The Deckard 7″ was the first vinyl released by people who were really close to me. Up to that point, it had been demo tapes. The history of how this all happened is something that I think back to often and remember just how amazing that time in my life was.

It all culminates in the Deckard 7″, but the road getting there was a fun one that, probably more than anything in my life, made me who I am today.

I guess it all started when I was five and in Kindergarten. There was a kid there named Chris Murrary. One day, for Show-and-Tell, he brought in the record of the “Good Ol’ Boys” Theme song for the Dukes of Hazzard. This was 1980 and the Duke boys were pretty much all we thought about.

From then on, Murray and I were very close friends. Through elementary school and middle school, we’d hang out, go to Knoebles Grove (an amusement park where we’d drop a ton of quarters playing Contra) and were generally great pals.

By the time high school found us, we had drifted a bit. Murray made a new friend – a greasy kid I saw once in awhile. He was usually getting yelled at by teachers or skipping out on class. His name was Todd Fogel and he was sort of a legend at Mifflinburg High.

The summer before my 11th grade year, Murray dropped by my house and asked me if I wanted to be in a hardcore band. I had a vague idea of what hardcore was, though mostly I thought it was metal. I was into The Cure and Anthrax – some rap too. Hardcore wasn’t a huge leap in a different direction, but I still didn’t really get it.

He introduced me to Todd Fogel, our drummer. Except that he didn’t have drums. We also didn’t have a place to practice. But Todd had been in a band before. He was in the seminal Lewisburg hardcore band Bound By Reason. For some reason or another, his time with Bound was over and he was looking to move on.

In no time at all, we became Reality By Choice. A very straight-edge sounding name, which is odd since both Murray and Todd smoked. But in central PA circa 1989, that was all you needed to claim the edge. We had four or five songs with some pretty shaky lyrics (“Heading down a one way street, going nowhere – try to face reality, you can’t escape!”).

Murray sang/yelled, I played guitar and Todd drummed (he got a very used set off of Lunacy’s drummer, McKinny). We practiced in my parents’ basement and played one show for a girl’s birthday party. That was probably horrible.

The band broke up, but then we got back together under the name “Blank Space” – so named because Todd would record every session and wanted us to leave a “blank space” before starting the song. We moved to Todd Fogel’s basement and added Casey Murray (no relation to Chris Murray) on bass and became The Foreseen. Somewhere in this, Todd moved to bass (or guitar) and we got a drummer named Russ. He was a pretty scary guy who drove a Camaro or something.

Through a lot of this was a freaky kid named Mike Sullivan. His goofiness is still one of my top five favorite things ever. He wasn’t a member in the band or anything like that, he was just always there, cracking jokes and making up parody lyrics. A Bound By Reason lyric went “Always stepping in another man’s tracks, trying to make tracks of your own” and Mike changed it to “Always stepping on another man’s cats, trying to make cats of your own!” I still can’t listen to Primus’s “Too Many Puppies” without hearing “I won’t eat a wet potato!” during the verses.

During the next summer, Murray’s time with us was through and Mike joined the band. We became Lawn Dart Casualties, named after an Ed’s Redeeming Qualities song. From that point on, it came together (as much as a garage band can). We played a bunch of shows, including two at The Unisound in Reading.

While Lawn Darts was going on, a few other bands were happening too. Some were even practicing in Todd’s basement with us.

After Bound By Reason broke up, they sort of became Sunblind. Sunblind was a mass of chaotic fun with oddly tuned guitars and Zim, a hairy guy who was often grumpy. Bryan Lippincott was in Sunblind. He and I became fast friends. Through him I met Brian Broadt.

It’s around this time that things get a little fuzzy. I’m leaving out quite a bit, I know that. A lot of this is because I finished high school and went to college for a semester. That put an end to Lawn Darts. The summer before college and every weekend when I was in college, I’d be at Bryan, Murray and Todd’s house on Chestnut Street in Sunbury. Brian Broadt may have lived there too, but I can’t remember.

Somewhere during this time, Bryan and I started a zine called The Re-Activist. There was also a zine we all did called Accelerator.

They started a band called Fullerton (named after a street they saw in New York City). I think they needed a bassist or something. I filled in. We played one show in State College (or Williamsport).

Here is where things get even more fuzzy. Fullerton broke up, but Todd kept the name and became Ed Fullerton, country radio station host. I hung out with him a lot during this period. I don’t think anyone was doing anything musical now. I could be wrong though.

Around this time, I moved to Columbus, Ohio. Deckard may have formed a little before that. I remember that I had their demo and saw them a few times. Their demo was amazing. Their live show was even better. Broadt screamed into the pickups on his guitar! That pretty well thrilled me.

Deckard played Columbus and crashed on my floor. They also played Erie with Brother’s Keeper and Prema. I went to see that show too.

By the time I moved back to central PA and reconnected with them, the Deckard 7″ had already been released. Deckard may have even broken up.

So, you see, I don’t have much memory of the Deckard 7″. I can’t even remember how I got it.

Nevertheless, here you go, the Deckard 7″ – a piece of my youth that I could never place.

Deckard – Just Plain Ordinary 7″
1) Exclusionary
2) Velocity

Listen here…

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Go ahead and get it here…

Technical Information:
Media Used:
Vinyl 7″ from my personal collection.

Artwork Scanned from Original @ 72 dpi with XSane .996
Edited and Restored Using GIMP Image Editor 2.6.6

With a lot of the records that I’ll be posting, I can remember a time and a place of when I got it. But with Botch’s John Birch Conspiracy Theory 7″, I’ve got no idea at all. There’s a good chance that it was when I ran a record distro with Kerri Dick.

She and I would sell punk records at shows and after a few months, we had amassed quite a collection. Mostly, we were trying to expose kids to new music. That would have been 1997. Most punk kids still had their record players at that point.

I wasn’t yet in a band (that would have been Waterstain Eulogy, which I joined in 1999), but I was putting on shows at the New Berlin Community Center. One of the shows that I remember was with Egress and The Gray AM. Maybe Mid Carson July played too, I can’t remember – we had a ton of shows there.

But it was during that time that I heard Botch. I was into screamy music like I Hate Myself and Lincoln, but Botch took it to a more complicated level.

On this 7″, which I believe was their second, they covered “O Fortuna,” the opening movement in Carl Orf’s opera, Carmina Burana. The rest of the songs are tightly controlled chaos. I loved it then and love it now.

For some reason or another, my copy of this 7″ has always been very crackly. Even when it was new, it was full of tiny pops and clicks. Since these recordings are available on Hydra Head Records (on a CD that compiles some of Botch’s early stuff), I’ve decided to not clean these tracks.

If you want to hear them all cleaned up, go buy the CD (you should). But there’s something about the crackles, especially during “O Fortuna” that takes me back to the late 90s and to the fun idealism that my life was way back then.

For me, this 7″ was all about the vocals. It was probably because of this record that I wanted to sing (well, scream) in a band. And that pretty well changed my life. So as far as pivotal records are concerned, this was a big one for me.

This was a four song 7″, but the first two songs run together. I didn’t want to split them, so I have them as one track.

Side One
1) God vs. Science
2) Third Party Tragedy

Side Two
1) Inch By Inch
2) O Fortuna

Here, you can listen to a couple of tracks.

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God vs. Science > Third Part in a Tragedy

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O Fortuna

And go ahead, get it here. (25 MB)

Technical Information:
Media Used:
Vinyl 7″ from my personal collection.

Artwork Scanned from Original @ 72 dpi with XSane .996
Edited and Restored Using GIMP Image Editor 2.6.6

Wormleysburg is that town that’s sort of just north of Camp Hill, right across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, PA. I’ve driven through it a bunch of times. The first punk show I ever went to was in… well, that was in Lemoyne, which is kind of near Wormleysburg. Anyway, I don’t have much to say about that strangely-named town, except that one amazing band called it home.

Admiral put out two seven inches in 1990 and 1991, taking the DC emocore and making it their own. Admiral was from Wormleysburg.

Their first release was recorded in March of 1990 at Inner Ear Recording Studios in Arlington, Virginia. Fugazi, Rites of Spring, Minor Threat and Q & Not U all recorded there. It was released on Soul Force Records. It’s a great 7″, but I heard their second one first.

When I first heard Admiral’s 7″ put out by Ebullition Records I was completely blown away. I can’t even remember how or when I heard it, but it must have been in the mid-90s. I probably just ordered a bunch of records from Ebullition and this was one of them.

After a few listens, I was at once elated that I had found them and bummed that there wasn’t more. At that time, I didn’t know of their first 7″ or of their song on the Significant Records Beneath the Wheel compilation (which I still don’t have).

Most folks reading this probably have never heard of Admiral. And maybe they’re an acquired taste. But give it a try, it’s probably not like much you’ve ever heard before.

And if you have heard of them, well, hopefully you’ll appreciate having both 7″s on high quality mp3s, lovingly ripped from vinyl. The zip file has all of the songs plus the 7″ covers and inserts.

Admiral – 1st 7″
1) Brother Can You Spare a Dime
2) Horns Lay Silent
3) Seasonal

Admiral – Revolving and Loading (2nd 7″)
1) Revolving and Loading
2) Fit
3) Meter and Rule

Admiral’s vocalist, Sean Linwood, later sang for the freaking brilliantly amazing Navio Forge (you must here this). Guitarist, Joseph McCredmund played in Hoover and Crown Hate Ruin.

Take a listen to two songs here:

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Brother Can You Spare a Dime

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Fit

Get them both in one zip file here! (50MB)

Technical Information:
Media Used:
Vinyl 7″ from my personal collection.

Artwork Scanned from Original @ 72 dpi with XSane .996
Edited and Restored Using GIMP Image Editor 2.6.6

Over the years I’ve amassed a fair-sized 7″ collection. I got my first two 7″s – both comps – in 1991. Since then, I’ve picked up a record or two at shows, distros and stores. So I thought that it would be fun to share some of them that are out of print and mostly forgotten.

I probably don’t have anything incredibly rare, but it gives me something to do and a bit of nostalgia never killed anyone.

Three or four years ago, I ripped a few of them from vinyl to digital with varying results. I didn’t know much about the process way back then and they didn’t turn out so well. The equipment I had wasn’t more than a novelty turntable and the “IN” jack on the back of my computer.

Nowadays, I’ve got a new turntable, an Audio-Technica PL-120 (the poor man’s Technics SL-1200 series). The Audio-Technica PL-120 came with a built in phono preamp, but something wasn’t right with it (has to do with messed up waveforms – don’t worry about it). So, I got myself a pretty decent preamp (TCC TC-750LC). It’s quite an improvement. And instead of my computer’s very iffy soundcard, I now use a Roland Edirol UA-1EX USB external soundcard.

On the software end of things, I’m fully Linux-based – most programs for Linux are free. I am using Audacity, a free audio software program that allows me to record, mix, edit and slightly repair audio files. It’s definitely more limited than Cool Edit Pro, but it does everything I need. To take the pops and licks out of the vinyl rips, I use Gnome Wave Cleaner. I’ve been very impressed with how well it works.

I’m not really sure when I’ll start this one, but I think I’ll do it in alphabetical order. That’s how my 7″s are stored, so why not?

That means I’ll be starting with the incredibly underrated Pennsylvania band, Admiral. I’ve got two of their 7″s.

I’ll probably do one a week. Maybe one every other week. But I’ll try to keep it a pretty regular thing.

You lucky people.