Baby On Board?
So I've had an idea for a more substantive blog entry kicking around for a while, but I never find the time to kick it out. And here I do a quick search to see if anyone else has done the same and I find that someone else is on the same wavelength, or was a year ago at least.
So briefly: When I first got into punk, one the first things my skate pals turned me on to was Black Market Baby. I made a cassette of all their material (probably "Youth Crimes" and "White Boy Funeral," but I can't be sure) and listened to it incessantly. This stuff was political, it rocked, was well recorded and was local to boot. The band's sound was a bit more influenced by British oi, the Ruts, 999 and Sham 69 but they had a sharp intelligence in vaguely ominous political tunes like "The Prophet" that put them in a different class than boot boys Iron Cross. BMB wasn't a Dischord band so they didn't benefit from the rise and romance of that local label, but they had a serious local following. They were more like the leather-jacketed toughs of punk yore rather than the new Vans-sporting, sensitive guys that would take over the scene in the later '80s. By the time I got into them (84 roughly), I think they had a rep as being the old men of the scene with a lot of the late '70s punk baggage that the "positive" scene was supposedly leaving behind. A cloud of drugs, booze, ego hung over the name. An Ian Mackaye-produced second album has never been officially released! That could all be totally wrong, but those were my initial teenage impressions of BMB. I'm dying to know where that cassette is, as I don't think they have an official CD compilation out at this time. I believe I do have some of their stuff on a compilation called Bouncing Babies. On the other hand, the related Crippled Pilgrims stuff was collected (from virgin vinyl, not master tapes) and reissued by Parasol/React.
8 comments:
Um, thanks. Do you mean you have the bootleg CD or the original vinyl or are you just being annoying? Annoying it good, just be more specific.
I can sing Cemetary Gates by heart and I often do when I'm feeling especially nostalgic, unloved and celebate. I only have one friend that I know of in Indianapolis and she's not a wiseass, or maybe she is. Reveal thyself?
No way, anonymous posts are super fun. Anyway, I need some kind of timeframe to work with here. Thanks for the clues, but my memory is not what it once was and the only thing I can think of is that I might have played Cemetary Gates at a pool party or something in 1988.
Is this Sam? or Scott?
Alright, but you went to a different HS? That goth kid James threw a lot of good parties with Gapinski's bands and stuff. Am I getting any warmer?
Hubert was in Baby Igor and had some house parties in Alexandria. Did you go to Ireton, per chance? Did you know Tim C. who I played with for a while?
O'Connell? Robinson? Woodson? Does No Scene Zine figure into this discussion? Merrifield Community Center? Arlington Women's Hall? Man, this is a heavy nostalgia thread we have going here.
It's you then, I still owe you a phone call. Soon, my friend.
Post a Comment