Genre > Rock > Punk

Instead of limiting the scope of, and essentially artistically neutering their original material for future generation, the band agreed to go the opposite direction and expose the evolution of Lagwagon. Recognizing the sacramental status of their first five albums (Duh, Trashed, Hoss, Double Plaidinum and Let's Talk About Feelings) within the punk world, the band set to work, culling the archives in order to create one of the most comprehensive audio narratives ever compiled.

The resulting 5 re-releases are nothing short of spectacular. Each album boasts the original track listing alongside demos, outtakes, EP's, B-sides and unstructured jams from the accompanying era (including tons of previously unreleased material), all remastered from the original analog tapes. All 5 albums are also repackaged with expanded artwork including never before seen photos and an oral history provided by the band members.

Originally released in 1992, Duh is the debut full-length album from Lagwagon. Features 14 really cool, fast, melodic songs including a cover of the Creedance Clearwater Revival song "Bad Moon Rising." This Fat Wreck Chords vinyl reissue of Duh consists of a remastered version of the original album plus a remix of the entire Section 8 demo. Also includes a download card for additional bonus content.

Instead of limiting the scope of, and essentially artistically neutering their original material for future generation, the band agreed to go the opposite direction and expose the evolution of Lagwagon. Recognizing the sacramental status of their first five albums (Duh, Trashed, Hoss, Double Plaidinum and Let's Talk About Feelings) within the punk world, the band set to work, culling the archives in order to create one of the most comprehensive audio narratives ever compiled.

The resulting 5 re-releases are nothing short of spectacular. Each album boasts the original track listing alongside demos, outtakes, EP's, B-sides and unstructured jams from the accompanying era (including tons of previously unreleased material), all remastered from the original analog tapes. All 5 albums are also repackaged with expanded artwork including never before seen photos and an oral history provided by the band members.

Originally released in 1998, Let's Talk About Feelings is the fifth full-length from Lagwagon. Yet another solid 12-song collection of melodious and humorous pop punk. This Fat Wreck Chords vinyl reissue of Let's Talk About Feelings consists of a remastered version of the original album plus demos, outtakes, EP's and B-sides.

Instead of limiting the scope of, and essentially artistically neutering their original material for future generation, the band agreed to go the opposite direction and expose the evolution of Lagwagon. Recognizing the sacramental status of their first five albums (Duh, Trashed, Hoss, Double Plaidinum and Let's Talk About Feelings) within the punk world, the band set to work, culling the archives in order to create one of the most comprehensive audio narratives ever compiled.

The resulting 5 re-releases are nothing short of spectacular. Each album boasts the original track listing alongside demos, outtakes, EP's, B-sides and unstructured jams from the accompanying era (including tons of previously unreleased material), all remastered from the original analog tapes. All 5 albums are also repackaged with expanded artwork including never before seen photos and an oral history provided by the band members.

Originally released in 1994, Trashed is the sophomore release from Lagwagon and is considered one of the band's all-time classics. Features lots of crazy punk with a touch of metal. This Fat Wreck Chords vinyl reissue of Trashed consists of a remastered version of the original album plus demos, outtakes, EP's and B-sides.

The band's twin guitar attack retains some of the space-punk overtones and spy-music-on-meth chaos of Dead Kennedys while adding a healthy dose of Detroit style proto-punk, flavored with Weiss' industrial excursions into metal percussion.

This is Jello Biafra's 1st full-time band since Dead Kennedys broke up in 1986, and it shows in the depth and breadth of Jello's musical chops and lyrical triumphs on these five originals and his reworking of the Deviants classic "Metamophosis Exploration."

Art by Jim Altieri and Michel Langevin (of VOIVOD)! Mixed & recorded by long-time Biafra co-conspirator Matt Kelley, whose other work includes Victim's Family, The Coup, Digital Underground, Hieroglyphics, Jello & The Melvins, and the 1st Jello & Guantanamo School of Medicine.

LOS INFERNOS are 5 working-class dudes from Riverside in the glorious Inland Empire. Suburbia nestled between the Mojave desert and L.A. They grew up listening to X, Black Flag, Flesheaters as well as Link Wray, the Ventures and Dick Dale. So its no wonder that musically Los Infernos meld together twang, punk, rockabilly, surf, and a touch of hillbilly & blues. They have built up quite a reputation as a hot live band. So hot, in fact, that their van once caught on fire!

Rock & Roll Nightmare carries on where their debut album Planet Kaos left off. SoCal surf, Riverside rockabilly, and hillbilly hardcore that should appeal to sweaty pompadours, Gear-heads, as well as Fat Wreck-kids.

A dig in the ol' crawlspace turned up even cruder earlier demos with alternate versions of the EP songs, plus over half-a-dozen others, heard only by a handful of people. A true labor of man-boy love, it took Jello Biafra years to pry this loose from the band. They kept insisting each album be housed in a 3-foot wide scale model of Gacy's house itself!

Now their affliction has subsided enough so that everyone finally has a chance to save their $200 "evil-Bay" bucks and grab a whole album's worth of mental illness before their condition comes back. "Gacy's Place: The Undiscovered Corpses" compiles all three recording sessions by The Mentally Ill: The Starbeat Sessions, The Basement Sessions and The Crawlspace Sessions for a total of 20 tracks, nearly all previously unreleased!

Their unsettling ilk of carny death rock & punk draws comparisons to The Screamers and Christian Death or contemporaries like the Subtonix, but don't expect today's glut of punks-with-keyboards playing 80s redux! THE PHANTOM LIMBS have carved out a lonesome place for themselves, finding inspiration in Kurt Weill rather than Duran Duran & Culture Club.

Produced by Dan Rathbun of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Now, the Subhumans join the Alternative Tentacles Re-issues of Necessity pantheon with Death Was Too Kind, a collection of material from the early years, lovingly remastered from original source material: the very first single Death to the Sickoids (only 500 were pressed); the Firing Squad single; the self-titled EP produced by Bob Rock, who went on to work with Metallica, The Cult, Offspring, etc.; "Look at the Dawn" and "Pissed Off... With Good Reason," two virtually lost songs (only available on the 1996 collection CD released by Essential Noise in Canada), especially remastered for this reissue from the original tapes by Jesse Gander at Hive Studios.

Death Was Too Kind features the band's best-known lineup with Wimpy Roy, Gerry Useless, Mike Graham, Dimwit, and Jim Imagawa. Both the LP & the CD come with liner notes!

Fans of AT's BlackNoise imprint and groups like I OBJECT and NAUSEA and even DISASTER STRIKES will love this, but anyone into melodic punk with screaming female vocals will also dig this! The LP has an insert & a printed inside dust jacket, and the CD is a handsome multipanel digipack!

Deluxe, Tip-On Sleeve

Unquestionably Portland's most well-loved punk group, the Wipers formed in the late 1970s and in 1980 released their debut LP, "Is This Real?"twelve songs of stabbing, jittery guitar, snapped vocals, and unabashed teen angst. Full of desperation and yearning, the LP has stood as a blueprint for wretched youth for over 25 years. In the early 1990s "Is This Real?" was given mainstream attention when Nirvana covered two tracks off the record and Cobain announced it was one of the primary influences on his group.

While it was reissued on compact disc and available as a part of the Wipers Boxed Set (Zeno), this is the first time "Is This Real?" has been available on vinyl in the U.S. since its initial release. Remastered from original tapes as provided by Greg Sage himself, the LP is pressed on audiophile grade vinyl and housed in a deluxe tip-on sleeve. Complete with a printed insert that replicates the original inner sleeve, the Jackpot Records reissue of "Is This Real?" is a lavish tribute to one of the greatest recordings of the last 30 years.

The band made its Nitro debut in 1996 with Very Proud of Ya followed by Answer That and Stay Fashionable (re-release, 1997), and Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes in 1997. Other releases include, the now classic, Black Sails In The Sunset (1999), the All Hallowís EP (1999), and The Art Of Drowning (2000).

The combustible punk-jazz trio featuring saxophonist Skerik, bassist Brad Houser and vocaslist/vibraphonist/drummer Mike Dillon have garnered a fanatical cult fan-base over years of incessant touring and critical praise, as well as through related projects like Garage A Trois, Critters Buggin and Mike Dillon's Go-Go Jungle. Gorelick will be released as a limited vinyl pressing with only 500 copies being issued.

"Dead Kenny Gs is a definitive statement of purpose: a resolute denunciation of all-things artificial. Skerik and his compatriots use their un-compromised art to draw an aesthetic line in the sand at the expense of crass commercialization that contaminates our art, our food, and what passes for our political discourse. It's fun, fearless, and, if you are the ass-shaking type, you can get down accordingly." - Popmatters

His brother, musician Mickey Leigh, executive produced the project. "It was of the utmost importance to me that these remaining songs of Joey's be finished properly, and made available for the world to hear," Leigh says of “...Ya Know?”, which is comprised primarily of never-before-heard songs written and sung by his brother.

But this is no half-baked grab-bag of odds and ends. Rather, it's a riveting collection of first-rate songs that embody Joey's trademark intensity and wit, and that can stand proudly alongside his most beloved Ramones compositions. It's also a fitting, if belated, follow-up to Joey's first solo album Don't Worry About Me, which was recorded just prior to his death and released the following year.

“...Ya Know?”, whose title refers to the phrase that was a ubiquitous staple of Joey's conversation, adds a significant new chapter to the seminal punk icon's hugely influential body of work. Among the many talented people Mickey Leigh and Joey's manager Dave Frey reached out to in bringing “...Ya Know?” to fruition was veteran producer Ed Stasium, who was behind the board for many of the Ramones' greatest albums, including their early classics Leave Home, Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin.

In addition to producing ten of the album’s fifteen tracks, Stasium also contributed instrumentation and vocals to each. The swaggering album-opener "Rock 'n' Roll Is the Answer" (co-written with Plasmatics guitarist Richie Stotts) will be released as a limited-edition 7” single for Record Store Day on April 21, 2012.

That song and the hometown shout-out "New York City" demonstrate Joey's knack for channeling his personal passions into bracing anthems. The playfully breezy "Make Me Tremble" (which Joey wrote and recorded with Dictators founder Andy Shernoff) and the bittersweet acoustic ballad "Waiting for That Railroad" find him exploring some of the more introspective territory that he'd been unable to visit within the format of his former band.

Elsewhere on “...Ya Know?”, "I Couldn't Sleep" is a collaboration between brothers Joey and Mickey, who also teamed up to record a romantic alternate version of the Ramones' holiday classic "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)" in Joey's apartment. Meanwhile, a previously unreleased reprise of Joey's late-period Ramones tune "Life's A Gas" ends the album on an appropriately uplifting note.

Also contributing to “...Ya Know?” is an assortment of musicians and producers whose prior relationships with Joey help to give the album an organic vibe that enhances its power and character. The cast of players includes Joan Jett, and Little Steven Van Zandt, who plays guitar on "Party Line" and wrote the album's poignant liner notes, along with such notables as former Ramones drummer Richie Ramone, Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick, Dennis Diken of the Smithereens, Richie Stotts, Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, punk survivor Holly Beth Vincent, members of the Ramones' punk-era contemporaries The Dictators, and producers Jean Beauvoir and Joe Blaney.

The resulting album is a brilliant encapsulation of the qualities that made Joey Ramone one of rock's most unlikely, yet most beloved, heroes. Leigh reflects “Over the past eight years I've been getting barrages of emails and Facebook messages from Joey's fans, wanting to know when this album would be coming out. So having it finally become a reality gives me a feeling of triumph, not for me, but for my brother, and for his fans. And there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that people are gonna be blown away by it."

In those magical couple years of the Dicks’ infancy in Texas, they made a dynamic impact on many people with a stellar live show that mixed punk and politics. Alongside Floyd, the original lineup was guitarist Glen Taylor, bassist Buxf Parrot and drummer Pat Deason. Unfortunately, they imploded in 1983.

Alternative Tentacles is proud to present a very necessary reissue of the band’s beloved first LP. If you aren’t familiar with 1983's Kill From the Heart, then you need to be aware of this bona-fide classic of Reagan-era punk, a record that most likely inspired many of the artists that inspired you. This very important document has been remastered with love by Jello Biafra.

From the hallmark breakneck down strumming and fleet rhythms on songs like "Headbanger," "In the Pit" and "Who Killed Sensei?" to the heavy throttling chorus on "Cruising Chicks," Freak Out! never stops to take a breath. Even the mid-tempo songs seem fast! Add to this TBR's uncanny ability to craft mesmerizing melodies, highlighted by Kody's impossibly high harmonies, and what you have is a pop punk masterpiece!

Often drawing comparisons to the legendary Ramones, Teenage Bottlerocket are certainly the modern flag bearers of the classic sound. Yet, on tracks like "Go With the Flow" and "Never Gonna Tell You" they manage to stretch the narrow boundaries of the three chord structure, while maintaining the authenticity of the genre. Freak Out! delivers the fun, fast, catchy punk-rock that TBR have built their reputation on, with the perfect amount of unexpected thrills to keep you pogoing for a long time to come. LP with digital download.

"Jet-fueled, skate brat punk at its finest." - SPIN

If you miss the pogo-ready pop punk of yesteryear, Teenage Bottlerocket will fill the void." - Absolutepunk