All - "Allroy For Prez"

The Descendents are one of my all time favorite bands. Their music got me through some rough times. They are truly one of the greatest bands to walk this Earth, and I will forever love their music. That being said, ALL is, as you may know, the Descendents, minus Milo. The fact is this though: ALL is a criminally overlooked and under-rated band. Sure, they get sneered at by most punks because of their overt sappiness, but this sappiness is within the confines of hook-laden, carefully crafted punk rock that will stick to the insides of your mind like the bubblegum it so wants to be like. This is their second release, an 8 song ep that is possibly the best thing they ever did. It features Dave Smalley (of D.Y.S./Dag Nasty fame) on vocals , Stephen Egerton on guitar, and the unstoppable duo of Karl Alvarez on bass and Bill Stevenson on drums. If I haven't said this before, I'll say it now...Bill Stevenson is the best punk drummer, ever. Standout tracks on this are "Skin Deep", "Wishing Well", and the great "Daveage".

All - "Allroy For Prez"

Curse Of The Magi - 2005 Demo

Here is a demo from unheard local band Curse Of The Magi, which existed briefly during 04-05 and features members who were in bands like Ikkabod and Cheapskate, which is about what this sounds like. If you haven't heard either of those bands, I have posted them elsewhere on this blog. A very odd amalgamation of pop punk and Maiden-esque metal, which definitely sounded different from anything else going on around here at the time. Half of this band joined up with me and formed Deeds Of Midwinter, which also was short-lived but played a bit and do have some recordings which I might post up here someday.

Thunder Brings The Storm

Cheap Skate

It's time for another trip down Northeast TN Punk Rock Lane with Cheap Skate.
Cheap Skate was a pop punk/ska band started by Austin Goins(vocals, guitar), Dusty Evans (bass, vocals) and Kevin Masters (drums, vocals). they recorded their first 7 song demo in early 1997. Summer of '97 was when I met Austin and Dusty at the shirt-lived "Our Place" hangout on Wilcox Drive in Kingsport. They gave me their demo and a sticker (wow, a punk band around here who already had merch!!) and we all became friends, even to this day. my old band Plan 9 (expect stuff up here from them soon) and Cheap Skate played a lot of shows together, sometimes even borrowing austin for guitar or drums when our guitarist either couldnt make it or our drummers sucked. one show in particular stands out in mind in Erwin(?), TN on the back porch of someones trailer...somehow i started cooking in their kitchen and kids grabbed me to dance during cheap skate and i left bacon frying in a skillet and almost burned the trailer down. oops.
anyways, i don't have any artwork or even pictures of this to post, but will post some when i find/get them. the music, however, is 17 tracks of ramones/screeching weasel influenced pop punk with some ska punk songs thrown in for good measure. 1-10 is the "Official Beagle" tape, recorded in 1998 by the man who ran Our Place. (it should be known that Cheap Skate won a "battle of the bands" competition in summer of 1998 and won free studio time, which they used to record this, and that by this time they had added second guitarist J.D. Collette, later of hadaka matsuri and long time friend, who appears on this recording) 11-17 is the bands original tape demo in all its glory. the beginning of "dead old man" on the demo sounds funny but it's from a 12 year old tape that someone converted to .wma, then i converted all tracks to mp3.

re-uploaded 8/29/09 with COVER SCAN and correct tracklisting!!

http://www.mediafire.com/?2kmuiwznjhz