Even the reissue is old enough to qualify…
(originally released on Giggling Hitler Records, 1979 [thanks, Mike]; reissued by Brain Transplant Records, 1998)
I’m not going to pretend I was cool enough to have the original 7″ by this Miami punk group. Frankly, I’m only cool enough to have this repressing because someone cooler than me at Bow Wow Records had ordered it and had tagged the plastic sleeve with a note that said something like “it’s the redneck Undertones!” Which isn’t quite right, as it turns out (this song in particular feels a bit more like Florida’s answer to X and the Dils), but it was intriguing enough a description that I was willing to drop the $3.50. This particular strand of first-wave punk, songs that were basically good old-fashioned rock and roll played at double speed with lyrics about arcane subjects like Caribbean and Central American political propaganda, has always been one of my favorites; it’s a shame that the punk history books are thus far largely ignoring the small regional scenes in favor of the idea that it all came from New York, London and, a bit later, L.A.
–Stewart Mason
