The Discocks - Voice of Youth EP

Label: New Age Records; Year: 1994: Format: 7" 33RPM EP 

Back in the mid '90s I lived for a couple of years in the great city of Toronto, Canada and it must have been in early '97 that my friend Simon of Ugly Pop and I spontaneously decided to take a Greyhound bus to New York City to see the Discocks support the Casualties at Coney Island High in the East Village. Mind you we really didn't care all that much for the spiked band from NYC but were eager to see a Japanese band on North American soil. The fact that the Discocks weren't even the main act tells you a lot about the ignorance in the punk scene as a band flying in from thousands of miles away should really be the main attraction of any night, but that's just my opinion. We certainly had a good night and stayed over at Neil's of Tribal War to catch the Discocks again the next day in New Haven, CT, this time if memory serves me right with The Unseen. What I do remember vividly to this day though is that on the way up to New Haven we stopped at a gas station somewhere in the Queens/Brooklyn area and the Japanese punks and skins stuck out even for a city like New York as they definitely attracted a lot of looks. Funny enough the same year as the above mentioned gig I travelled to Tokyo, Japan and ran into Peter, singer of the Discocks, at the Antiknock Club in Shinjuku when One Way System were playing five shows in the Tokyo area. We had a brief chat after the show and he handed me the flyer that's been stuck in my copy of the band's first release up to this day. Ladies and gentleman, now after boring you to death with my travel stories let me remind myself that there is actually a record to be reviewed here and while preparing for this post tonight I also found out that the Discocks actually have a Wikipedia entry, now that's quite fancy me thinks. The "Voice of Youth" EP having come out in 1994 on the band's own New Age Records (also licensed to UK's Helen Of Oi) is in my opinion their best release by a mile. Their later stuff on Knock Out is okay, but doesn't come even close to this as this record is nothing short of a great effort of youthful UK82 influenced Oi Punk in the great tradition of Blitz, the Partisans or the Ejected to think of a few. My two favorite songs on this EP are "Street of '92" and "Punk and Proud" with a loud bass guitar and great choruses leaving you with no option as to sing along like a maniac. I sometimes wish I could go back in time and relive those days, great memories.