Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Wipers - Over the Edge LP


Label: Jackpot Records
Year: 2009, Reissue
Format: Vinyl LP

The Wipers from Portland, Oregon are in many people’s books one of the best kept secrets in music history. And I can only succumb to this opinion due to the fact that Greg Sage and his men have written so many unbelievably great songs. It must therefore come as a big surprise why I have waited all these years to obtain this masterpiece of an album. Well first and foremost it was relatively hard and potentially expensive to track down the original and it wasn’t until last year it was reissued again. There might have been a German pressing on Weird System but I might be wrong here. Anyway I do remember hearing this years and years ago on tapes friends would pass around so I was familiar with many of the tracks on it but have not heard them in a long time. What can I say – each one of the songs is a killer on its own and there is not one single letdown on this album. How many albums of this quality exist? Originally released in 1983 – at a time in history where many US hardcore punk bands tried to sound as fast and pissed off as possible it was quite the opposite with the Wipers. They had the capability to turn anger and frustration into gloomy yet highly melodic anthems. Songs like “Over the edge”, “Romeo” or “This time” just to name a few, are perfect examples that a band does not have to play at a speed close to derailment in order to bring across a message. And to end this I can only recommend anyone to get their sticky fingers on a copy of this, one of the best records ever.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

V/A - Pebbles Volume 1 LP

Label: BFD Records Year: 1979 Format: Vinyl LP This is the first post for this blog so please do not expect anything mind blowing. Speaking of mind blowing though the record I am going to briefly review for this post is nothing else than mind blowing. I bought this one not too long ago at a shop in Basel, Switzerland and it was worth every penny I spent on it. The Pebbles series concentrated in stark contrast to the better known Nuggets album on regional acts from the 1960's. 16 Original '60s Punk Rock Classics describes this record as accurately as possible and comes nothing short of the expectations the listener should have. Fact is that the Nuggets hardly scratched the surface of 60's Punk Rock and this LP is a great example of it. So should you like myself be someone that is still discovering lost hits from the vast archives of the 1960's than do yourself a favour by tracking down a copy of this album. And trust me my dear reader, all 16 songs on this album are absolute belter songs by bands such as the Litter, The Haunted, The Elastik Band, The Soup Greens and so on.... Highly recommended!