Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Every time I listen to the Mr. T Experience, or MTX for short, I marvel at how Dr. Frank takes a clever turn of phrase and uses it to ever greater effect in each song. For a band that writes "Songs About Girls" with tongues planted firmly in their collective cheeks, the group has gone through many permutations, but Frank has been the one constant in their long career. The band has written many great songs in different periods, whether one is a fan of the more punk and rock 'n' roll period with Jon Von turning in the occasional raucous, garagey anthem like "Kill The Ramones" or "I'm In Love With Paula Pierce" or the power pop records in the early 90s with tracks such as "Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend. Of course, the Joel Reader era produced pop-punk classics like Love is Dead , which morphed into a brief indie rock period before the band's dissolution. The other day I was listening to 1989's Making Things With Light , an album t...

Oddly enough, Bob Dylan's songs on the Wonder Boys soundtrack marked a watershed moment for me as the 90s blended into the 2000s. I started going back to college in 1999 after a two-year break where I mostly worked and listened to records. My first attempt at college had been unsuccessful due to deep depression and homesickness that I did not realize was happening at the time. The period for me was full of change. I was trying to figure out who I was in an adult world, figuratively and musically. I was shifting between genres and personas like a man possessed.  My high school musical interests ran the gamut from 70s punk to melodic hardcore to indie rock, but I had fallen away from most "alternative" music as I reached that age in a young person's life where I felt like I needed to be defined by a "style." Needless to say 90 percent of my listening tastes were firmly entrenched in punk circa 1999-2000. While I never gave up the punk rock and indie rock o...

  When I was a young and impressionable punk rock kid in the 1990s, I went down a lot of paths. I was indoctrinated into the fold like many a naïve youth of the time by Green Day and then after pursuing their earlier albums and the Lookout Records catalog, I stumbled on to Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph before disappearing ever further into the underground and classic hardcore. I flirted with many labels and have moved into other genres practically entirely, but I never forgot my love for those earlier records. The Shit Split , the joint collection from Bay Area crusty bands, Blatz and Filth, was one that was stamped indelibly on my mind, and I wish I had been in the scene when it was released in 1991. I made up for lost time when I got it later on CD, but I now I wish I had invested in the vinyl. I do have the 7 inches because I scoured every bin for Lookout releases for years. Blatz's “Cheaper Than The Beer” has been a longtime turntable favorite, but I was always partial to t...

Green Day has maintained a low profile since they released three full albums of music, ¡Uno! , ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! , in 2012, and now return with a collection of demos from the same recording sessions. The aptly yet not originally named, Demolicious , clever portmanteau notwithstanding, is slight, yet infectious. Released on Record Store Day 2014 the collection purports to give fans what bassist Mike Dirnt wrote on his instagram account: how ¡Uno! , ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! would have sounded if we were still on Lookout Records!" The record is certainly more immediate than what the band has been doing in recent years. "99 Revolutions" kicks it off with a poppy burst of inspiration that is more stripped down than the version on ¡Tré!, but sounds more like it would fit nicely alongside Insomniac's "Stuart and the Ave." one of that album's more melodic songs. The intro of "Angel Blue" sounds like the Clash before Billie Joe Armstrong's vocals shif...

Since I've been a kid, I've been obsessed with liner notes -- the details that catalog the minutiae in the grooves. My father used to subscribe to the Time Life Classic Country collection, and I used to categorize and memorize the liner notes, storing them for some unknown future. Even then I was a music historian by default. Later, when my mom got the Sounds of the Seventies cds, I would pore over them. As I built my own collection, I still read liner notes. You can learn so much about a record, but also about the scene or situation that it has developed from. Each kernel leads to another. The bands in the acknowledgements section, the producer, the additional musicians -- all tell the story of this record, while leading to other important bands and albums. A voracious music junkie will always find another clue to building a collection, while scraping together a narrative of that record's invention. My continual search through liner notes first became evident when I ...

The past looms on the back of a record sleeve. Labels, such as, Lookout, Epitaph, even Bomp, cryptically allowing for years of wasted moments. The times that your finger tips traced the edge of an LP or slammed your fist against fragile drywall. You marveled at the pictures on the back of each sleeve, somehow they were more real than your own family members. They spoke through each lyric, each guitar line, each drum fill, each chord change -- so goddamn directly to you. A slipped power pop backbone, a hardcore frustration, a mod moment, a Dischord emo relapse. The emotions bubbled over into a potent stew of remembrance and forget, lost in transition as the records and years slipped quietly away. They were replaced by other records, other ideas. But the intent is the same, a slipping away into the night, a creative outlet or an escape from yourself and the world. The past looms on the back of a record sleeve, as surely as the present looms in the smile lines of your face -- a crow's...

Sometimes record engineers, band members, label people, or other unknown individuals will inscribe funny messages or insider jokes on the run-out grooves of records. These spaces near the label of the record are often inscribed with matrix numbers that contain record manufacturing or label information. Dates, pressing number, plant identification, logos, initials, and other information can be gleaned by the avid record fan. These details may reveal when the record was cut, who engineered it, where it was pressed, etc. The numbers, for instance, usually are different than the catalog number, yet many minor labels print the catalog number and record side in the groove as well -- probably because their pressing runs are smaller. For example, Green Day's Slappy EP has a matrix number of L35573, but also has Lookout 35-A designating the label number scratched into the wax, as well as the initials, D.W.K. Many major label  records have less information, which may refer to the order of ...

Gilman Street bootlegs are a funny thing. Many times the sound quality is bad because they were recorded by audience members by any means necessary. For example, Lint Rides Again , which chronicled the last Operation Ivy (interestingly enough they played with an embryonic Green Day) show has fairly poor sound quality, but is listenable. Most sound better than earlier hardcore bootlegs, especially if they were taken from the soundboard. Regardless of sound quality, the energy level and enthusiasm at these shows makes them worth a listen. Songs are debuted, loose sloppy versions of early songs are auditioned for an enthusiastic audience, an errant cover song will slip out as if by chance or happenstance. Green Day shows are no exception. The between song banter is as interesting as historical chronicle and the list of later fan favorites that the band plays is exemplary. The crowd knows many of these songs, even as Billie Joe Armstrong continually plugs Kerplunk . The album had be...

In issues of the old "Lookout Records! catalog," Larry Livermore, or some earnest shitworker, referred to Pot Valiant's eponymous EP as "what your cough syrup daydreams sound like." With an awful cold, while fighting through my own cough syrup haze, I listened to the new Green Day album for the umpteenth time, wondering just how far the boys from Rodeo had come from their early days on the aforementioned (and sadly gone) pop punk label. Green Day's new record, Uno! , is much better than expected. Gone is much of the rock star posturing and  topical songwriting that plagued or strengthened their last two rock operas: 2004's American Idiot and 2009's 21st Century Breakdown . Nor is there an overarching conceptual theme, except perhaps an attempt to write fun songs in the tradition of their Lookout! records. Yet, if you are looking for the ubiquitous return to form record, you may need to imbibe in similar large amounts of cough syrup. Perhaps a r...

I have long harbored an obsession with collecting colored vinyl. The very first 7 inch I purchased, the amusingly titled "My Name is Erik Yee. My Favorite Band is Green Day," was on green vinyl, and I have been obsessed since then. While not the best record I own on any color, this record still gets played at least once a year. It reminds me of my roots as a pop-punk kid, who still has the goal of collecting all the Lookout! 7-inches on whatever color I can find them. I often dig through bins looking for interesting covers; if the record is on colored vinyl all the better. There is something primal and real about listening to records. You can listen to the analog recording straight from the needle without amplification, and, in a sense, feel closer to the recording process. The crackle and pop as the needle hits the record reinforces this sense of authenticity. When bands release limited color vinyl, not only does it look cool, but it also brings the listener closer. In one s...