Rikk Agnew "All By Myself" LP

I'd like to turn the spotlight on a little known early hardcore punk record by Rikk Agnew. Recently I came across an updated "vinyl in stock" listing from the distributor Lumberjack Mordam Music Group that included several titles which I believed to be out of print. Lists like these are usually an exercise in futility with most distributors. You run through them and check through all the stock in your store, make a list and hopefully this stuff will show up. 8-9 times out of 10, they don't. So when I saw two old Frontier Records titles, Redd Kross' "Born Innocent" LP and Rikk Agnew's All By Myself LP I was intrigued. I've never actually seen either LP before. I've seen shit tons of lousy Redd Kross records and CDs. Never any solo Rikk Agnew though. I'd have never known he released a LP if I hadn't been searching the Flex US punk / hardcore discography site years ago compiling a new record want list. Funny thing about that entry (which gave the LP an 8/10) is that it lists him as an ex-member of D.I. multiple times while making no mention of his most popular band, The Adolescents! I did a little more research on this LP and have always kept an eye out for it. I figured it was long gone and for the most part forgotten.

The day finally came around and the LP showed up at our store!

I threw it on to see for myself and on the first song (hear it for yourself right here) O.C. Life, I was sold. Word is getting around at our store and all the Adolescents fans are checking it out. You should too. All music on the LP is written and played by Agnew, thus the title All By Myself. Recorded in 1982 at the age of 23 just after he'd left the Adolescents but before he'd joined the first incarnation of Christian Death. It's the classic Southern Cali hardcore punk that you'd expect from this guy. A few upbeat Adolescents style songs, a few moody slower ones that bring to mind the Christian death stuff, a surfy one that brings to mind "Kids of the Black Hole" a little bit, perhaps due to the tone of the lyrics and an odd pop song called "Everyday". That one is pretty good but it just doesn't fit here I think. I highly recommend this LP!



As I had promised a month or so ago, there will be MP3 "mixtape"s here soon enough. I completed one in late August but had a few setbacks. Both technically and in my personal life. I am going to run through and re-rip probably 3/4 of what I had finished. I've got tons of ideas for the next several and I haven't slowed down in my record purchasing at all recently. If anything I have been buying more records than ever. Lately it's one of the things that has kept me in positive spirits. When things get shitty I just buy records. Seriously, sitting here in my room listening to the music I love on a good stereo with my cat at my side really pleases me.

Here's one for you.....

A little over a week and a half ago I received complimentary tickets to the Shriner's Circus in my P.O. Box. I thought this was more than a little odd. They weren't necessarily addressed to me but the "boxholder". See, just a few days prior I had been down at Minneapolis City Hall along with other concerned citizens and members of Compassionate Action for Animals protesting for a citywide ban on circus performances that include wild animals. Anyway, the whole ordeal simply reinforced my distaste for politics. Obviously the ban didn't pass. Further details are here on the Star Trib's page. My ward's representative went on to say that he "didn't find anything wrong with the circus." Kidnapping wild animals (or perhaps breeding them) for a life of slavery, abuse and other cruelty sounds perfectly fine to me too. Fuck you Robert Lilligren.

Jackson Michigan. Tomorrow.

The birthplace of the Republican Party.

Tomorrow. I arrive at 10:50 or something. Wish me luck.

Repost from my other blog thing (as promised).

The following is the stuff I wrote earlier this year. I don't know how I wound up with 2 blogs. Anyway, you can expect the "mixtape blog" thing to start here soon. I finished up one edition earlier last week but then received some not so constructive criticism and then put it all on hold. Fuck it, though. It's done. I like it. Perhaps you'll like something I post. That is really all I care about.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Don't ever go in business with me. You'll lose.

Last night's show, just like the 3 preceding ones was semi-poorly attended. Who really knows what it is. Perhaps it was propagandhi. They played a $12 / $14 show at the Triple Rock with lesser known bands from their record label G7. I know there were some other shows happening. Anyway, there were enough folks to come out to spare the show the sort of embarrassment of the last few. History definitely came through not only with much needed supplies (paper towels, soap, toilet paper, etc.) for the space but with a bunch of people to see them at the end of the night. The touring bands got a decent cut of the cash. Not too much but there really wasn't a whole lot to go around. Times are tight. The space's number one fan, "Boris Parsley" of the MRMB fame came out to the show and baked 4 pizzas from scratch. Aaaa-mazing! The resulting heat from the oven made the space near unbearable though. I really wonder why the AC in the building isn't working this year. It did last year. Fucking place was like an ice box for last summer's shows. I talked with the space's coordinator, Chris H today for like 10 minutes but completely spaced mentioning the cooling system. Fuck.

Tomorrow night is Loser Life. However there is a massive crust show for free over at Memory Lanes. Massive. Did I mention it's free. I'll be back to give you the low down on that on Tuesday morning.

Jessica and her 3 cats are all moved in. Happy days are in store for all of us. As soon as Rabies can adjust to having some new friends.

Oh yeah, I picked up some records at the VFW hall record show on Saturday.

* Rorschach - Protestant LP $5 to trade. Unfortunately the cover is slightly torn. I hate trying to trade off blemished records. I will likely sell it to Noise now. Bummer. It could've been a rad trade.

* Gang Of Four - Yellow 12" $3. I'd say it's about a VG. I'm going to hang on to this copy and trade off my other copy that I bought at Hymie's years and years ago. Definitely a score.

* The Stone Roses s/t LP - Sealed for $10. Works for me. I always liked that song "I Want To Be Adored". Ever since 9th grade. Still really catchy stuff. In my head allllll day long at work.

* Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre - Metal Gods 7" $5. Not bad. I picked up on this band way too late. Troubleman was way too hip of a label for me to care about there for about 2 or 3 years. Then once I started ordering it for the store I tuned back in. Still digging around for like all the earlier Glass Candy vinyl.

* Glass Candy - Love on A Plate / Johnny Are You Queer? 7" $5.

Listening to...

Hot New Mexicans - Wah... 7"
Glass Candy MP3's
Ruination s/t 7"
Superchunk - Cool / Fishing 7"
Giant Haystacks - We Are Being Observed LP
Sinaloa - Fathers and Sons LP
American Cheeseburger - demo 7"
Disclose / Framtid 7" - alright it'd been a year since my last Disclose record! Framtid rips too. Why didn't I ever buy their 7" when it was in print?!? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY? (insert D-beat here....)

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Much sadness. Much happiness.

I have lived with my friend Joe Rizzo for what I believe would be exactly one month short of four years today. Joe took Bjorn's room at the 2555 Emerson Ave S (the S is very important part of the address to remember! Ask former resident Josh C. or members of Hot Cross and Transistor Transistor) house. It feels like a very short time ago. In the course of a 32 year life I suppose it is. The time had come though. In my mind I had thought once the time had come for Joe and his longtime girlfriend and dear friend of mine, Lindsay, to move in together that I would be a part of the happy family. With my lovely feline offspring, Rabies the cat, in tow of course. It was not to be though. At first I felt kind of hurt and slightly scared. No way did I think Joe and I would be roommates forever. I had to figure something else out. Thankfully, I had well over 6 months to figure something out. I get along with most people pretty well and I think I've had extremely good fortune with roommates. At this point in my life I would prefer to only live with very close friends of mine. I thought perhaps by the time Joe moved out that maybe Emily and Yasmine may move again or need a roommate. I don't know why I didn't think of my newest best friend Jess first! She'd been living in St. Paul for over a year and she often talked about wanting to live here instead. In this particular neighborhood to be precise! So here we are. It's all worked out. Very sad to see Joe go. Overjoyed, ecstatic, outta my mind happy to have Jessica and her wonderful cats join Rabies and my own family.

Other notes:

* I just got through listening to Fields Lay Fallow's "One Hundred Years Of High Rises..." 12". No one sounds like this anymore or they're just not getting it right. Anyway, they really had the 400 Years sound down. I never got to see the band and I'm not even really sure how long they were around. Ex-Spirit Assembly and pre-Tiny Hawks. I plan on doing YSI style download links on here in the future. So you can listen along if you care. Or laugh at me for being a "stuck in the '90s hardcore kid".

* I don't know. It seems like there is just too much olive oil being added to the Wedge deli's vegan basil walnut pesto.

* The rest of the day's playlist:
Right now:
Television - Adventure LP
New Order - Power, Corruption and Lies LP
Tranzmitors - Look What You're Doing / Teenage Filmstar 7"
Shitlickers - Cracked Cop Skulls 7" boot
Alloy - Eliminate LP

How Am I Supposed To Watch Your TV???

It's a total nerdy record collector thing to be sure or is it something else? I've started inserting scraps of paper inside all my record sleeves with the date I listened to the record. I sort of think it has a bit to do with my computer's Itunes feature. Itunes lists all the music imported onto your computer and lists the date that each individual song was last played on in addition to how many times. Maybe this will lead to me listening to things more often or it'll make me ditch stuff I haven't listened to in years (not very likely). Who knows?

That's all I've got tonight.

I guess this is what happens...

I guess this is what happens when you create too many e-mail accounts, mailing lists and too many blogs. I'm going to try and go find the two other entries I thought I had published under this particular blog. I'll repost them if and when I find them.

TONIGHT:

Well, I anticipated making dinner for two in my kitchen this evening. I fully woke up thinking that was what was happening anyway. It turns out I missed a message on my answering machine. Plans this evening are off. I felt a little down but then I decided to go ahead and cook some stuff for myself. I felt it was way past time to try Sharyn's BBQ tofu recipe for myself. And why not? I've still got half the $17 worth of "BBQ" tofu the Wedge deli wrote off the night. Why not take it and make the real deal? Then I tried digging up my classic "yankee" cornbread recipe to go alongside it but I couldn't find it anywhere. So sad. You would have thought I'd have that one memorized years ago. Well, I did! Years ago! I... just forgot... that's all. This is the problem with scribbling all your crucial recipes in little notepads over the years. You end up losing that shit. Well, I dug one up online and it should be ready here in about 15 minutes. Hmm. It's 11:30. Jess, my best roommate ever should be home any minute from work. Dinner is on!

One of my reasons for resurrecting this blog is to use it as more of a music blog more than so much of a personal one. Most people know there is only so much you're going to squeeze out of me on the internet. Inevitably it will be personal to a degree since music is so personal to me. What I intend on doing is creating a weekly series of MP3 "mix tapes" to share with everyone. In this digital age my mix tapes aren't as accessible as they used to be. Most people tell me they want mix CDs and I can do that by ripping my vinyl on to my computer but why not go one step further and put it out there for everyone to listen to? I'd like to share this music with more people and keep them up to date on new stuff and old stuff they may have missed. What you can expect is a song or two each from new and old bands like I said. What you will NOT find here are full LP/EP's that are in print or are readily available. Remember I volunteer in DIY punk rock record store and believe in it very deeply. I think music is more than just a faceless MP3. If you really like something you should seek it out. Punk and hardcore (obviously the majority of what I'll be sharing here) is more than just music. Without lyrics, artwork, and the whole package it doesn't have the same meaning. The aesthetics behind it is every bit as important as the music to me. I don't jump down anyone's throat on either side of the illegal downloading debate though. And I won't bore you anymore with this topic right now as it's been done to death in other forums.

So to sum that up, check back often as I really do intend to put one together weekly as time is available. You're sure to find something you'll like.

Dinner tastes great! Jess is still not home though. I think I'm going to head out to the living room to watch some movies.

Frustration

I would just like to start off by saying that booking shows is incredibly frustrating when no one ever responds to you. In the event they do respond in a timely manner it's to say that they cannot play. 15 shows this summer and the odds are stacked against me.