• The Bouncing Souls

• The Bouncing Souls

• Pit at the Bouncing Souls

• Pit at the Bouncing Souls

• Pit at the Bouncing Souls

• The Bouncing Souls

• Pit at the Bouncing Souls

• The Bouncing Souls

• The Bouncing Souls

• The Bouncing Souls

• The Bouncing Souls

• Heavy Cream

• Heavy Cream

• Heavy Cream

• Fucked Up

• No Joy

• No Joy

• Powers

• Powers

• Art Brut

• Bouncing Souls

• Bouncing Souls

• Descendents

• Teenanger

• Teenanger

• Teenanger

• Teenanger

• Teenanger

• Devo

• Devo

• Ty Segall on a boat

• Ty Segall on a boat

• Ty Segall on a boat

• Ty Segall on a boat

• Ty Segall on a boat

• Uncle Bad Touch

• Young Governor

• Young Governor

• Young Governor

• Crocodiles

• Art Brut

• Art Brut

• Crocodiles

• Crocodiles

• Crocodiles

• Crocodiles

• Crocodiles

Thursday, June 16th

OFF! at Yonge-Dundas Square, 9 PM
Let me preface this with a statement of the obvious: Keith Morris is a legend. His work with Black Flag and Circle Jerks will always rank him among the all-time best hardcore punk vocalists. However, the outside square did not do his new band OFF! any justice. The energy that permeates punk shows just was not there in the public square environment and the whole act suffered. The die-hard punk fans appreciated the show, but most of the people there were counting to seconds until Descendents took the stage. The music was great and Keith Morris still can put on a solid performance, but Yonge-Dundas Square was not the right venue to showcase the classic hardcore sound of OFF!

Friday, June 17th

Junior Battles at Phoenix Concert Theatre, 7 PM
Toronto pop-punks Junior Battles opened up the Phoenix Concert Theatre’s punk rock extravaganza featuring Anti-Flag and Bouncing Souls. The band tore through a set of tracks showing an emo influence of early Thursday or Hawthorne Heights mixed with the pop-punk sound of Sum 41. The band played with great energy and served as an excellent opening act. The band manages to breathe some life into the tired pop-punk genre with better lyrical senses than most and a willingness to get away from the same old three-chord rock.

Art Brut at The Mod Club, 9 PM
It’s always hard to determine what exactly will happen when Art Brut takes the stage. In fact, Friday’s performance at The Mod Club was exactly the odd type of performance that followers of the eccentric English rockers have come to expect.

Art Brut started the set at the two-thirds full Mod Club off with “Formed a Band” and “My Little Brother” from their debut album, Bang Bang Rock N’ Roll. The band came out with seemingly-forced energy early, but turned it up when charismatic lead singer Eddie Argos began telling stories about his family. The personal interludes broke up the music, but created a connection between the performers and the crowd that is rarely experienced outside an unplugged session.

In addition to the older material, Art Brut played a pair of new tracks off their 2011 album Brilliant! Tragic! as well as the non-album track “Unprofessional Wrestling.” The new material was well-received by the crowd, who, by this point was completely engrossed by Argos’s stage persona.

Although it would appear that Art Brut has peaked in popularity (and is perhaps waning), the band still put on an impressive, commanding performance, even if it had to rely on Argos’s charisma. It was a chaotic, anarchic, and completely unpredictable set. But anything less from the most eccentric of British bands would have been a tremendous shock. With Art Brut, oddity is to be expected.

Elephant Stone at The Garrison, 10 PM
Montreal based indie-pop act Elephant Stone brought their psychedelic pop to The Garrison. The group featured a sitar-heavy sound that would make Ravi Shankar proud, and put on a solid set of lush pop music. The whole vibe was mellow and hypnotic, with the heavy sitar driving the entire show. It was an overall pleasant performance, but not one that was particularly riveting, as the set included a wealth of monochromatic tracks. Give them another year of polish and Elephant Stone could become a huge band.

Braids at The Garrison, 11 PM
Canadian experimental noise-pop band Braids played a tremendously crowd-pleasing set to a packed house at The Garrison. The Polaris Prize-nominated Braids feature a psychedelic sound that comes across with complete harmonic perfection. Brilliant female vocals transcend into the realm of being an additional instrument rather than a simple lyrical delivery device. The songs of Braids are marvelously well-constructed, and the band performed a stunning set.

Crocodiles at Silver Dollar Room, 12 AM
With its ’60s psychedelic blues rock-meets-post-punk sound, California noise-pop band Crocodiles took the stage of the small and sweltering Silver Dollar Room to a packed house. While Crocodiles’ recorded material is lo-fi and spacy, the live set presents a completely different sound, as the lo-fi elements are thrown out the window. Instead, Crocodiles put the vocals of lead singer Brandon Welchez squarely into the forefront with higher tempo tracks feeding the energy in the room.

Every song was a perfect showcase of the band’s immense talent in a room too small to be anything but acoustically perfect. The highlight of the show came during the exquisitely performed “Neon Jesus” when the Dum Dum Girls joined the band onstage. Another high point of frenetic energy during the eight-song set was a roaring cover of the Ramones classic “Beat on the Brat.”

One of the beautiful things about a festival like NXNE is that a concertgoer can stick with big-name acts, or get adventurous and go find the lesser-known artists. Crocodiles may not be as big of a name as Stars or Devo, but the set at the Silver Dollar Room showed that this is a band with serious potential to become a huge name in the indie rock world. This was one of the best shows of NXNE.

The Pack A.D. at Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, 1 AM
Vancouver-based duo The Pack A.D. brought one of the more unique sounds to the stage Friday night. The Pack A.D. takes the same garage rock aesthetic as Band of Skulls but adds a blues spin — along the lines of The Black Keys — and a punk vibe à la The Runaways or even Bikini Kill. The whole set was a superb high-energy blast, punctuated when the band crammed three full songs into the last five minutes of their set by doubling the tempo of each track.

Deerhoof (Special Guest Slot) at Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, 2 AM
NXNE brought out an incredible array of special guests this year. Neon Windbreaker, Dum Dum Girls, No Joy, and the Polaris Prize-longlist nominee The Luyas all stepped up to the stage as special guests Friday night. But the highlight was Deerhoof onstage at the Legendary Horseshoe. Deerhoof played an intense set filled with their signature heavy guitars and delicate vocals that make a soundman’s job an absolute nightmare. The band performed a stunning set, masterfully crafting their stage show with veteran precision, with the highlight being the performance of the fun “Dummy Discards a Heart.”

Saturday, June 18th

Stars/Chad VanGaalen (Secret Show) at Edward Day Gallery, 1 PM
Not all of the fun at NXNE happened as part of the official schedule. Canadian music television station Aux sponsored a secret show featuring Stars as the headlining act with Calgary, Alberta based singer-songwriter Chad VanGaalen as the opening act. Information about the show (including entrance codes) was disseminated through QR Codes readable by smartphones, with more information being given during Stars’ Friday night show at Yonge-Dundas Square before an estimated 10,000 people.

Saturday’s show at the Edward Day Gallery was significantly smaller. Only around 200 people were allowed into the gallery for the performance, which started with Chad VanGaalen playing an eight-song set filled with songs off his new album Diaper Island. This included the brilliantly cutting “Shave My Pussy,” which tossed out the poetic lyrical sense that VanGaalen normally exudes in his lyrics replaced by direct sarcasm. Halfway through his set, VanGaalen switched from electric guitar to an electric ukulele for the remainder of his set, adding a summery vibe to the gallery.

Stars took the stage shortly after VanGaalen finished and opened their set with an oddity of a statement: “We’re going to play a bunch of shit we don’t know.” The set, which opened with “Bitches in Tokyo,” took a darker turn through the Stars catalog, showcasing Amy Millan’s incredible vocal talents, as well as the brilliantly written lyrics. The intimate show induced tremendous energy in the room — the whole set was sublime in every detail, from the setting, to the acoustics, to the perfect performance on stage.

Dirty Beaches at Yonge-Dundas Square, 5 PM
Dirty Beaches is the stage name of Taiwan-born, Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Alex Zhang Hungtai. Dirty Beaches brought layers upon layers of distortion with aheavy dark-wave sound. Hungtai’s voice sounds similar to Nick Cave in terms of baritone, though he is completely capable of hitting perfect falsettos. Every note was distorted and warped, but still sounded excellent in the outdoor setting. The highlight of the set was a cover of Mattress’s “El Dorado,” which was the most spectacularly emotive song of the performance.

Cults at Yonge-Dundas Square, 7 PM
New York City’s Cults took the stage at Yonge-Dundas Square Saturday evening to a large crowd. Lead singer Madeline Follin is rapidly developing into one of the best female lead singers in indie music. Cults’ signature track “Go Outside” was the perfect song for the steamy Toronto summer evening, and brought a distinctly youthful, playful energy to the festival.

Men Without Hats at Yonge-Dundas Square, 8 PM
Eighties New Wave rockers Men Without Hats brought their signature synth-heavy sound to Yonge-Dundas Square. The set opened with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” before the group (with lead singer Ivan Doroschuk being the sole original member remaining) played a number of their classics, including “Pop Goes the World,” “Living in China,” and, of course, “Safety Dance,” which provided a nice close to the set. During their set, the band announced that they are working on a new album, and the new incarnation of Men Without Hats proved that they are far more than just “Safety Dancers,” while still paying homage to its past.

Bands confirmed so far include:

Hot Water Music, Against Me!, Less Than Jake, Samiam, Lifetime, Bouncing Souls, Dillinger Four, None More Black, Paint it Black, Small Brown Bike, Dead to Me, Teenage Bottlerocket, Toys That Kill, Tim Barry, A Wilhelm Scream, Circle Takes The Square, Off With Their Heads, The Holy Mountain, Cobra Skulls, Magrudergrind, Bomb The Music Industry, No Trigger, Trap Them,  Dear Landlord, Underground Railroad to Candyland, The Menzingers, The Copyrights, Broadway Calls, Cheap Girls, Ninja Gun, Nothington, Shook Ones, Banner Pilot, Static Radio, Coliseum, Chris Wollard and the Ship Thieves, We Are The Union, Grabass Charlestons, Worn in Red, The Measure (sa) (this will be their final show), Tiltwheel, Bridge and Tunnel,  Dan Padilla, Blacklist Royals, The Snips (Canada), The Brokedowns, The Catalyst, Algernon Cadwallader, Red City Radio, Shores, Future Virgnis, The Riot Before, Make Do and Mend, We Were Skeletons, Pianos Become Teeth, The Flatliners (Canada), Young Turks, Campaign, OK Pilot (UK), Look Mexico, Dirty Tactics, The Dopamines, The Arteries (UK), Bent Left, SSSSNAKES (UK), How Dare You, Comadre, Grown Ups, Such Gold, Tigers Jaw, Touché Amoré, The Great Explainer, PJ Bond, Carpenter (Canada), Annabel, One Win Choice, Amateur Party, Cynics (UK), Sexy Crimes, Greenland is Melting, Spanish Gamble, Captain We’re Sinking, Senders, O Pioneers! Pure Graft (UK), Caves (UK), Mixtapes, Vultures United, Living With Lions (Canada), Mose Giganticus, and many more alumni to come.

Weekend passes are currently not available for sale but organizers are shooting for an April 1st launch date of their full website (thefestfl.com)  with weekend passes, hotel options, and merch for sale.

Check out Verbicide‘s coverage of The Fest 9.

First off, let’s start with music.

One thing I’d love to see under my tree is the new remastered vinyl edition of Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine that was released this week.  After the original masters changed hands from TVT to Bicycle Records, Trent Reznor worked with Tom Baker to remaster and polish the classic album. They spiffed up the cover art, too. It’s on vinyl for the first time since its original release on TVT, so go pick that sucker up at your favorite indie record store!

Next, I want to mention this BYO box set: Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records. We wrote up a glowing review of the set earlier this year. Any punk buff you know will be delighted to receive this thing. The box set includes two colored LPs and features exclusive tracks from Pennywise, NOFX, Youth Brigade, Dropkick Murphys, Leatherface, Bouncing Souls, 7 Seconds, and more. It also includes a DVD of the full length documentary directed by Jeff Alulis and a big, glossy coffee table book full of photos and stories. You can also get it on CD, if you’re not into vinyl. Either buy it directly from BYO, or get over to your local indie record store.

Moving on to another wonderful box set: Bill Hicks’ The Essential Collection. This is a two CD/two DVD set that includes some of his best material. Hicks called himself “Chomsky with dick jokes.” He was one of the funniest, most controversial comics ever, and I seriously wish he were still around. This set is a great primer for anyone who doesn’t yet have Rant in E Minor or Arizona Bay, or a fan that would like to view the DVDs.

The next item I’d like to highlight on this cheery holiday list is the collection of The Walking Dead graphic novels. Everyone loves the new series on AMC, and the graphic novels are the perfect gift for the zombie-obsessed horrorholic in your life. Yay! Zombies! I’d suggest heading over to your favorite local comic book store to pick them up. Image, the company that originally published the comic, has a nifty comic store finder on their page that’ll help you locate a shop near you.

If you’re looking for a unique, artist-created piece of wonderful to give to someone, a great place to check out is buyolympia.com. They have a ton of interesting items there to choose from. Some of our favorite stuff is done by the artist Tiny Meat. There’s a bunch of wallets, passport holders, and checkbook covers posted that are fucking fantastic. Laser Kitty! Protect my passport!

A couple more buyolympia finds:

Mood Bottle Openers

Refillable, one-of-a-kind notebooks made out of vinyl records

Mini-mix necklace

If you want to buy DIRECT from artists, though, one amazing place to do so is of course, Etsy. Here’s some of our favorite etsies:

Typewriter Jewelry by qacreate

Monster iPad case and Moustache iPhone cozy by yummypocket

Hanging Air Plant Pod by mudpuppy

Glass Pendants (most under $10!) by cuteworkz

If you’re interested in saving the planet, why not buy your friends and family gifts that are made of recycled materials? For example, these t-shirts from Stay Vocal:

….and these pendants made from recycled eyeglasses by Jen McCleary on Etsy:

Last, but not least, here’s an idea that’s very dear to our hearts here at Verbicide. Why not buy one of these amazingly cool thumb drives from Mimobot and fill it with all of our free Verbicide Select Mixtapes? They’ve got Star Wars, Halo, Hello Kitty, Domo, and more, with storage space ranging from 2GB to 16GB, depending on how much you’re willing to pay.

]]> http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2010/11/25/verbicide-holiday-gift-guide-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2010/07/28/va-warped-tour-2010-tour-compilation/ http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2010/07/28/va-warped-tour-2010-tour-compilation/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:41:33 +0000 jackson http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/?p=7700 I’m having a big dilemma here. A lot of people would agree with me when I say that the Vans Warped Tour has lost its punk rock reputation because the tour has too many corporate sponsors and the lineup has become overrun by bands that would only appeal to “emos” and “scenesters.”

Originally, I planned to use this review as a soapbox to announce my distaste for the current condition of the Warped Tour, but I was given a new perspective after recently viewing a documentary called Punk’s Not Dead where the term “sell-out” is challenged. In this documentary, Warped Tour creator Kevin Lyman says punk shouldn’t be exclusive and claimed that he wanted to use money from corporate America so that kids could see their favorite bands all on one bill. Punk-as-fuck bands add that it’s good exposure and that it’s perfectly fine to take money from big businesses without having to change their music. In today’s world, it’s impossible to avoid corporations, so what’s the harm? But the problem still lies in the present lineup. What struck me first about this year’s lineup wasn’t merely the presence of some bands, but the absence of veteran acts that made VWT worth the $45. Bands like NOFX, Big D and the Kids Table, Flogging Molly, and Less Than Jake have dropped from the bill, making the Warped Tour less appealing to people like me. After witnessing talented punk bands disappear from the lineup year by year, it’s only a matter of time the surviving bands go as well.

Let’s talk about the compilation. The first track on the first disc is strangely a Blink 182 song; I’m guessing it’s to commemorate their brief reunion in the past year. The songs are appropriately grouped based on the style of music; for example, Every Time I Die, Bring Me The Horizon, Set Your Goals, and Parkway Drive are placed in subsequent order. There are some great bands on disc one, like The Bouncing Souls, The Casualties, Fake Problems, the Flatliners, and Flatfoot 56, to name a few. It was pleasant listening to disc one, which included some songs from bands I haven’t bothered picking up before.

Disc two is a different story. The second disc is polluted with screamo and over-emotional alternative bands, which are the main reason I’m disgusted with the modern Warped Tour. Most of these bands I found unbearable to listen to (with the exception of Four Year Strong), mainly because they all sound the same and the music is utterly depressing. You can accuse me of having a closed mind, but after listening to 14 agonizing tracks one after another, my face hurt from cringing so much. I felt sick to my stomach and a bad taste was left in my mouth. Some may like this kind of music, but it’s definitely not my cup of tea. It was a breath of fresh air when “Party Girl” by Fight Fair played. From there, the disc improved, but I got pissed off again when I discovered that there was a misprint in the tracklist; “Fast Girl” by the Frantic was replaced by a song I didn’t recognize. The Frantic certainly don’t get the kind of appreciation they deserve.

In my opinion, disc one gets four-and-a-half stars, while disc two gets only one star. I’ve decided not to attend the Warped Tour when it comes to my city because the cons outweigh the pros. Maybe I’ll attend in 2011 if the lineup recovers, but for now I’m not willing to spend my hard earned money to wait around in front of the huge schedule for hours, trying to drown out the sound of a whiny singer in the background.

(Side One Dummy Records, 1944 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90068)

Youth Brigade’s journey as a band has not been an easy one. Some of their difficult travels have been chronicled in a movie, Another State of Mind, where Youth Brigade and Social Distortion tour North America in an old school bus.

BYO Records celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2007 and recently released Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records, a massive box set chronicling their entire history (see the review here). Youth Brigade has been among my favorites in my playlist, so I was very excited to talk to Shawn Stern.

First things first: why did you abandon Canada and move to California?
(laughter) Well, I was only 10 at the time and didn’t have much choice. My dad had quit his practice as a medical doctor and started writing for the CBC when I was maybe eight years old. He was bored of being a doctor, after going through school, medical school, an internship, and having a practice for a few years. Pretty crazy, right? So, he was writing first for a musical variety show called “Music Hop,” where Gordon Lightfoot got started. Then he was getting jobs in Los Angeles, staying in an apartment for months at a time, and finally he just realized that he needed to be in LA. So we loaded up the station wagon and drove across the country in the fall of 1970.

Being in a band with two of your brothers (and then later, one brother), did you feel your relationship with your band members was superior to the relationships other bands have between members?
For me, it’s easier to be in a band with my brothers because I’ve known them all their lives and – since I’m the oldest – I tend to win the majority of the arguments! The fact is that being in a band is often similar to being in a family, so being in a band with your own family means the stupid little things that bug you are not a big deal. Small fights that might break up bands are just day-to-day living for me and my brothers.

You and Mark have always been full of ideas. Have you ever had ideas that didn’t go over so well?
Oh, lots, doesn’t everyone? Anyone who says all their ideas are great probably pisses champagne and shits gold!

Any stories of your first tour that we didn’t get to see in Another State of Mind?
[There are] so many great stories on that tour that didn’t make it into the film. We played at a club in Chicago called COD that we were told was owned and run by the mafia. We got in a huge fight with the security, and Mike Brinson – the roadie who is always changing his hair color – punched out the manager or owner. Cops were called, and somehow we managed to talk our way out of going to jail. The cops escorted us in the bus to the city limits and told us not to come back. Once they left we turned around, went over to Articles Of Faith’s house and partied all night.

Why did you decide to change your music so drastically when Adam left? What inspired your brothers to start Royal Crown Revue?
I don’t think it was a “drastic” change when you consider where we were at the time and the music that was influencing us – bands like U2, Simple Minds, The Chameleons, The Alarm, Love & Rockets, and stuff like that. The punk scene was changing [and] dying, a lot of bands got faster and noisier and moved into metal and speed metal. We were never into that. We always liked melodic music, so that’s the way we went. I like the songs we did as the Brigade.

Royal Crown Revue was Mark’s thing. They started out just doing it for fun and people liked it and things just steamrolled from there. I had actually tried to start a swing skinhead band before Youth Brigade, but we just weren’t good enough back then.

Tell me about That’s It.
I hadn’t played music in a few years, my brothers were playing regularly with Royal Crown Revue, and people were interested in writing songs and playing shows with me, so I started a band. I had been doing a lot of activist work on renters’ rights, peace and social justice issues in my neighborhood of Venice, so that was where I was coming from when I started the band. The first Gulf War started and we were protesting that. It was fun for awhile, but I got busy with the band and honestly, the old hippies that were involved in the politics were just so ridiculous and narrowly focused – it just got frustrating. I realized I needed to be making music because I was good at that and people wanted to hear my music.

What brought Youth Brigade back together?
Both That’s It and Royal Crown Revue were on tour in Europe in 1991 and we met up a couple of times. Lot’s of people, old friends and new fans, were asking about Youth Brigade getting back together. We discussed it and realized it could be fun, and since people were interested, why not? So, we decided to try and write some new songs, tour, and see how it went. We’ve been back together ever since.

How does it feel when you see bands that you have helped grow (such as Bouncing Souls) become more successful in a shorter span of time?
I never did this to be “successful” in a monetary or popularity way. We started playing music because we believe we have something to say, and as long as people are interested in that we’ll keep doing it. I’m happy when bands that I love, like the Bouncing Souls, are successful, because that means punk rock is alive and well. They are a great band, have great things to say, are very good friends, and carry on the tradition that we helped start. When they are successful it helps us all.

After about 30 years of playing music and 25 years of owning BYO, does your mother still believe that should have gotten “normal” jobs?
She pretty much gave up that idea once I bought a house 12 years ago. She realized that I must be doing okay. Now she just wants grandchildren.

You still use the word “youth” a lot. Do you think it still applies to your music and your audience?
I think, for me, “youth” is more about how you feel than about how old you are in years. I’ve met some 15-year-olds who seem like they are 80 and 80-year-olds who seem more like 15-year-olds. I think that, unfortunately, the society we live in pushes us to conform and give up our ideals and dreams, to basically become “consumers” and just be cogs in the machine. Punk rock, for me, says you don’t have to do that. You can do what you want, think for yourself, and fight against the mindless mediocrity that seems to pervade our world.

You’ve recently been touring around the country promoting Let Them Know. How has that been going?
It was great – we did dates all across Canada with the Bouncing Souls and had a lot of fun. We did the Riot Fest in Chicago, The Fest in Gainseville, and the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, as well as a bunch of other shows around the United States. We are about to do more West Coast dates in the next few months and go back out on the road in spring and summer around North America, Europe, and hopefully we’ll finally get to South America and Australia as well. Hopefully I will have some time [to] write some new songs. We live in exciting times, but the world is truly a mess, and people need to wake up before it’s too late – but I’m a glass is half full kind of guy, despite the odds. I believe that we have the ability to fix the problems we’ve created, if we have the will.

The box set comes in different forms — I received only the CD and the DVD documentary, but the complete package also includes two LPs and a coffee table book. Stuff like this will really compliment your music collection. The documentary tells the tale of three brothers who started a band called…you guessed it, Youth Brigade. The documentary is much like other punk docs: American Hardcore comes to mind first and foremost. In many ways, Let Them Know is superior to American Hardcore because it concentrates on only one band and one city, while American Hardcore had to put the spotlight on many hardcore punk bands in many cities in the 1980s. Let Them Know features interviews with Fat Mike, Ian MacKaye, Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio, as well as members of Bouncing Souls, 7 Seconds, Swingin’ Utters and many more. And, of course, this film would be nothing without interviews of all four Stern brothers. Since Mark and Shawn Stern are the masterminds behind Youth Brigade and Better Youth Organization Records, you’ll become comfortable listening to their deep, soothing voices. If punk rock was a university course, Let Them Know would be required material.

The CD is even better and 10 times more exciting than the documentary. BYO Records has always produced great compilations, but this one is possibly one of the best: 31 tracks, each a cover of a song found on a record released by BYO. You have Youth Brigade playing SNFU, Bouncing Souls playing 7 Seconds, Anti-Flag playing the Unseen, Krum Bums playing Alkaline Trio. I’ll tell you, it’s like a big punk rock swingers party, a massive musical orgy, with Lower Class Brats jacking off in the corner because they’re the only band with an original song on this compilation. I listened to the originals before each cover to see how differently they were altered. Some bands kept the essence and changed their own style to suit the style of the original, like NOFX’s version of “No More Lies” by Battalion of Saints. Others differ immensely from the originals, such as The Ignorant’s cover of “Keep On” by Hepcat.

My personal favorites have to be Dropkick Murphys doing “Fight to Unite” and 7 Seconds doing an acoustic number of “Sink With California,” both originally by Youth Brigade. However, one track that stands out the most is Old Man Markley playing a Celtic-folk version Youth Brigade’s “We’re In!” Pure musical genius. But don’t take my word for it — get it yourself! Money should be no object when you’re dealing with something as desirable as this.

(BYO Records, PO Box 67609, Los Angeles, CA 90067)

Click here to download a sample from the box set: “We’re Gonna Fight,” a cover of the 7 Seconds song performed by Pennywise

Originally published in Verbicide issue #22

Hollywood Jersey, 80 pages, paperback, $20.00

I am a big fan of kids’ books, and in my youth digested a massive amount of William Steig, Richard Scarry, Matt Christopher, Encyclopedia Brown, etc. I’ve also worked with kids in public schools a little bit, and have a rough set of guidelines for determining the quality of children’s books: they should be fun, well-written, and foster learning, life skills, or a creative imagination (or any combination of the three). I also believe a book should be, no matter the target age group, a stepping stone to the next level; slightly challenging, quality writing that respects the reader’s intelligence.

So, does I Went For A Walk by author Shanti Wintergate and illustrator Gregory Attonito fulfill those requisites?

Well, not entirely. It’s an excellent effort, with beautiful artwork, clever concepts, a neat (and strange) storyline, and a lot of heart from the creators. Attonito’s colorful and rather psychedelic artwork accompanies Wintergate’s tale of a child who walks around the Earth, floats up to Neptune, and falls back to Earth in search of food. Upon opening the refrigerator door, finding only a moldy piece of lasagna, the gender-neutral child narrator shrinks to the size of an atom and is sucked into the mold to discover a new universe. In the “mold universe,” the child visits two pun-tastic planets, “Moove” and “IZ,” all the while still seeking food. The story wraps up with the kid awakening to the smell of pancakes and eggs and a parent calling, “Breakfast is ready!”

I like the idea of the two mold universe planets, Moove (where there is “No walking, no running, no cars/and no bikes, just dancing about in/a playful delight”), and IZ (“The people of IZ are so very pleasant/because the people of IZ live in the present!”). Nice, though these concepts are likely to be more appreciated by the adult reading the book to the child, rather than by children, whereas a classic like The Giving Tree contains an impacting concept comprehensible and equally appreciated by readers of all ages.

The main theme of the story is summarized on the next to last page: “You never know what’s beyond the Horizon/you never know what’s under your nose.” The fact that the book takes us travelling through two universes — the one in which we live and a microscopic galaxy contained within the mold on a slice of lasagna — is a really bizarre, clever way to get the idea across.

Beyond that, though, the book doesn’t do much for me. Intended for an age group who’ve graduated from Pat The Bunny and reside somewhere in PD Eastman territory, the language still seems too rudimentary — unless we’re talking about Winnie the Pooh, I personally would never read to my own child or elementary school students a book that uses too-cute words like “yummy” and “tummy,” which together appear six times, including the phrase, “I flew back home as quick as I could, I couldn’t wait to fill my tummy/with yummy, yummy food!” That’s Barney the Purple Dinosaur language, and you can do better than that.

Also — yes, I know this is a kid’s book — but even kids deserve consistent rhyme scheme and meter. Is this a book-length poem, or is it not? Even within single pages (most pages are comprised of five or six lines broken into two stanzas) the rhyme and meter is inconsistent. Right off the bat, on page one, the first stanza doesn’t rhyme, yet the second stanza does. Then pages two through 10 don’t rhyme, and don’t even maintain any particular cadence. Then, on page 11, both stanzas rhyme, in an ABA CC scheme. An on we go throughout the book, rhyming, not rhyming…the whole thing reads, I’m sorry to say, amateurish (“No peanut butter, no bread no carrots,/no yogurt no cheese, no milk,/not even a soda. I rubbed my eyes to be sure of this sight/but there was no food,/not one single bite.”)

Do you have to be the next Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein to write an adept children’s book? Absolutely not. But you should study them and strive for an attainable level of quality before putting your final product out there.

I feel like an ass for critiquing a children’s book so severely, and I feel even worse because I’m afraid I might hurt the creators’ feelings if they ever read this. But before I finish, hear me out: as I said initially, this book is a great effort, and it succeeds on several levels. What I’m assuming Wintergate and Attonito could benefit from most of all is some outside assistance. This is a fully DIY effort, and on that front, they deserve an A-plus for breaking the punk rock mold and really creating something truly “for the kids.” But like many a cut-and-paste zine, I Went For A Walk feels as though the creation of the book was very insular and relegated solely to the writers. Copyeditors, outside eyes, anyone who has experience working with children’s books…there are a host of sources they could bounce ideas off of, and if I’m assuming correctly, it doesn’t appear that they brought in anyone else to help clean it up. They both possess wonderful imaginations and great potential, and their hearts are in the right place. I tip my cap to them. They’ve done a pretty good job here, but I’m just convinced they can do better.