I’ve never professed to being a professional writer or an expert on punk rock. I do have an opinion though. I have pretty much stuck around for the last twenty plus years listening to this noise. As I read the intro to this release, I am in agreement that comps are different these days. Bands in the past would send their best effort and make it pretty much exclusive to that one release. If it wasn’t good, it wouldn’t be released. Lately, you get record label sampler comps that flood the rack space or comps with recycled material. It’s rare that you find a comp that completely has unreleased tracks. If you see what the old comps go for on Ebay, you can see that they are worth something. Enough of my old man memories. Back to opinion. I don’t listen to a lot of the OC beach punk garage stuff personally. So, many of these bands I have never heard of. The two that I recognize and have heard are the Smut Peddlers and Cell Block 5. Todd Taylor told me of the up-comers Broken Bottles. He liked them so much, he booked them on a Razorcake show recently. Tracks that stood out to me were from the previously mentioned and The Thunder Pistols, D-Cup, Beer City Rockers, Extortions, The Negatives, The Switch-Ups, The Spooky, The Put-Ons, The Stand and The Cadavers. That’s a high percentage of bands on this eighteen band comp that peaked my interest. A good comp doing what it’s supposed to do – introduce me to some new bands I have never heard of.
–don (Hostage)