Besides Asides

Sorry for the late update.

In the fall of 2007, freshly reunited 90's pop punk/hardcore act Lifetime did a tour of Japan. Somewhere in there they played a short acoustic set in a record shop in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Someone filmed four of those songs, and I've ripped the audio from them in surprisingly good quality. It is a real treat to hear these classics and one new song re-arranged. I hope you enjoy this:

During the 90's major labels seemed to be signing bands who came from the punk and general American Underground left and right. These bands took their indie spirit and married it to bigger budgets, wider promotion and better production. These bands became what is wildly known "alternative" bands, over time bands in the mainstream started to copy these bands watering down their sound more and more and therefore what was the "alternative" became the mainstream.

While technically still on an indie The Gaslight Anthem's blend of Springsteen roots rock, 80's new wave and college rock and 90's New Jersey punk rock reminds me a lot of what those so-called alternative bands were doing in the 90's. Along with Against Me! they could be spearheading a push for credible rock bands gaining a more prominent presence in the mainstream market. I for one am all for it if it means more people get exposed to better music than Nickelback or Three Days Grace or whatever the fuck they play on alternative radio nowadays. In honour of Gaslight's new album American Slang being released this past week I went and collected songs from all the band's acoustic radio sessions and the like that they made while supporting their last album The '59 Sound. I went for the best sounding version of each song as they did a lot of sessions those two years and certain songs had plenty of versions. Sadly, the band didn't record every song from the album acoustically so there is 8 songs from that album, a slew of covers and a few songs from other projects. So, here is The '59 Sound Acoustic Sessions:

In 2008 Lansing Michigan's Cheap Girls released their debut LP Find Me A Drink Home and it quickly has become one of my favourite releases in recent memory. They mine similar power pop territory that the Smoking Popes and Gin Blossoms did before them exploring life, love cigarettes and mistakes. Anywho, sometime possibly before the release of that LP they recorded the entire thing acoustically and I got my greedy little hands on it. Here it is:

So some of you may or may not know but this blog takes it's name from a song by Alkaline Trio called "San Francisco". I'm not sure why I chose it other than thinking it was a funny musical reference. I don't think even I realized how much I really loved the band until I embarked on creating this three "disc" collection of non-LP material. In the past decade AK3 has released two such collections but there was enough material left over for another. So what did I do? I decided to make my own and split it up into b-sides, studio demos and acoustic songs.

The first "disc" is the b-sides, many of which happen to be covers, so I structured this disc to represent the band's influences. The ruckus intensity of the band's early work can be heard in the 80's hardcore punk of The Misfits and Nomeansno. Matt Skiba's flair for the gothic and dramatic in his lyrics can be seen in TSOL, the Sisters of Mercy and the Rocky Horror soundtrack representing in another crop of covers. A love for the great pop-punk history of their own city can be heard in the familiar sounds of the Smoking Popes and Pegboy renditions. Finally, the band reveals what has drawn them toward the full pop-rock sound of their current work with covers of The Cars and The Psychedelic Furs.

The second part to this Skiba/Adriano love-in I've got going on is packed full of studio demos from the band's 1996 demo tape, to bits from the LP's "From Here To Infirmary", "Crimson" and "Agony & Irony". As well as, demos of b-sides like "War Brain" and "Burned Is The House". This "disc" was made to represent the band's process, how they take The Misfits, Smoking Popes and The Cars and work it into the unique sound we all love or hate.

The last piece of this collection is full of acoustic versions of songs the band recorded for their LP's as a full band. After all is said and done it comes together for a little deconstruction. In some cases I like these stripped down versions of songs better than their originals, "Fine" for instance. The two songs that open up this disc "Snake Oil Tanker" and a live acoustic cover of Tegan and Sara's great "Wake Up Exhausted" I chose to start things off not only because of chronology but also they reveal the band's lighter side which is a lot of their charm that they don't take the gloom and doom too seriously.

Thanks to Pants for the artwork, enjoy:

Download Part 1

Download Part 2

Download Part 3