Monday, April 16, 2012

The Stitches - "8x12" (Vinyl Dog - 12" EP, 1995)

Alright. Name your favorite 90s punk bands and records. Come on you don't have to be shy, feel free to even  include "Dookie" or Rancid among them, you won't be embarrassed! I still rate them high too cause they actually  belong there. I wish the airwaves today had more of the "Dookie" period Green Day pop-punk quantity or the same title Rancid CD. And forget the rules! Punk rock after all was about "no rules" even though it ended more fascist in some cases than those it supposed was against of... Maximum Rock & Roll it's for sure one of the most important ever zines and even today if i found an' issue I'll grab it, BUT it is NO BIBLE! Come on, 'bibles', 'holy grails' and 'sacred cows' have absolutely no relation with punk rock, so f*ck anyone trying to set up rules for it on what's cool, proper and right (I was always to the left side of the things)! Saying this i realized recently just by staring at the "90s punk" shelf of my records that our generation had actually MANY cool records and bands. Teengenerate, the Infections, Rip-Offs, Devil Dogs, the Dimestore Haloes, The Humpers, The Didjits, The Stitches, it's endless!
The Stitches hit me right away. Their name was the best of all the new kids on the block and it was making clear to everyone that this is a PUNK ROCK band and nothing else! Their look (imagine some skate holding Heartbreakers!) especially on the quite a few 7inch singles was THE right one, the perfect mix-up of 1977 poster collage technique and its 90s improvement! Their sound the possible best from skate punks who knew their roots (hardcore) but knew as well that the roll element is factor no.1 to make some asses shake, just like what U.S. Bombs did. This EP is now legendary. It has at least five pressings with different colors on the stripes (pink, red, blue, green, and the 15th anniversary re-release on black!) and eight totally double-edged punk blasts, just like the cool razor logo they had on all of their records. Two amazing covers on La Peste's "Better Off Dead" and Shane McGowan's "That Woman's Got me Drinking" and less than twenty minutes of blazing REAL punk rock action! In my top 10 fave punk records of the 90s easily.


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