Sunday, February 13, 2011

Watching Everything Get Worse



I suppose it's about time I said something about the Guilty Faces LP, since it's easily one of the top handful of punk albums to ever come out of Connecticut. When I first found out that the LP was going to be on Deranged, I figured, as great as the record was, that Guilty Faces would end up on the cover of Razorcake (shitty mag) and be on every blog in the country in no time, but I guess I overestimated a bunch. I'm not even sure if the band is still active right now; I know they kicked out my second-favorite guy in the band before they had even finished recording the album (Mike, the bass player, who ended up spending the first half of this winter driving Circle Pit around on their tour). The singer, Tommy, had a side project for a while that had a cover of Kitty Badass' "Chevy Impala" on their MySpace, so that was kinda cool.

There's a whole list of bands lately doing some sort of variation on the Adolescents/Circle Jerks/SoCal '81 thing-- bands like Night Birds, Social Circkle, Psyched to Die, and so forth-- although I'm pretty sure Guilty Faces were doing it a year or two before most of 'em. In any case, if that's your thing and you haven't checked this album out yet, definitely look into it because it's fast and heavy and it totally rips. Great cool-as-shit Dangerhouse-styled cover art, too (the EP was good for that also). Here's most of side A to help get you started.




Guilty Faces -

"Another Distraction"

"Glass Bullets"

"Some Things"

"Bad Wires"











9 comments:

Mike said...

What's wrong with Razorcake?

Brushback said...

Razorcake's got no flavor to it, it's like all the other "big circulation" punk zines in the past -- it has everything that's boring about zines, with all the good stuff taken out.

I've always preferred zines and blogs that were written by one guy (or two at most), with a single indentifiable personality. Razorcake's got one good columnist (Norb), one good interviewer (the guy that interviews all the garage bands), and one good reviewer-- and then 20 other shitty writers fucking up everything else.

The only zines I've ever seen that got around the "too many writers" problem were Flipside and Ink Disease.

Jere said...

D'I ever tell you about the time Brian & I took a young Tom up to Trinity to see Ian Mackaye do a Q & A?

Everyone was asking the most obvious questions, like, "what do you think about the war" and other stuff that anyone there would already know Ian's opinion on. Basically just "serious" "interview" questions. Finally Tom raises his hand and goes "can you tell us what happened when Fear played Saturday Night Live?" And Ian gets a big smile on his face and tells the story, and the crowd kind of loosened up after that.

Brushback said...

It's kinda funny when people act all scholarly around people that they're in awe of-- like they're going to impress them with their intelligence, or something. Come one, these are just punk rock dudes.

My first punk interview (1985) was with Jello Biafra. There were other people in the room with me, and most of them were asking all kinds of dead-serious questions. I kinda mocked that whole attitude when I typed the interview up later. One of my questions to Jello was like, "Do you find that a lot of people act like you're their dad?" Mykel Board thought it was funny when he read it, he ended up mentioning it in MRR.

Perkimania said...

One of the top punk albums from CT? Ever? Nice. Actually, how many punk bands put out full LPs from CT? Vatican Commandos for one, and boy, what stiff competition.

Anyway, I guess I should clarify a few things. The first is that Mike, crowd favorite or not, was out of the band before this record was even done being written. As was Dan. Things weren't working out. We're friends again though.

As for Razorcake, yes, it is a thoroughly useless "punk" magazine. They called our LP a great "debut" record by "Boston kids". So many inaccuracies right there.

At this point, Guilty Faces are on hiatus. I suppose it's like Terry Schiavo. To say that we're dead would be too blunt for our loved ones, but to say we're alive and kicking would be quite the overstatement.

Brian (guitar) and I live an hour apart in CT and Queens respectively, while Ian (guitar) is married and living in Austin, TX. The last show we had booked was to open for Negative Approach in Philly in fall of 2009 and Ian backed out at the last minute. He never quit though so I guess unless we officially kicked him out he's still in the band.

Oh, also, we haven't had a permanent drummer or bassist since summer of 2009. Bad Antics rhythm section played with us on our last tour, and our return show in CT with Chronic Sick had our second bassist Steve Hartlett on drums and his brother John on bass.

Our LP is still available for all the Johnny Come Extremely Lately's. Deranged probably still has copies of the limited to 100 color vinyl ones too.

My side project, Battered Husbands aka Stiff Flesh aka Mystery Miscarriage aka Vomit Comet, has more names than songs, all three of which can be heard here http://www.myspace.com/batteredhusbands

Alright. I should probably get around to doing these dishes and putting away my laundry.

Brushback said...

Well, at least we both agree that Razorcake sucks.

Brushback said...

Oh, and Tommy, you're overlooking a whole bunch of CT punk albums-- I mean, just from the mid-80's you've got 76% Uncertain, C.I.A., Contraband (not really a very good album, but anyway), Chronic Disorder, Lost Generation, Seizure, and so forth... Vatican Commandos "Point Me To The End" is more like an EP, but it's a 12" so maybe it counts...

Pooz said...

Sure wouldn't mind hearing that Kitty Badass cover
:)

Brushback said...

It was on MySpace, I don't have a copy of the mp3 myself and I'm guessing that the file isn't on MySpace anymore...