Sideshow - S/T

Back when “emo” wasn’t a four-letter word, Sideshow played some of the best posthardcore (punk) rock around.

Bass player/vocalist Bernie McGinn runs (ran?) Caulfield Records, which released most of the Sideshow recordings. I don’t know much about Sideshow other than that they introduced me to Caulfield Records, which was hugely influential for the Midwest Indie Rock scene, releasing a string of criminally under-appreciated records. However, the great “Built on a weak spot” had a really nice post with much more info and some additional tracks from various other Sideshow releases a while ago. So you should definitely go there and get what you are missing here.

Sideshow has a very unique and interesting sound (otherwise I would not post it here), but they are also very much a child of their time (which for me being musically imprinted on late 80s - early 90s bands is also a good thing). To me the obvious comparisons for Sideshow are Rain (La Vache Qui Rit), Rites of Spring, One Last Wish, Policy of 3 and a couple of other bands that embody the early Dischord sound.

In any case, this, their first LP, does neither sound dated nor like an imitation of any of the aforementioned bands. Their sound is a bit less angular, and if anything I enjoy them much more than say Rites of Spring, which get all the credit as pioneers of the genre.

Sideshow

UPDATE: Now with more Lip read confusion (their 2nd full length)

This one’s for Phil…

so he doesn’t have to crawl up into his attic and keep rummaging for this lost gem anymore. The missing link from the early (read “good”) period of Shades Apart, this EP came out in 1992 on Sunspot Records, in between their self-titled debut and the “Neon” EP. As such it’s exactly like you would expect and everything that I wrote below about these other two releases applies to this one as well. Great melodic punk rock in the tradition of Dag Nasty and preceding similar acts like Sense Field or Farside.
I found this on Soulseek a while ago and finally came around to post it here. The way the tracks were labeled indicates to me that they were bonus tracks on the CD reissue of the self-titled LP but I don’t know and neither do I particularly care.

Dude Danger

All gone...

So, uhm, I managed to have all my files deleted from my MediaFire account (it's a long story). That obviously means that currently all links are dead. Because I have been extremely busy for a while now and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future I have not bothered to re-up any of the stuff.
The blog isn't dead, but it clearly is not a big priority for me at this time. However, if you really want something leave me a comment in the post and I'll try to fix the link. So you know what to do.

UPDATE: I fixed/re-upped a number of dead links that people had requested.
So some are working, some are still not.