Back when I was a little hardcore kid, whenever I'd play a new record I'd always drop the needle on the shorter, louder songs first, because one of the neat things about vinyl is that you can tell which songs are quick and thrashy and which songs are slow and boring just by looking at the grooves. Apply that method to this record and you'd obviously play the Olive Lawn song first, because not only is it three times shorter than the song right next to it (The Thrown Ups' "Walrus Head"), but it also has a goofy song title, which is usually a safe bet that something good might happen.
You'd be a little off in this case, since the Thrown Ups rank as one of our nation's finest purveyors of rock ever, while the Olive Lawn song is your basic paint-by-numbers C/Z grunge rock (elevated a notch or two by the goofy song title, of course). But this isn't even a hardcore record anyway, so I don't even know why I'm bothering to go through all of this, except for the fact that early-80's hardcore was way more exciting than the boring early-90's noise rock that grew from it (of which the "Teriyaki Asthma" series, along with the "Love and Napalm" series and all of the others just like it, dealt up in spades).
The b-side presents a bit of a drop off-- though Pain Teens and Unrest are great, this probably isn't their A-1 material-- but I've ripped that side anyway, because both songs are kind of meditative in a way, especially the Unrest song which is almost pure techno. "Caitlin Bums" is also the only song here where the recording doesn't make it sound like my needle has a big piece of fuzz on it, not that there isn't one, you never know.
The Thrown Ups -
"Walrus Head"
Olive Lawn -
"You're a Dick & I'm Gonna Kill You"
Pain Teens -
"Come Up & See Me Sometime"
Unrest -
"Caitlin Bums"
(these files are now listen-only)
