“not_so_quiet_on”
Not So Quiet On the Western Front
Various Artists
Alternative Tentacles
OK, enough of the bullshit. If you didn’t have this album seventeen years ago, there’s high potential that you suck. Then again, seventeen years ago, hardcore punk rock meant you had to go find comps like this. Well, now’s time to either catch up or, if you happen to be hovering around seventeen years of age, it’s time to find out what you missed and just how much music today lacks.
Again, like the famous compilations This is Boston (Not L.A.) and Flex Your Head , Not So Quiet On the Western Front features songs from a whopping forty-seven bands from the California (and Nevada, too) punk rock scene back when the very thought of being signed to a “major” was not only ludicrous but wholly unthinkable. Suburban punk rock was about really feeling boxed-in and damned if a few quarter-sticks weren’t going off in the minds of the youth “back then.” This was the era of the Reagan Presidency, which, along with “Mr. Gorbachev TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!” caused an outpouring of the best anti-social, anti-“republican” punk rock ever. We’re talking bands like Intensified Chaos, Fang, Capitol Punishment, Code of Honor, and 7 Seconds (when they wuz SKINS and sang “Fuck Your Amerika!”). Of course the Dead Kennedys are on this, too. And don’t forget Millions of Dead Cops, Urban Assault, the Church Police, Domino Theory and the all-friggin’-mighty Flipper.
And as one can imagine, plenty of these bands are defunct and various band members have been dead and buried for not too many years. The music on this album was put out by bands who REJECTED the corporate rock image embraced by far too many “punk” bands as the century ends. I don’t care if “today’s” bands are better musicians! It’s three chords, dude! And the animosity was for real. If anything, get it for the reprints of old xeroxed show flyers accompanying the disc.
Alternative Tentacles, P.O. Box 419092, San Francisco, CA 94141
