Future Awesomeness – Part I

Well, hello and welcome!

At this point in the blog it is very likely that you are only here because Blend77 from the mighty “Zen and the Art of Face Punching” told you to swing by and check out the Underdog post. Because, really, I haven’t even told my wife about my little new hobby yet. I figured I would make some posts, change the layout back and forth, and in the meantime slowly learn about all the fancy buttons that they have here. I figured I would post hard to find and out-of-print records and personal favorites from my heydays as a young hardcore kid – which would mostly cover the late 80s and early 90s.

But then Blend decides he wants to be nice (well, he IS nice) and link straight to my new blog, and he promises “future awesomeness” and other such follies. And here I am like the Emperor with no Clothes on – or maybe just a fig leaf of an Underdog post.

Fortunately, it was a slow day at work, so I was already half-way into what I figured would someday become my second post – maybe, if I found the time and felt like it, you know, in a couple of days maybe…
But enough of the fake moping and whining. ^_^

Rather step right up and enjoy:

Future Awesomeness – Part II

Visual Discrimination was a self-proclaimed punk band from Southern California, which may be a bit surprising considering their sound, their appearance and their lyrical content, which all always screamed “straight edge hardcore’ to me. I couldn’t have been all that far off with that impression because Jeff Banks, the guitarist, went on to form “A Chorus of Disapproval”, a band that embodied the militant edge like few others (almost to the point of caricature).

Visual Discrimination’s first release in 1988 was "Step Back and Listen", which also was the first release on the California-based Nemesis label (NEM 001). Nemesis was quite influential in the (straight-edge) hardcore scene on the West Coast in the late 80s and early 90s, and released stuff by A Chorus of Disapproval, Uniform Choice, Vision, and even the first LP and 7” of The Offspring.

“In Vain” was released in 1990 as NEM 13 and was produced by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion fame. I am not sure what magic Brett Gurewitz worked at the knobs, but “In Vain” is a marked improvement over “Step Back and Listen” (particularly the drums on that record were just horrible; but overall everything sounds much crisper and cleaner on “In Vain”, plus the songwriting is much improved here).

The 8 songs on this record are:
crawling / 6ft. under / enough said / vain // money is freedom / potential statistic / inevitable / united blood

The always very poignant Flex discography says about this album:
“Fast & powerful hardcore from California; solid stuff but kind of simple and un-original. Strong Agnostic Front influence, apart from that it's the macho/metal/sXe/NYC hardcore sound with some guitar solos. Still OK. [7]”.

Clearly there are worse things than being compared to Agnostic Front. And indeed, VD sound a lot like a California version of the NYHC sound of that era. The AF comparison is also obviously justified because the last song on this album (if you didn’t guess so already) is a cover of AF’s United Blood.

“In Vain” isn’t earth-shattering, and from what I can tell it also didn’t prove to be particularly influential for future generations of hardcore kids (I’m sure most newer artists would instead rather name-check “A Chorus of Disapproval”). However, as the years go on I feel myself drawn back to my early years of hardcore. In that process I sometimes re-discover things and I am surprised how well they still hold up. And “In Vain” definitely falls into that category. It’s fast and powerful, with great riffs and strong vocals. In short: It kicks ass!

So, it’s still OK.

In Vain

Visual Discrimination’s complete oeuvre was released on one CD as “We got the edge” by Lost and Found Records in 1996. This CD is also out of print, but it might be worth keeping an eye out for, because it is probably easier to find than the original releases (or if you ask nicely, I’ll upload that, too)

Underdog – UPDATE / DISCLAIMER / APOLOGIES:

Yes, the picture in the inaugural Underdog post (below) shows the original artwork for the release of “The Vanishing Point” on Caroline Records.

Yes, as I state in the post I own both a vinyl copy and a CD version of the record with that artwork.

BUT, unfortunately this and many more records sit in my mother’s basement in Germany waiting for the day that I make enough money to rescue them from the always imminent danger of flooding and to reinstate them to them to their righteous glory. When I moved from Germany to the US 8 years ago I could only take a small number of CDs with me and vinyl was of course completely out of the question. At that time I was also more into other genres of music, so somehow “The Vanishing Point” did not make the cut. In the last 3-4 years I have really kicked myself in the butt for this and other similar decisions. Well, but hindsight is 20/20.

So, to make this long story short(er), when I posted this record I wanted to post it with the original artwork, but all I could find were images of the butt-ugly cover with the blue background that was used for the CD reissue (shown here at the top). Until I found this picture from a recent e-bay auction, where a guy sold this LP. So, my apologies to him for stealing his picture for this post. The CD re-issue came out on a different label, so maybe they had to change the cover art, too, otherwise there is no excuse for this kind of “upgrade”. Anyway, if I ever get my hands on the CD again (got to call my mom…) I’ll post better pictures of the artwork here.

UPDATE: As you can see, my mom came through...

And these are the even better looking pictures from the Demos LP released on Far Out Records:

Underdog - Vanishing Point

For the inaugural post on this blog I could not think of a better band and record than Underdog's Vanishing Point. This is by no means charting undiscovered musical territory, as this is one of the few bands that everybody loves (Fugazi might be up there, too). And even the few people who don't LOVE Underdog, certainly respect them for what they meant to late 80s New York hardcore. Underdog are also not a band that is particularly hard to track down on the internet. They have a MySpace page and an official band webpage that doesn't seem to get updated very often, but that has all the biographical info that you could wish for, straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. They also have reformed for several one-off gigs and seem to be playing in the New York area in the summer of 2008.

However, while you can still buy t-shirts and stuff from Revelation Records their records are currently out of print, despite having been reissued in various new packages over the years. And that clearly is a situation that needs to be rectified!

There really isn't much that I can say about this record that hasn't been said before. If you like NYHC, you know this album already. If you still like to get to know NYHC, then you definitely need to have this record. This album has great crunching guitars, strong melody and power, and of course the dominating throaty vocals of Richie Birkenhead, who always gets name checked because of his brief stint with Youth of Today, but who more importantly went on to front Into Another, an equally incredible band that defied categories. Finally, the cover art by Matt Solomon that was an unofficial trademark of the band since their first 7" and "Over the Edge" demo days.

I bought Vanishing Point on a whim when it came out on vinyl (as I bought everything on vinyl). But this is one of only a handful of records that I also had to buy as a CD, because I loved it so much that the vinyl started to show the wear and tear.

This came out in 1989 and it still sounds amazing. If you can get it, buy it!

Oh and yeah, this is how you would have gotten it on the original LP, without the tracks added for the reissue (just the way the Baby Jesus would have wanted it).

Underdog - Vanishing Point