Part of Issue 1.5

Music

Boss Capone & Patsy “Kings & Queens”, Self-Released/Aggrobeat Records (2023)

Not going to pretend I’m some sort of expert on early reggae released between 1967-1972, but I’m no greenhorn either. I’m familiar with a lot of it. So when a song from this album came up on my Spotify recommended tracks, it was confusing at first. This sounded like something from Pama or Trojan during the glory years but I had never heard it before. After looking them up, it wasn’t hard to discover they were a contemporary duo putting out new music here and now. While there have been plenty of acts that look at the same period of reggae for inspiration, it often sounds a bit off to varying extents, no doubt because of the difference in recording technology. Kings & Queens may be one of the closest to get to that classic sound.

Budgie “Holy Ghost Zone II” (2020)

Budgie is a hip-hop producer from the UK who has released a number of beat tapes/instrumental albums including the Panty Soakers series, which often revolve around one genre of music as the basis for his sampling. Holy Ghost Zone II is the second of a series of these kinds of releases that revolve around gospel samples. Gospel is one genre that has received extra attention over the past decade or so from producers, as it is relatively untouched compared to soul or funk, where even obscure songs have been flipped many times by different people. From what I’ve heard, Budgie has been to Out of the Past Records, a record store on the West Side of Chicago not far from me that is so disorganized, dirty and absolutely packed with records that it crosses into hoarder territory. They have perhaps thousands of gospel records even an expert on the music might not be familiar with. HGZII is gospel sample heavy, with sped-up vocals that you may remember were quite popular in the mid 2000s and continue to be for some underground hip-hop. Great stuff. Almost makes me want to go to church.

The Burial “Demos & Rarities”, Common People Records (2022) & Skin-Deep “Recordings 1986-1987”, Common People Records (2022)

The Burial and Skin-Deep have a lot in common. Both originated in Northern England, were originally oi! Bands, debuted on the second wave of oi! compilations and eventually released 1 album each on a Link Records sublabel before disbanding.

Similar to the Redskins, both bands incorporated soul, arguably the first music of skinheads, into their debut albums, as well as pop and ska. These two 45s bring together both bands early, more oi! tracks. The Burial 45 includes their two songs from The Oi! Of Sex compilation, as well as two songs from their 1983 demo that eventually appeared on the 1997’s Oi! The Demos collection. The Skin-Deep 45 includes two songs from a 1986 demo that also appeared on 1997’s Oi! The Demos, one track that originally appeared on the 1987 The Sound of Oi! comp, and then one live track that I’m not sure had been previously officially released.

More Than Skin-Deep and A Day On the Town are both personal favorites of mine and although they managed to record more than some bands from the same scene and period, I appreciate Common People Records collecting this lesser known material into their own releases.

Conservative Military Image “Casual Violence”, Self-Released (2023)

Things have moved pretty quickly for CMI since vocalist Adam Voss started working on the project in 2021. Beginning as a one-man project with Adam recording CMI’s first EP himself, it shortly filled out with 3 other members, all veterans of other hardcore groups. After releasing 3 EPs and 2 singles in just over a year, all of which have had limited physical copies that have sold out in minutes, Casual Violence is their first full-length album. It’s energetic, riff-heavy, aggressive skinhead hardcore. It’s probably cliche to say this is good workout music. Personally, it’s even better ‘Don’t fucking talk to me, fellow busriders’ music. P.S. – While the music itself is what gets talked about the most, the aesthetic and artwork should get a mention. They obviously care about it and spend time on it and I believe it plays into CMI’s modest popularity. 

Grade 2 “Grade 2”, Hellcat Records (2023)

After stumbling upon this band’s last album, 2019’s Graveyard Island, one of the first things that came to mind was “Man, this sounds like something that would be on a Hellcat Records compilation from the early 2000s”. Sure enough, they were in fact on that record label and Graveyard Island was produced by Tim Armstrong. This band plays what once would have been considered pop-punk or maybe melodic hardcore, but with obvious oi! and classic punk influences. It’s a bit slicker than most other oi! I normally listen to, but for the most part, the album is enjoyable. If punk acts could still crossover into the mainstream like they did in the 90s and early 2000s, Grade 2 would undoubtedly be considered a candidate for such a meteoric rise.

Lost Legion “I Hate You Like I Hate the Police” (2023)

The 4th release from this Chicago band. Lost Legion’s penchant for coming up with catchy tracks shines through again on this 4 song single/EP. Chunky, garage-y hardcore that sees oi! and new wave as important influences. Like their last release, this is short and sweet, leaving you wanting more. By the time this has been published, they have played their first live show in Gary, Indiana. Here’s hoping there more shows to come and a full length LP!

Squelette “Fin De Partie”, Primator Crew Records (2023)

Some of the best oi! coming out today is from France. With much of it, there are definite post-punk and coldwave influences. While this EP has that, it also has what I don’t believe I’ve come across from an oi! band before: shoegaze influences. Both the opening and closing tracks wouldn’t feel out of place on a Lush or Pale Saints album. This goes to show that however long a musical genre or subgenre has been around, there are always new and different ways to approach things.

Comics/Magazines/Zines

God In A Bottle by Frank Kwiatkowzki (2021)

$7 US/£7 UK/€8.25 EUROPE/$12.50 CAD & AUS, ispress.co

From what I can tell, the author is a pedicab driver in Denver, Colorado with Type 1 Diabetes who produces linoleum-style prints out of orange traffic cones. The prints in this zine are about living with Type 1, with social commentary about that experience. It’s impressive.

Do the Dog Skazine #120 (May 2023), dothedogmusic.tumblr.com

Invaluable resource if you follow the international ska scene. Still going strong after 30 years, DTD is a sort of ska newsletter that provides paragraph long updates of various ska group releases and tour plans. I’ve discovered a number of bands through this zine.

Plop! Vol. 1, No. 2 (Nov-Dec 1972)

My dad found this among some trash being thrown out at an apartment complex in Dubuque, IA. The cover was done by Basil Wolvertoon, a cartoonist both he and I are big fans of. Plop! was produced by DC Comics for 24 issues, between 1972-1976. Many of its contributors were veterans of Mad Magazine and “Mad, but as a conventional comic book” would be a decent descriptor of this publication. Of note would be ‘Hey Skinny’, drawn by the legendary Sergio Aragone, which is a callback to the old Charles Atlas ads in the back of comics, where a wimpy man is bullied at the beach. He proceeds to go to the lab of his mad scientist college professor who provides him an experimental elixir meant to turn the wimp into a werewolf. Unfortunately for the wimp, as he approaches the beach for revenge, the elixir transforms him into a poodle. He is subsequently demolished by large, aggressive dogs.

Red Bird #6: West of the Mississippi by Dan Zettwoch (2019), $5 (SOLD OUT), https://zettwoch.com/

A brief minicomic about a Sonic Youth concert the artist and his girlfriend attended in 2009 under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Supplemented with facts and history about the city. As I’ve long had a softspot for STL and try to visit at least once a year, most of this stuff I knew, but I did like seeing them presented in a minicomic format. This seems to be the last issue, but the artist has some other comics and stuff on his website, including a great print describing a showdown between 1960s baseball players Bob Gibson and Roberto Clemente.

Spirit of 69 Skinzine: The First Five, https://www.facebook.com/spiritof69skinzine/

As mentioned in Issue #1, this zine partially motivated me to create The Coldest. His Packing A Punch history of UK skinzines and Issue #10 of Spirit of 69 gave me at least some validation to create what I had in mind. So I was particularly interested in picking this up, a collection of the first five issues of Spirit of 69. When looking through early issues of a zine that has a longer run, you can get an idea of why the person started it in the first place, as well as kind of get a feel for their confidence in the project initially. One of the primary reasons he started it was to pass on knowledge about skinhead culture as he saw more people entering the scene. This definitely comes through and this collection would be a good resource for anyone getting interested in aspects of the skinhead subculture. His opinions on fashion, summaries of key early reggae figures, music reviews and interviews with UK reggae soundsystem DJs are all great stuff.

Youth Authority #1, $12, a.co/d/2gAqdg0

A strange but interesting anthology, entirely written by Nicholas Meijia with art from 7 different artists. It’s like the 1970s concept of exploitation cinema was taken up with 1980s subject matter but converted into comic form influenced by a very specific 1990s aesthetic. Think Joe Cool (Snoop’s Doggystyle album cover) and Chicano prison drawings.

Safety Pin: Punk Rock Ancient and Modern Issue 16 (Late 2022), £6.95, https://www.safetypinmag.com/

&

Vive Le Rock Issue 96, £5.99, https://vivelerock.net

These are somewhat similar magazines. Both published in the UK. Both of them mostly focus on older rock n roll from the early punk era of the late 1970s into the mid 1980s. Both of these issues include articles or interviews with Cock Sparrer and the Newtown Neurotics. I think both are probably purchased by older men into the groups of this time. The main differences between the two are the layout and design. Vive Le Rock is slicker, has loads of ads and looks more ‘professional’. Safety Pin, while slick, doesn’t have a layout that is as ‘professional’ looking. It reminds me a bit of the obscure, lower circulation hip-hop magazines one may randomly stumble upon at a supermarket here in the States.

Safety Pin does come with a 45, which is the reason I picked it up in the first place! It was a Cock Sparrer split 7” with Spunk Volcano and the Eruptions. The Cock Sparrer track, “Marching Orders”, was previously released on the For Family And Flag compilation released by Pirates Press Records back in in 2020. As for the magazine itself, there are articles and interviews with the Piss Kitti, Rum Lad and Iain Kilgallon, among others..

This issue of Vive Le Rock features The Damned on the cover. There are a ton of short articles in this issue on bands ranging from Abrasive Wheels and Gogol Bordello. Among the longer form  articles are on The Damned, Buzzcocks and the history of Teddy Boys. A bunch of record and show reviews.

Both are worth picking up if you aren’t super familiar with every group from the eras these publications cover.

Books

“2 Tone: Before, During & After” by Lee Morris (2020)

There are only a few book-length works out there that cover two-tone ska. The ones I’m aware of were either published 30 years ago, are long out-of-print or both. Morris’ effort here is admirable. It covers not only the well-known groups with connections to the Two Tone label such as The Specials, Madness and The Selector but also little known ones such as The Apollinaires and The Higsons. Extensive histories of the groups and even individual members is included. This book is a valuable resource if you want to learn about the Two Tone record label and what happened with the various groups who once released music through them. Morris also puts out a zine with the same title, also recommended.

“Burlesque Paraphernalia And Side Degree Specialities and Costumes” edited by Gary Groth (2010)

In Spring of 2017, my girlfriend and I took off from Chicago and headed to St.Louis for a 3-day weekend. Things did not fare well. Right before we reached the St. Louis area, we were pulled over by police in some small Illinois town. They wanted to search the car for drugs and guns. We refused to consent to a search. They threatened to bring the dogs and made us sit there for a while. They eventually let us go but the delay meant we didn’t get to make it to a STL-style barbecue joint before it closed. Instead we ate bland hotel restaurant food. Then at 5:30 AM we were awakened by housekeepers or guests continuously slamming doors. After a few hours we went out for breakfast. I ordered french toast but received oatmeal. When I tried to tell the waitress about the mistake she insisted that I ordered oatmeal. So after that I had steam coming out of my ears and we decided to end our trip to St. Louis after about 12 hours.

On our way back into Illinois, my girlfriend said she found somewhere we should go that was a bit out of the way but could be worth it. After an hour we arrived in Greenville, a town of about 7,000. We approached a small building with a sign that said ‘DeMoulin Museum’.

Walking inside we were treated to a kind of kooky, unique experience that I had assumed was mostly extinct with the demise of Route 66.

In this small town, a company called the DeMouilin Brothers once made initiation contraptions for fraternal societies. Today, the Freemasons or the Elk’s Lodge are the main examples of these sorts of organizations. But from the 1890s-1930s, there were countless fraternal organizations which could claim perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of adult males as members. Many of them had bizarre or comical initiation rituals that a new or prospective member would have to subject himself to. Some of these rituals involved specific contraptions. The DeMoulin Brothers was one such company where you could buy these contraptions. Many of these devices squirted water, shot blanks, or even slightly electrocuted the person being initiated. This book reproduces an extensive catalog of what was once sold. The museum, expanded since we visited, holds a collection of these products…

“Living and Dying on the Factory Floor: From the Outside In and the Inside Out” by David Ranney (2019), https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1003

The author is a professor at the University of Chicago, but as a young man he was a leftist who went to work in the factories on the South Side of Chicago. In the 1970s, this wasn’t an uncommon thing. As the 1960s faded, the more student-oriented New Left splintered and grew up. A number of socialist organizations and leftists from the New Left rejected a life of white-collar work or academia in favor of going where the blue-collar working class was at the time. Many of them had strategies of organizing unions or of getting themselves elected to union positions. Ranney, associated with a more eclectic group called the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO) didn’t necessarily always have such goals, but they did at one point think it was important for their members to work and live in working class communities.

The book describes the author’s life during this time, from 1976 until 1982, when he lived and worked in such a community. 

This era of working class life, where there were countless communities centered around certain industries or specific factories and somewhat decent union jobs were plentiful is long gone. For someone my age, who was alive when they existed but had plummeted by the time I reached adulthood, they are almost like a faded childhood memory. I experienced them as an undeveloped observer and the story has been supplemented by those who were adults at the time. It’s like I missed out on something, but am not quite sure what.

The notion of missing out on something is a feeling probably most Americans have. For many, at least for those my age, this seems to get expressed through adoption of reactionary politics or nostalgic pop culture consumption. I try to avoid both of these things, instead opting for an understanding of the lives and experiences of working class struggle that preceded me. This book is a good resource for that. So if you feel you’re in danger of falling into a panic about drag queens or detect you have a newly developing intense interest in third-rate Marvel Comics characters from 1994, maybe pick up this book instead.

The Small Axe Guide to Dancehall 1979-1985

Despite having the appearance of a print on-demand, self-published book, this is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the first period of dancehall reggae. Concentrating on the pre-digital era, the book features over 170 profiles of artists, producers, albums and singles. Many of these are still unavailable on streaming services and were never issued digitally, so you might have to do some digging to actually hear some of this music. However, if this era of dancehall is something you’re into, this is a must-have.