THRASH - "Total Anarchy" - Tape - 1990

   Since the beginning of this blog, I've been dusting off many tapes from my shelves and digitizing piles upon piles of forgotten music from over the years. I love many of the things I've posted on here, but I understand that some of this stuff might be embarrassing for some of the people who played the music on those tapes. I can almost hear them thinking, "Thanks for digitizing that band that I was in for 5 seconds who put out that one awful tape that sounds like shit. Big contribution to the world of punk there. Where's your stupid, embarrassing bullshit tape?" Well, here I am to level the playing field.

    I grew up in a town called Pleasant Grove, which is only notable for being completely wiped out by a tornado last year (to be clear, I'm not meaning to be flippant about it. If you can offer any help or support, that would be great, As Hurricane Katrina and this tornado has proven, the US does not care too much about poor southern people). My parents and I split the cost of a drumset ($100) when I was 12 and we bought it from my cousin, who played in a DEF LEPPARD lip sync band...meaning that they were not a cover band, but were a band who dressed up like DEF LEPPARD and acted like they were playing their songs while dancing to pre-recorded music....like karaoke with too much planning. Anyhow, I got the drums and just hit them haphazardly in my basement for months on end. I did not understand how to make a beat at all. My favorite bands at the time were THE CURE, METALLICA, VIOLENT FEMMES and DREAD ZEPPELIN but I didn't know how to make a drum set sound like any of those things.
   I tried to start a band called WASTED YOUTH (I know...name was already taken) with my friends in 6th grade, but it never got further than coming up with that badass name. Later, we started D.O.P.E., which stood for DEATH OF PREPS EVERYWHERE, but I'm not sure if we ever recorded anything or learned how to play a real chord. Then, at the ripe age of 13, my friends and I decided to start a "thrash band" called THRASH. It was gonna be the raddest band ever. We were going to play at our school and fucking kill people. We were gonna have the coolest songs with lightning fast tempos...if we could only figure out what you had to do to actually write a song. It seemed really hard and confusing.
   Ward played bass and sang. Mike played guitar and also sang. I played the drums. Those two guys were a few of the only people in my school who even came close to resembling punks. We set up my boombox in the basement of my parents house and unleashed song after fucking song of unbridled teenage brutality. We were completely untouchable and at the top of our game. I pressed "play" on the boombox to listen to what we had done and....what the fuck? What was this dumb shit that we burdened the world with? Mozart was 5 years old when he composed his own music and performed it in front of European royalty. One of the guys from OLD SKULL was 9 when they put out an LP on Restless Records. We were teenagers and we couldn't even write a legible song with a chorus or even any noticeable "parts". Basically, we sucked....bad. I was embarrassed of our band before the tape was even finished.
   Opening up with the now-classic (to someone somewhere...maybe just me) "Suck My Dick You Fucking Prick" (gimme a break. we were 13), it sets the tone for the rest of the tape. It's amazing how fucked up some of this sounds. It reminds me of shit that noise artists are striving for. One perfect example of that is "Bad Taste". It's no wonder that I quit within a couple of months and started a noise band that only played on the streets. I dare you to download this and listen to it all the way through. Lucky for you, I cut out over half of the tape because I still have some shreds of self-respect buried somewhere deep within me.
   After this tape came out, I quit THRASH. They soldiered on without me. Mike moved to drums.  They got our friend, Andy to sing and found some hot-shit stoner guitarist named Josh to round out the lineup. The four of them delved into the devil's weed and actually tried (unsuccessfully) to write real songs (sell-outs). I appeared briefly on their second tape, aptly titled "Weed", but my days with the band were done. They were trying to be serious and I wanted no part of that
   Lo and behold, THRASH did play at our high school, but did not end up killing anyone...or even giving a wedgie to the principal. I think they got in trouble for saying "fuck" a lot. I'm not sure. My joke band, THE SMEGMAGICIANS opened up for them and we were too busy changing out of our bathrobes, boots and fencing masks to notice....but that's a story for another day.

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