Dan Vapid & the Cheats release S/T album

Dan Vapid & the Cheats made its self-released debut S/T full-length available yesterday. All 15 songs are originals by lead singer/guitarist Dan Schafer. The album was recorded in October 2011 by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Studios in Milwaukee, WI.

The Cheats pressed up 1,000 copies of its album on CD, and are selling a limited-to-100 bundle, which includes an autographed copy of the CD, an instant download, a T-shirt and buttons, for $25 ppd. The six-panel jewel case is cool too, and includes full lyrics and more art.

Stream the album right down below, and if you like it, buy it here. The official release date of the album will be April 9.

The Cheats will be playing its record release show May 5 at Chicago's Cobra Lounge. Door time, opening bands and cover charge are all TBA.

Wax Nostalgic #3: Nirvana - 'Saturday Night Live' bootleg 7''

By Jason Duarte

Artist: Nirvana

Title: Saturday Night Live

Inches: 7

Label: Unknown

Pressing: Unknown (Possibly/500)

Color: Swirly grey

Release date: Unknown

I don't own much bootleg vinyl (if any besides this one), but I couldn't pass this up when I saw it.
It was September 2009 and I was on tour with my old band, The Kobanes, in Japan. We were trekking around Hiroshima for the day and visited Dumb! Records - one of the labels (also a record store) that co-released our album (the other label being Fixing a Hole Records).
I'd already had the way common "Sliver" b/w "Dive" 7'' by Nirvana and thought this bootleg would be a nice addition to my budding Nirvana collection. It was 500 yen, which translates to about $6 USD. I picked this up with some other records (The Riverdales' S/T album, The Damned's Music For Pleasure, etc.) and neatly put them in my rolling suitcase.

I remember it was awesome hanging with Nass (owner of Dumb! Records/drummer for So-Cho Pistons) and his girlfriend in the store. It was a small store with beer on tap and bottles of soda for sale. They had a pretty decent selection of vinyl, and a lot of CDs. They also had a Johnny Ramone signature guitar hanging on the wall, a signed Teenage Bottlerocket/Ergs! 7'', and other fun punk memorabilia. It also humbled me to see our CD, Japan Invasion, on display above the CD section.

This 7'' features live versions of "Rape Me" and "Heart-Shaped Box." As you can see, the vinyl has blank labels, and was pressed on black, and a swirly grey (shown) color of vinyl. I did a little research and found the date of the Saturday Night Live episode where the tracks were recorded for this 7'' was September 25, 1993.

Fun fact #1 - in 1993, Kurt Cobain called Pat Smear of The Germs, and asked if he'd be Nirvana's second guitarist. Pat thought it was a joke his friend Carlos Nunez was playing on him, but it wasn't. He accepted, and September 25, 1993 - this same SNL performance, was the first time Pat performed with Nirvana on second guitar (see links from the show above). He played with Nirvana till Cobain's death in 1994. That, to me, makes this 7'' go from pretty cool to incredible, and I'm fairly certain that's the reason it was bootlegged in the first place. As far as the pressing goes, one eBay lister claims there were 500 pressed on grey.

Fun fact #2 - Eric Cobain, Kurt's cousin, did the artwork for our album, Japan Invasion (see below). Holy Nirvana twists and turns, Batman!

Hot Water Music debuts 'Exister' album art, track listing

Gainesville, Florida's Hot Water Music returns this year with its eighth studio full-length, Exciter, via Rise Records on May 15. This will be HWM's first album since 2004's The New What Next.

The album was recorded at Fort Collins, CO's Blasting Room alongside producer/drummer Bill Stevenson of Descendents fame. HWM allegedly plans to announce a U.S. tour following this year's SXSW and Bamboozle festivals.
Check out HWM's most recent 7'' single featuring "The Fire, The Steel, The Tread" b/w "Up To Nothing," released on No Idea Records last year.

Exister track listing:

1. Mainline
2. Boy, You’re Gonna Hurt Someone
3. State of Grace
4. Drown In It

5. Drag My Body
6. Safety
7. Exister
8. Wrong Way
9. Take No Prisoners
10. Pledge Wore Thin
11. No End Left In Sight
12. The Traps
13. Paid In Full

Matt Skiba and the Sekrets debut first song off 'Babylon'

By Jason Duarte

All photos, Superball Music

There's been some buzz about Matt Skiba's newest project, Matt Skiba and the Sekrets, and their debut album, Babylon.

The band consists of Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio) on guitar and vocals, Hunter Burgen (A.F.I.) on bass and Jarrod Alexander (My Chemical Romance) on drums.

I scoped the track listing, and noticed some of the tunes have already been released via Matt Skiba's Demos album, which came out in 2010 on Asian Man Records.

"Haven't You" is about Skiba's grandmother, and he claims he wrote it a while back. Also from his Demos album will be "How the Hell Did We Get Here?" and "Angel of Deaf."

Babylon comes out May 8 via Superball Records.

Listen to "All Fall Down" and check out a cool Q&A here.

Babylon track listing:

1. Voices

2. All Fall Down

3. Luciferian Blues

4. Haven't You?

5. The End of Joy

6. You

7. Olivia

8. Falling Like Rain

9. How the Hell Did We Get Here?

10. Angel of Deaf

Wax Nostalgic #2: The Ergs! - '3 Guys, 12 Eyes' 7''

By Jason Duarte

Artist: The Ergs!

Title: 3 Guys, 12 Eyes

Inches: 7

Label: Whoa Oh Records

Pressing: First (black vinyl/yellow cover/incorrect 33-1/3 rpm labels)

Color: Black

Release date: 2001

This week, I wanted to feature one of my more recently-acquired pieces of wax, even though it's been around longer than my little sister. On Friday, February 10, I visited my pal Mike Hunchback at his record shop, Co-Op 87 Records, in Brooklyn for the first time. All I had with me was my backpack, which I had been carrying with me everywhere since I landed in Queens the morning before, and didn't know if I would be able to transport any records, no matter how tempted I knew I would be.
I wasn't in the store for a minute before I spotted a copy of The Ergs!' 3 Guys, 12 Eyes 7'' (in the yellow cover) behind the counter. After chatting a bit, I asked Mike if it was for sale.

"For you, sure," Mike said. "How's $3 sound?"

I was shocked at his killer deal, and knew I'd be a fool to turn down the foundation; the building block; the quintessential stepping stone that one of my favorite bands of all time had created and sprung forth from.
So I perused most of Co-Op 87's inventory and made a neat pile of records I wanted to bring back home. Mike rung everything up, and the total was $20-something and some change. He grabbed the 3 Guys, 12 Eyes 7'' and dropped it on top and said, "And that one's a freebie."

"What?! Are you sure?!" I asked him.

"Yeah, man," he said nonchalantly. I wasn't going to contest it. Instead, I'd make it a point to return and check out all the records I didn't flip through that day. He packed them in a sturdy cardboard mailer and double-bagged it in brown paper bags that had "Co-Op 87" stamped on them. He gave me walking directions to the House Boat/Mikey Erg show at Death By Audio, 1.1 miles up the road so I said goodbye and started walking, records in hand.

Wax Nostalgic #1: Green Day - 'Warning' 7''

11'' x 17'' poster

By Jason Duarte

Artist: Green Day

Title: Warning b/w "Scumbag"/"Outsider" (Ramones)

Inches: 7

Label: Adeline Records

Pressing: First?

Color: Gold

Release date: December 11, 2000

Since this is the first Wax Nostalgic entry, I thought I'd start with the first 7'' I ever ordered via mailorder.

I just started high school a few months prior to this release, and had been a Green Day fan since Dookie. One of the Green Day CDs I bought that year had a mailorder catalog for Adeline Records in the case. I remember lying on the floor of my bedroom in the basement of the house I just moved to five months prior. I remember examining everything on it and getting totally sucked in because it was stuff I'd never heard of, or Green Day stuff I knew I'd like and want, but had never seen in places like Best Buy or Tower Records or even Disc Replay.

At 14, I owned no vinyl or turntable - only a few cassettes, CDs and a big stack of mix tapes I made by recording songs I liked off the radio and affixing stickers to them with tiny handwriting to tell what was on them. I knew vinyl was an older format, and had always heard things at record stores or from older people who said things like, "music sounds better on vinyl." I brushed it off as mindless nostalgia crap - older people refusing to accept a new format, a better format; the digital format. Why read grooves pressed in plastic at 33 rpms when you can read it at 5,200 rpms and cut out all the scratching and fuzz? Plus it was way smaller and easier to buy.

I still wanted to know why, so even though I didn't own a turntable, I made it a mental goal to one day get one, and I'd invest in vinyl until I got one.
I think the Warning 7'' cost $4 ppd, and it came with an 11'' x 17'' Green Day poster, so I was sold. I knew it was risky to send cash in the mail, so I gave my mom the cash and asked her to write a check to Adeline Records for $4. I stuck the check and the order form in an envelope and ran out to the mailbox and flipped the flag up.
It seemed like weeks (it probably was) until I received that flat 7'' x 7'' brown cardboard package in the mail. "FRAGILE - DO NOT BEND." I carefully opened one side and pulled out the 7''. It smelled like fresh ink and plastic. There was no insert or liner notes or even dust sleeve - just the yellow/gold record in its cover and the poster. I unfolded the poster, admired it, then carefully folded it back up, trying not to get my oily fingerprints on it, and stuck it back in the cover with the record.

A year or two passed and my mom's husband said he had an old turntable in storage somewhere that I could use if I was careful. I dug for it through boxes in the room where the water heater, furnace and mice resided, and finally found it. I brought it to my room, attached the wires to my stereo and gave it a spin.

It was beautiful. I couldn't believe I was listening to a Green Day song I had on CD on this newly discovered format, with new songs (to my ears) on the other side. "What the fuck do these songs sound like?" I thought to myself since the day I cross-referenced all my CDs to see if they were on any of them. They weren't. A Ramones cover? "Scumbag?" I finally knew, and this turntable was the key to decoding these treasures I hung on to for what seemed like forever.

As soon as I flipped the record over from the song I'd already heard hundreds of times, I was trekking a new frontier. Why were these songs never on any of their albums? What could they have done to this Ramones song, and really, who the hell were The Ramones? I was so excited to hear what I only inferred was super ultra mega rare Green Day material. Keep in mind, this was before you could hop online, run a search and get instant gratification. I had to withstand time, my own excitement and patience for two years before I could unlock these treasures. Even if there was a way to hop online and get those songs, I didn't know how (that would soon change).
The rest of the world stopped when "Scumbag" started, and I remember lifting and dropping the needle repeatedly, playing side B over and over again. I don't think I ever flipped this 7'' back to side A. A whole new world was opened to me because of the Warning 7''. None of my friends sought out vinyl, and it seems this was several years before its big comeback. As a 14-year-old with and no record shop within walking or biking distance and no friends in my new town anyway, music evolved from being just a passion to becoming my new hobby. CDs were so easy to get, but this vinyl stuff was hard to find.

So began my quest and passion for vinyl.

Announcing WAX NOSTALGIC MONDAYS!

Mondays inherently suck because of one thing and one thing only: work after a couple days of enjoying your life. So being the two loves of my life are music and writing, I'll be kicking off Wax Nostalgic Mondays tomorrow. Let me explain! I will peruse my collection of vinyl new and old, common and obscure, warped or mint...you get the idea. Instead of a straight-up review, it will be more of a personal narrative about the record like how it came to my possession, where I got it, why I love it (or hate it), etc. I'm not limiting this to punk, because if I were, most of you would probably own all the same stuff and wouldn't be interested. Anyway, stay tuned tomorrow for the first entry! My hope is to solicit comments from readers sharing their stories too.

Tune in tomorrow!