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.
