The Rockers on Cheap Rewards Records

I love when a band is really going for it. When they completely commit to a highly produced, labored over version of their style it can result in everything from Keep it Like a Secret to Before Today. This reissue from The Rockers was originally released in 1977 and were clearly looking to nail this to charts next to Foreigner and Boston in the Top 40 of the late ‘70s.

A-Side’s “I Want To Tell You" comes off like a weird Fleetwood mac punk sound, lots of harmony, but REALLY produced. They get a little jump in this chord change and the bassline is crazily off on its own in the way where he knows what he's doing a little too much, looking for ways to free jazz a near solo between verses. All around crazy skill level. Bass lines flying up the fretboard in it’s insanely exhausting way. Like Dwight Twilley but really aware of where they want to end up. Poppy as hell, a sugar bomb that is even better since no one has ever heard this. "Comeback" has a warbly electric start that introduces a bunch of sitar sounding guitars. The lead vocal is really enthusiastic about getting this person to come back and he knows he's good trying to sound super sexy with shades of Mike Rep. It turns into a sunday '70s summer jam, the next verse bringing in chunky muted distortion. It's over the top in a glam way but aiming for the very top of the pops. Like Donnie and Joe Emerson covered in sincerity. A CCR or Fogerty sound straight from the era, a real lost gem that will leave you wondering how these guys got this sound, a studio mystery lost to the ages.

A-Side (another one, well they weren’t wrong, how do you decide on the better side?) "Don't leave me tonight" has a faster Cars doubled up guitar sound. A hyper tempo with those random changes with such a clean sound in pure bubblegum pop, no part of the garage here, they go straight for the arena. You can't imagine a band with one single starting out would go right to this place. Reminding me of the Resonars or Adam Widener, I hope those guys check this out, it gets almost psych in how blindingly gleaming and sparkly it is. How they crafted this stuff informed by the radio of the '70s and then luck or environment never managed to get more than a few hundred of these out there.
"Understanding" goes right for the typical themes, nothing new there, baby, losing or getting someone back, its all in this instrumentation. More of that Cars slightly manic power pop sound. John Rock on vocals really nails this over the top chorus. You can almost see them choreographing their stage show and getting pyrotechnics involved from the beginning. Like this Zig Zags video.

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Legionaire's Disease Band on Cheap Rewards Records

As with any great mythical early punk single, the story behind this is what makes it the insane document you have to hear to believe. Jerry Anomie gets out of prison and sees Iggy Pop play sometime in the late '70s and says 'fuck it, I can do that.' He sells all his furniture and starts the Legionaire's Disease Band playing shows naked at lesbian bars...anywhere that would have them. For a shot to open for the Dead Kennedys at Whiskey a Go-Go they were forced to press this single and after rumors Jerry died before the single even came out, they staged his funeral at a record store...all of this in Texas in the late seventies by the way. A crazy document repressed by Cheap Rewards Records to give people a chance to actually get their hands on this artifact and to even influence another generation of scumbags.

On A-Side's "Rather See You Dead (Than With Wool on Your Head)" I wasn't sure that was an expression while the punk feedback fade rushes in with a high hum. This is working with a range of scuzzy distortions, there's a low end 'chunk chunk' from the bass with a metallic clank of buzzing strings from the guitars here. Perfect drum mic-ing, getting the whole range of this kit from the thuds to that delicate high hat stuff, all separated without losing any of this raw scrappy feel. There's a cranky haphazard solo and Jerry on lead is laying into Baaaa aa aa! Baa aa aa! over and over with no pop filter on this mic. This is one take in the middle of the night when the studio was cheap but make no mistake his weird snarling rage is the thing that makes this record. He's belching out that sheep sound like some otherworldly vomit, peaking the mic all over the place. The sound of this thing warbles in and out subtly thanks to a recycled tape but that just makes this that much more raw and anchored in this time. A final restrained baaaaa aa aa and the grind to a halt. I'm guessing he wants this guy dead more than walking around with a hat? Definitely made that up and of course that just makes this better.

"Downtown" has more scuzzy guitar just blowing through huge chords and these drums...whoever set up the session new what they were doing and got these guys to sound pretty freaking great. Jerry had to have been influenced by the Sex Pistols but he can pull off that serious attitude, and snotty delivery. Like that friend who's always attracting trouble, no matter where you go or what you're talking about he's got some story about porno booths or the time he stayed with crust punks in Germany. If that guy isn't in a band he's going to start one. Jerry just started one out of a sheer force of will. There's a reason people still go bonkers over this stuff, maybe even more than jazz record nerds, because it remains a snapshot of a sea change in rock that we'll never get back.

But you can get this from Cheap Rewards Records.

The Hugh Beaumont Experience on Cheap Rewards Records

Hugh Beaumont was the dad in Leave it to Beaver, a show I only barely caught, not by choice, in the days when you'd come home from school and sit in front of whatever happened to be on at the time. Even then it was pretty clear how abnormally normal and happy that world was. Maybe that's why it was successful, an escape from reality like some suburban sci-fi. Around 1981 a couple or bored to shit friends in high school in Fort Worth Texas get together, name themselves The Hugh Beaumont Experience and write an EP of songs in the space of 15 minutes (this of course is a point of pride). They get another friend who had a drum kit (Take note kids, if you are a social outcast, just get a drum kit. The number of drummers who ended up in bands because no one else had a kit or the space is astounding) and rehearse a few times ending up with four hours of studio time (who knows) and pressing 500 (probably the smallest amount the plant would even deal with) to be reissued here from Cheap Rewards Records thirty years later.

It's important to remember that the desire to piss people off with shocking lyrics about chemical weapons has been around forever. Take A-Side's "Zyklon B" which is actually sadly still relevant. You would think this definitely originated in England a few years earlier and no doubt they would have been influenced by that scene. Lead Brad Stiles sounds like Darby Crash, young as hell and eager to take on that English accent and sing about the ills of world war II. (?) Nothing like Nazi's to swing that cultural pendulum back to reality. The mix is really nice on this by the way, super clean for something like this and Brad strikes a balance between snotty, bratty vocals and possibly being actually dangerous. He's taken a lot of notes from that scene overseas (as the next track will make utterly clear) but is wiling to take them the same places with many of the same obstacles being down south in steer country. They didn't exactly love The Pistols when they came acround two years earlier.

"Where'd ya go Sid" This is about Vicious? Perfect. They take on a real crunchy distortion and lay into a slow Ramones sounding riff with heaftier weight to the guitar work. Brad is right in your livingroom looking around for Sid. It's still crazy to me that looser became such a star, a completely talentless harmless groupie became more well known than anyone else in the band. Oh those broken old days when Malcolm thought every member of The Pistols would continue on in side projects. Sid & Nancy then included a young Courtney Love...basically a new Sid. This track is about the world being lost without Sid, maybe this was before his death even when he went AWOL in a rehab clinic when he couldn't get a ticket back to England from NY? I think Malcolm was actually looking for him, when he realized he wasn't finished making a couple last bucks. At least Brad could see the big picture. These are pure, pissed off, teen tracks poking parents and suburbia right in the eye. Thirty three years later the naivety and ham fisted ideals behind this are still important. Nice work gentlemen...and I hope you gave a copy to your history teacher.

I got to hand it to these guys, they definitely found someone who knew their way around a mixing board and on B-Side's "Charity" it makes a crazy difference. There's still the punch of authenticity, these guys are just untrained and smart enough not to care about playing as perfect as the engineer was recording them. Brad's vocals are doubled up, the percussion is clean and the rest is all hog tied in a surprisingly clean package. "Money Means so Much to Me" has a landmark guitar tone that couldn't be duplicated, it's coming from a broken amp in another room, Brad sings with himself back and forth on this one. Being an outsider and not even giving a shit, the very essence of high school punk. I did the same thing with friends at lunch in our Dead Milkmen rip off band about the bullshit of gym and dumb teachers. Kids are the same everywhere. Some of them get their shit together and produce a perfect snapshot of an era like The Hugh Beaumont Experience.

Essential insert looking back on the group with lyrics on the reverse. Like any good reissue this sticks to the original design, going all the way to faithfully reproduce this crazy punk artifact...and for way less than if you had to go track a first press down. I don't know about you but I just want to hear it, I don't care if it's the test pressing from the band or lathe cut last week. Thanks Cheap Rewards.