Monday, September 15, 2008

Problems Come From All Directions

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In 1998, back when I was still working on another issue of Brushback zine (but just barely), a box showed up in the mail from Makoto with three singles in it-- a Gondolier 7", the Jihad "New Testament" EP (a great record, plus there's a really scary-looking picture of the singer on the inside of the sleeve), and this Empire State Games 7". I still have all three records, although the Empire State Games one is easily my favorite out of the three of them, which makes me some kind of indie rock dork I guess.

When I first listened to this single I thought to myself, "Wow, these guys are gonna be big", because the songs were totally in the style of the driving emo rock which was pretty huge at the time. I figured these guys were going to be the next Sunny Day Real Estate or Texas Is The Reason, because I got the same feeling listening to this as I did listening to the first Texas Is The Reason 7" that I ever bought. It never happened, though, because it turns out that Empire State Games broke up almost as quickly as they started, which is too bad.

Empire State Games have a few other singles and EPs besides this one, plus a discography CD which came out on Elkion Records a few years ago and collects everything together (I don't own it, but I'm sure it's worth hunting down). The Elkion web site hasn't been updated in a couple of years, but it still has a couple of mp3's on it and they're pretty good songs-- maybe even better than the songs that're on the single I have-- so I'll tack them onto this post.


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Empire State Games -

"100 Years of Baseball"

"Dialogue (from a movie)"

(these files are now listen-only)


From the Elkion web site:

"The Evil Song"

"Wrong Way To Hold a Microphone"

(these files are now listen-only)


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5 comments:

Jonathan said...

This is cool to see. I have that discography disc you mention and it's excellent. Sad these guys didn't stick around longer.

Brushback said...

I think I'd like to track down that discography CD, if I wasn't so lazy.

Brushback said...

The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. TOUGH LUCK, CHARLIE! No, actually, for those of you who missed the boat, I will do my best to respond to any e-mailed requests for the original 7" files.

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanx for your work, i found Empire State Games tracks i've nerver hear before !!! (I'm french sorry for my english...)
I know ELKION, but it's not updated for 2 years ! So, to order the discography it seems really complicated, isn't it ? I bought the ESG self-titled EP on Makoto 6 years ago and i'm still thinking it's my favorite band for a long time... Where can i get this f... discography ? Do you know any band in this vein ? Hope you'll answer me, beautiful blog - Mat

Brushback said...

I've never been able to find the discography CD myself, although I stopped looking some time ago. The most obvious places to search would be eBay.com and gemm.com, I would think.

If you like Empire State Games, you'd probably also like Texas Is The Reason - I'm guessing you've heard of them already, though.

Oddly enough, Superchunk is another band you might really like - they're not completely in the same vein, but there are enough similarities (plus their records shouldn't be too hard to find, even in France).