This Is Book’s Music

Fans of the Orlando, Florida-based band Go Rydell have been waiting for their debut album to drop when it was announced they were signed to Black Numbers, and now they only have about a month left to wait.

The band is coming out with The Golden Age, and fans of punk with a slight pop touch will want to get to know what this band is about. The album will be released on vinyl in a limited pressing of only 500 copies (100 Blue, 150 White, 250 Green), and each LP comes with access to a free MP3 download of the album. That’s perfect: MP3′s for your digital player of choice, the LP for your turntable enjoyment. Black Numbers have the album available to pre-order, including a package deal where collectors can order one copy of each color pressing, along with a 4-record package deal where they’ll throw in a black vinyl test pressing (audiophiles will tell you the black vinyl pressing is arguably better sounding than a color vinyl, but this is punk rock, who cares right?) Head over to Black Numbers to select which package suits your listening needs.

Go Rydell just hit the road with Nightlights, so if you’re on the East Coast, see where they’ll be next:
JUN 23 – Pembroke Pines, FL @ The Talent Farm w/ Touche Amore
JUN 24 – Orlando, FL @ Hoops Tavern w/ Touche Amore, Maker, Late Nite Wars, Nightlights, Battle
JUN 25 – Atlanta, GA @ PS Warehouse w/ Nightlights, Maker, Late Nite Wars
JUN 26 – Greenville, SC @ The Channel w/ Nightlights
JUN 27 – Greensboro, NC @ Arts By Alexander w/ Nightlights, Late Night Wars
JUN 29 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel w/ Nightlights
JUN 30 – Philadelphia, PA @ The OX w/ Nightlights
JUL 01 – Nanuet, NY @ Le Garage w/ Nightlights, Motorcycle Industry
JUL 02 – Mendon, MA @ RAD Skatepark w/ Nightlights
JUL 03 – Garden City, NY @ EHS w/ Nightlights
JUL 04 – Happauge, NY @ House Show w/ Nightlights, Ink and Lead
JUL 05 – Hackettstown, NJ @ House Show w/ Nightlights, Banquets
JUL 06 – Wester Chester, PA @ Basement Show w/ Nightlights, Bearings, Spraynard
JUL 07 – York, PA @ The Skid Row Garage w/ Nightlights
JUL 08 – Bethlehem, PA @ Secret Art Space w/ Nightlights
JUL 09 – Baltimore, MD @ Charm City Art Space w/ Nightlights
JUL 11 – Savannah, GA @ Sweet Mellisa’s Pizza Place w/ Nightlights
JUL 13 – Pembroke Pines, FL @ The Talent Farm w/ Nightlights, Featherweight

Punk and hardcore heads will know Walter Schreifels from his time with Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand, and Youth For Today. Today, he’s doing things under his own name and will be dropping his debut solo album.

An Open Letter To The Scene (Big Scary Monsters (UK)/Academy Fight Song (US)) is an album that will no doubt be a statement in itself, lyrically and musically. The album was scheduled for release right around now, but pressing issues in both the US and UK have pushed it another month, so it is expected to hit the streets in early May.

Those in the US can pre-order it here, UK fans can head over there.

Omegas are a Canadian band who have been punching people left and right with their music, and they recently came out with a 7″ called Sonic Order, a 4-song EP. The record is a split effort between No Idea Records and High Anxiety. Only 500 copies have been pressed, you can order yours here. Digital numb nuts can go to iTunes.

I’m going to be honest: I have no idea what these guys are singing about, but it sounds cool. They’re called Bavaria Bootskiosk and they’ve just released an 7-song EP called Comeback des Jahres, released as a 7″ record and as a cassette tape by a label who proudly call themselves Shit Attack Records.

It wasn’t that long ago that fans of underground/alternative/post-modern/college rock were praising the sounds of Jawbreaker. They were one of many bands no one thought would ever go major. A year after the release of the band’s debut album Unfun, the world of music changed. They remained indie until the end, but as far as many were concenred, it was Unfun that was near and dear.

20 years later, Unfun is being reissued, with the vinyl version retaining the format’s 12 tracks while the CD holds true with its 16 tracks. The vinyl version will be packaged with a bonus 7″, featuring the Whack & Blite EP and the uncredited “Busy”. All of it was remastered from the original analog master tapes by John Golden, so even if you still have your original LP, you’ll want to hear what Golden did with this. Vinyl version also comes with download code so you can have the album in MP3 form.

It will be released on March 30th, you can pre-order your copy through Insound (click the box below.)

Joan Jett was “a part of the gang: in the early days of MTV, becoming a staple for the fledgling cable network to the point where Weird Al Yankovic would parody her with “I Love Rocky Road”. You loved her passion for the music, that aggression and attitude, and maybe you felt that was sexy. I still remember back when “world premiere videos” were an event, I wanted to see the video for “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)”. I dozed off, but when I woke up she flashed me. WHOA!

Anyway, one can easily have similar flashbacks or memories with her music, and with a new biopic about her and her time with The Runaways, people are realizing how much her music still holds up. She has compiled a greatest hits album with all of her great songs, including “I Love Rock’N'Roll”, “Crimson & Clover”, “Bad Reputation”, “I Hate Myself For Loving You”, “Light Of Day”, and three updated versions of Runaways songs, including “School Days”, “You Drive Me Wild”, and “Love Is Pain”. With luck, this greatest hits collection and the biopic will inspire a younger generation of girls and young women to pick up a guitar and become maybe not the next Joan Jett, but the next movement of ladies who will share an inspiration to rock out for the fuck of it.

Her Greatest Hits album will be released as a single CD and of course be made available through the digital networks, but you can now pre-order it as a 2-record set from Amazon.

The Reveling‘s 3D Radio is a 4-song self-released EP that works as a demo and a mini-LP release to introduce themselves to people and in the process, make fans hungry to hear much more. Their style of punk rock is mixed in with the pop sensibilities of bands like The Buzzcocks, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and Blink 182, and early Green Day, with a minimal amount of doodling and a maximum amount of powerful lyrics, strong messages, and instrumental strength. Even the dual guitar solo was a nice touch, something that might be called a cliched hair metal tactic by some but it’s not in this case.

Drummer Jay Weinberg is the son of E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg, and his drumming skills shows the love and admiration of his father. Vocalist Sean Morris, guitarist Dave Kramer, and bassist Dennis Murphy play in a way that shows the influence of all of the melodic punk from the early 90′s, proving that Generation X wasn’t just an era of slackers after all. Perhaps these guys, with an unabashed energy that is most welcome, will gear up for what will be an explosive decade of music, and help sections of the world rock once again. It makes me feel younger again when I used to go to cramped VFW halls waiting for bands to fill up rooms with a capacity of a mere 72, and while that dates me as an old-man-to-be, I’m not old enough to forget what this music means and can mean to those who need to hear this.

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If you’ve been a fan of The Wonder Years, then you probably know this already, so skip. If you’re new to them, let me tell you that they are a punk band out of Philadelphia, although the subject line/header told you this. The band have been signed to No Sleep Records, who are now taking pre-orders for the sophomore album, The Upsides, before it hits literal and digital streets on January 26th.

The album will be released on CD along with digital, and those who buy it on CD have the option to get a bonus 7″ single as part of a number of package deals. You can find out more about those deals by clicking here.

The New Jersey-based Black Numbers record label have just signed the Oklahoma-band Over Stars And Gutter, and the news arrives with word that the band’s debut album will be reissued, this time on vinyl for the first time.

The group released their debut album, Consider This Your Curse, independently this past summer, but vinyl junkies will be able to hear it on their preferred format. The LP will have a limited pressing of only 500 copies (300 orange, 200 yellow). Pre-orders are now underway, you can order them through a number of different combinations by checking the Black Numbers web store.

If vinyl is not your thing, you are able to download the album in different digitized formats, including FLAC lossless, by heading to the Black Numbers’ Bandcamp page, where you are able to make a donation-of-your-choice to download and listen. Yes, you can download it for free, but if you like it, show some support or listen before you opt to get the LP or CD. One of the songs on the album is “I’d Rather Be Dead“, which you can download right now at no cost to you (4.8mb).

Over Stars And Gutters will be playing a number of shows for the remainder of the year and in early 2010 with John Moreland & The Black Gold Band, with stops in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Missouri, along with a show in Oklahome City on the 17th at The Conservatory (8911 N. Western).

Punk rock comes in all shapes and sizes, and if you are a fan or collector of the music, it means it comes in various forms of sound quality. Rusted Shut hasn’t been around in years but Dead is an album that documents their early sound by taking some of their old recordings and having the fans decide for themselves.

It sounds as if these were transferred directly from cassette, and while that’s far from a bad thing, the original recordings were not up to par. What you hear though is a sense of energy that comes from a band who sounded like they just wanted to rip shit up because they can. The CD is properly indexed so you can access each track, but a lot of times it sounds like there are seven or eight songs in one track, with no way of telling which is the proper song, where things begin or end. But it’s fun, loud, raunchy, nasty, and disgusting all at the same time.