska-core for the most part, anyway. Not to say that everything on this is a gem; there are a couple snoozers. Edna's Goldfish play typical ska style that is so mediocre it hurts; The Radiation Kings sloooow style didn't do much for me, either. But don't hold that against New York Beat — there are some fantastic stuff from NYC's best here: The Moon Ska Stompers' "2-Tone Army" instrumental (which you might recognize from a show on Nickelodeon), The Stubborn All-Stars, great live tracks from The Scofflaws and Mephiskapheles, Skinnerbox, Red Rube, and (of course) The Toasters. This is not only a great comp of NYC ska, but ska in general.

Nihon Ska Dansu, Land of the Rising Ska  

This is a compliation of the best of Japanese ska featuring 12 bands, and all your bases are covered as far as genres go: there's modern ska, traditional ska, ska-punk. All are good (they wouldn't be Japan's best for nothing), but let me get the criticism out of the way now: on some tracks it's painfully obvious that English is their second language. Here's one lyrical sample: "Let's happy go lucky, enjoy yourself for party tonight. Where is girl? Come on let's do it! There is not your mom." Personally, I think I'd like it better if more of them sang in Japanese (some do), but you can't really understand it unless you follow the lyric sheet, anyway. On a musical level, they're all good: Young Punch and Duck Missile have a heavy Op Ivy influence; Oi Skall Mates and Fruity do some cool instrumentals; and Blue Beat Players have a great old school style. Nothing totally amazing, but good stuff overall.

Short Music for Short People   

I'm surprised an album like this hasn't been done already: Short Music for Short People is a compilation of 101 punk bands playing 30-second songs. And one thing I've learned from listening to this is that writing a good 30-second song is not an easy task (it's probably equivalent to writing a good short story). Some songs sound like they're longer songs that have been cut 2 or 3 minutes short; others are kinda fun and goofy tunes. I'm not saying they're bad (and even if they were, wait 30 seconds and it'll be over), but some bands on this CD (which is pretty cheap, too) are much better at packing a complete song into half a minute.
      Just a few of the 101 bands here: Bad Religion, Swingin' Utters, MTX, Samiam, All, 7 Seconds, Anti-Flag, the Dickies, and Down by Law. There are some here that don't necessarily fit the pop-punk mold as well like Dance Hall Crashers, Gwar, and Spazz; plus there are some "classic" punk shorts by Descendents, Circle Jerks, and Black Flag. A must have for those with extremely short attention spans.

Ska United - A Global Ska Sampler  

The title pretty much says it all: this is a Moon Ska Records compilation featuring ska bands from all over the world. It also includes various ska flavors, too: third wave, traditional, rocksteady, ska-core. Despite a couple lame/mediocre cuts (there's always bound to be some on compilations), there are a lot of great stuff here, including contributions from Dr. Ring Ding (Germany), The Busters (Germany, doing a rousing live version of "Summertime"), The Porkers (Australia), Rude Bones (Japan), and (of course) The Toasters (USA). England's Bad Manners' track is an interesting but unfulfilling remix of "That'll Do Nicely", but there's an unlisted live version of "Sally Brown" which makes up for that. You'll also hear one of the last songs recorded by Judge Dread before his recent death. There are also some pretty interesting cuts as well: Rocking Time does a Japanese rocksteady tune, Spain's Dr. Calypso does a Skunky song (and proves that you don't need to understand the lyrics to enjoy a song), and Russia's Spitfire does a quite un-ska version of Abba's "Mama Mia" (you figure out how that one ended up here).

(You're Only as Good as) The Last Great Thing You Did  

The Last Great Thing You Did is a sampler CD that has songs from all (?) of Lookout's releases over 1997. As you can guess, there's a lot of great stuff here: The Queers, Hi-Fives, MTX, Pinhead Gunpowder, Avail, Phantom Surfers, Parasites — 21 bands and 23 songs in all! And there's bound to be a couple you don't know. Uranium 9 Volt, Bomb Bassets, and Auntie Christ were new to me and sounded pretty darn good.

Victory Style  

A compilation of Victory bands. A few songs were okay, but most are your typical angry, screaming, testosterone-filled hardcore--except Hi Fi & the Roadburners' song, which was a nice change of pace.