Thursday, August 22, 2013

CAPITAL SICKNESS - "Toolin' For Lucifer's Balloons" - Tape - 2000


    When I moved to Chattanooga in the late 90's, I was already friends with a bunch of punks who grew up in the nearby carpet mecca of Dalton, GA. Some of them had been playing in punk bands since the late 80's and were pretty "well-established" (whatever that means) in the local punk scene. By the time I got to town, most of them had moved to Chattanooga because it was a bigger town and there was more to do (kind of). A younger crop of punk kids had popped up in Dalton and started forming bands in their absence that made these elders (some at the extinct age of 25) look downright ancient. My favorite of these new punk bands was CAPITAL SICKNESS.
   Even though they were all teenagers, their band came up to Chattanooga to play fairly regularly at shows in bars, public parks and houses. Their singer/bass player, Josh has enough boundless energy and charisma that he probably could have screamed into a microphone solo for 20 minutes about the youth detention centers of Dalton and kept a room full of us entertained, but luckily, he didn't have to. Mason played the guitar and Mackey rounded out things on the drums. Even though their live sets and recorded output usually fell to pieces, they still maintained the enthusiasm that kept people dancing and singing the whole time. If you don't believe me, you can watch this video.


   On this tape, they play their hearts out in 8 quick songs (in about 8 minutes) and it includes their crowd favorite, "Burn The Mills", which is about destroying the carpet mills of Dalton (the town's core business). 


Members went on to be in a tidal wave of other bands like TRICYCLE FARM, QUEERWULF, PRINCESS THUNDERSTORM and HELLSTOMPER.
 

3 comments:

charlie said...

awesome! thanks so much for posting this...brings me fuckin back

edd scream said...

Never had a copy of this tape. Had their first tape. To bad it's an mp3 down load.my worst enemy!

Unknown said...

I saw a copy of this on IG. I asked where they got it. They made their own off your sites download files. Now we're doin talkin' tape trades. Keep up the good work. I don't even have this. Its our 7th tape I think.