4 posts tagged “punk”

One of the cool things about Vox in particular and blogging in general is the folks you run into that you might not have otherwise. Skip.town is one of those people. She found a post I made about some song and commented and I started reading her feed as well. It's really good stuff. Today she posted a pretty great song by The Songbirds but referenced this song by Crimpshrine. It's called "Summertime" and like everything else I post here it's so entirely filled with memories and emotions for me I can barely describe it.

I don't recall if I heard Crimpshrine first on a comp or on their first Lookout! 7" but they instantly became the epitome of East Bay Punk Rock to me. Even more so than Operation Ivy who I could also listen to non stop if required to do so. The wikipedia article on them is incredibly light for a band who I kinda think there would never have been a Green Day without. This was also my first introduction to Aaron Cometbus (and his delicious handwriting) which inspired a hell of a lot of my own graphic design projects later on, most notably of which is probably The Bad Brains Omega Sessions. Funny how small a world this all shapes out to be, isn't it?

I love Big Black. I've loved Big Black ever since the first time I put Atomizer on my record player, which was sometime in the late 80s. In fact, I still have that same LP (though have a new record player with which to play it) and it's just as bad ass. A friend from college got a Songs About Fucking tattoo and I used to quietly snicker about it, but in retrospect of all the band tattoos that people got, a Big Black one isn't a bad one to have ended up with. I was bummed when they broke up but then we never would have gotten Rapeman or Shellac so it all worked out in the end.

Not too long ago I picked up Rich Man's Eight Track just to have all those songs together in one place. It includes one song, which I hadn't heard in years and years, and is now totally burned into my head and on massive repeat on my iPod. That song, is 'Heart Beat' and it's provided here for your listening enjoyment.

I've had this vox blog for a while and not really known how to use it or what to do with it considering I already have a blog that I use all the time. Since I've been listening to more and more music recently I decided that this might be a good place to showcase some of the stuff I'm listening too way too loud these days without worrying about all the issues that go along with posting MP3s on my own site. So here we go, don't know how often I'm going to post but I'll try and be somewhat regular with it.

For the first song of this new direction, I'm picking WAX's "Settle Down." WAX is one of those bands that I never listened to and not for any good reason. I first heard them when Thirteen Unlucky Numbers came out and I picked that album up for the one song I liked on it, "California." It's a great song for sure, but I don't know why I never listened to the rest of the album. Recently I threw it on my iPod and a few of the songs have popped up and caught my attention. This one especially. Of course now I really like the album and I'm bummed I didn't listen to it more before, but that's the way it goes sometimes I suppose. Anyway, here's "Settle Down" - enjoy.