The Eat
It’s Not The Eat, It’s The Humidity
Alternative Tentacles Records
South Florida’s The Eat released two 7” records back in the late ’70s/early ’80s, Communist Radio/Catholic Love and the EP God Punishes The Eat. Years later, both records were highly sought after as one of a few punk Holy Grails with prices hovering in the triple digits. If one were to take the recent Radiohead example and pay what the songs were worth, yeah, “Communist Radio” would be in the high hundreds. A fast yet tuneful blast that epitomized the best in punk right before the advent of hardcore, “Communist Radio” is equal to anything released in California at the time.
Luckily, today’s consumers don’t have to shell out hundreds of bucks to hear “Communist Radio” or the 29 other songs Alternative Tentacles compiled on this double CD. While the remaining songs never quite reach the heights of “Communist Radio,” they are fast, catchy songs, perfect reminders of just how good rock and roll can be when played with abandon and recklessness. “Hey Jackass,” “Mary Mary,” and “Nut Cop” will stay lodged in your brain for weeks. Like Texas’s Nervebreakers or The Embarassment from Kansas, two other criminally overlooked bands, a good number of the songs featured on It’s Not The Eat… makes one wonder why radio stations were trying to pass off Huey Lewis and Phil Collins as rock acts in the ’80s, when there were plenty of hungry, real rockers that never got a chance for wider exposure.
Alternative Tentacles: http://www.alternativetentacles.com
