Reviews
I first became acquainted with the Goons in 1997 on one of my first trips to Washington, DC to see a punk show. I was going to see the Subhumans on their reunion tour, and as I walked into the Capitol Ballroom, pretty much the largest club in DC that hosted punk shows, I was shocked to see at least 75 kids out of the few hundred in attendance going the fuck off while a bunch of young-looking punks belted out 1000mph-melodi-thrash like the Circle Jerks used to make it.
Since then I've seen the Goons a number of times, and they've always seemed to me like the little punk band that could. They played out constantly, but never seemed to become well-known outside of DC, despite ferocious live shows and scorching recorded material (just check out their out-of-print LP No Leaders). However, despite the absence of the kinds of favors that get most bands ahead, the Goons' audiences grew bigger and those in the know followed them closely, waiting patiently for new material.
Their latest disc is the appropriately-titled Live at the Black Cat, a near-perfect document of one of the best live punk bands to call the United States home. As Squirrel Heart's ad says, you get "everything but the beer and the B.O." with this disc; the fidelity is absolutely perfect, a professionally mixed soundboard recording that actually holds up in quality with the band's studio material. The perfectly selected set list (which careens out of the gate with "White Tide," easily the band's best song) also finds the band at their tightest and singer Serge at his most obnoxiously poetic, delivering exactly the kind of classic between-song rant that Goons fans the country over have learned to love.
And in addition to the scorching live set, the kind folks at Squirrel Heart were great enough to include two mpeg videos from the show which, remarkably, match and perhaps even surpass the quality of the audio material. The monstrous stage dives and the invigorating singalongs are all there, waiting to be unleashed by anyone with a personal computer (or Macintosh).
Live at the Black Cat, an essential purchase in and of itself, becomes a necessity now that the classic No Leaders has gone out of print. So support this band and support this label, because this is where the spirit of punk rock lives on. Rarely does punk sound this raw or this dangerous, so if you're one of those people constantly complaining about how lame today's punk bands are this is one for you, Paco.
Deep Fried Bonanza
|
|
