START OF SOMETHING BIGGER

You might think that any old fart that listens to punk rock from thirty odd years ago is stuck in the past, or trying to bring about a feeling of deja cool. But when I revisited the stuff below, the first thing that I flashed on was what the feeling was like, not the feeling of the music, or the feeling of what it felt like to be in with the out crowd. When I heard these, it reminded me of the the excitement of the open ended possibilities that these records represented. These tiny upstart record companies that seemed to pop up over night were not lapping up the condensation as it dripped off of the major labels tall cool one. They stepped in the puddle and went another day without water.

With the possible exception of the odd private pressing, or token 45 by a local bar band, these were the first independently released records that most of my friends had ever heard. They most definitely were for me. Just as in that old punk rock cliche "they can't play and they're in a band, and I can play three chords...", these records proved "I can put out a record". And many did. The links below lead to a good size chunk of ground zero for the L.A. punk scene and the surge of independent West Coast labels. These records and others released about that same time did no less than change the game.

These links lead to separate posts at Killed By Death, each with two to four songs, with the original sleeves . All of these records were released within a span of about two years on L.A. based labels, and all of the bands were from L.A., with the exception of the Dils and the Avengers, who from San Francisco.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY KILLED BY DEATH ~ 

Listen:

The Dils - I Hate the Rich Two songs
The Weirdos – Destroy All Music E.P Three songs
The Avengers – We Are The One E.P. Three songs
The Bags – Survive Two songs
The Dils – 198 Seconds Of…  Two songs
X – Adult Books Two songs
Black Randy and The Metro Squad – Trouble at the Cup E.P. Three songs
Randoms – ABCD/Let’s Get Rid Of New York Two songs
The Weirdos – We Got The Neutron Bomb Two songs
What Records Comp. E.P. Three songs, Contollers, Eyes and Skulls
The Deadbeats – Kill The Hippies E.P. Four songs
The Germs – Lexicon Devil E.P. Three songs
Black Randy and the Metrosquad – I Slept In An Arcade Two songs