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

Ikkabod

so heres the deal.

around the turn of the millenium some friends got together and decided to start a band. the musical tastes varied from member to member, and they wanted a band that reflected those tastes. so Blood Diner was formed. Blood Diner was started by andy (vox, keyboards), matt (guitar, vox), j.d. (drums, vox) and adam (bass). adam didn't last too long so austin joined , and when he joined the band renamed itself Ikkabod. Ikkabod started playing shows with a fury. what did they sound like?

well, that was always a point of argument. i always thought they sounded like spazzier punk rock metal bastard version of faith no more. you might think otherwise. i will say this....between 2000-2001 i lived in knoxville and would come back to kingsport occasionally when work and school permitted it, and usually either saw them practice at the fabled lenoir house or playing for hardly anyone at some local bar or v.f.w. hall or wherever they could. i fucking LOVED this band while they existed, they were my favorite local band. NO ONE else was doing such insane stuff at the time around here, everyone was either playing really bad pop punk or (even worse) korn sounding shit and they just played whatever the fuck they felt like.

like all good bands, inner turmoil split the band on the day of what was supposed to be my first show with them as second guitarist, but they left behind this recorded legacy. what you have here is the self released "Dark Angel Rock Attack" cd-r demo (which is still available from humdinger records) and extra tracks, including 4 songs that were supposed to be released on 7'' and another few early songs recorded "live" to a four track (i think).

will you like it? i don't give a fuck if you do or don't. i liked it alot when it was going on, and listening to it now, it brings back memories of a time when everyone still hung out, got fucked up in the garage together while watching wrestling and bad movies, reminds me of days sitting at the lenoir house watching them practice, listening to them recording the cd at the lenoir house and the insanity that that was, and just simpler times.

if you lived around here during 2000-2003 and you liked this band, you owe it to yourself to have this. if you've never heard them and want something new to check out, i envy you. to me, this band was punk as it got for this area, that time. another band like them won't be seen.

Oh, The Horror!!

Fall Of Leningrad

Fall Of Leningrad were a 3 piece hardcore band from Andover, MA who existed in the late 90's. they play screamy political hardcore and all they released was a split cd with Incoming and a split 7'' with Force Fed Glass, which happens to be the only thing that comes up if you type fall of leningrad hardcore band or whatever in google. this compilation is everything they released , the 7 tracks from the cd and the 2 tracks from the 7'' (as one mp3).

any information about this band is wanted. they played in Johnson City, TN twice in the late 90's, and me, ryan and justin(bassist and guitarist) were friends for a while, then we just lost contact. dudes, if your out there, please get up with me, it's been a long time!http://www.mediafire.com/file/gimommjyjtu/Fall%20Of%20Leningrad.rar