It Would've Been Better Had I Never Known

Once I got my shit straightened out and was no longer a little nubber first getting into punk rock, my main goal was to own a Pagans single. While a good amount of the straight edge kids I knew in the scene back then got into hardcore by listening to SoCal bands like the Adolescents and Youth Brigade, I was all about the Midwest and East Coast, so alongside the usual Negative Approach and Minor Threat cassettes, the car that I was driving around in had Replacements, Pagans, Zero Boys, and Rocket From The Tombs tapes stuffed in the glovebox. One of the first tape compilations that I ever owned had a live version of the Pagans' "She's a Cadaver" on it, and I used to play that thing constantly. Eventually I found one of the Pagans' original '70s Drome singles ("Dead End America"/"Little Black Egg"), though by then collections like "Buried Alive" and "The Godlike Power of The Pagans" were being pressed and it became much easier to get an overview of what the band was all about.

"Family Fare" gets touted as "the Pagans' final studio release", though from what I can tell it was mostly just a collection of some of the Pagans' late-80's Treehouse singles. And while there's nothing even half as powerful as "Six and Change" or "Give Up", there's still some pretty decent stuff here; "I Stand Alone" would work great as one of the songs Cafe Nine blares over the PA in between bands (I'm trying to figure out if Tommy Perkins sounds like this or not), and "Us and All Our Friends are So Messed Up" is one of my top five favorite Pagans songs ever. If this is your first exposure to the band, then by all means start hunting now-- you're bound to have an easier time of it than I had, scrounging around for scraps 24-some-odd years ago.




Pagans -

(these files are now listen-only)

"Her Name Was Jane"

"I Do"

"I Stand Alone"

"(Us And) All Our Friends Are So Messed Up"