Pearls Before Swine The Early Years Vol. 2

Description

To launch this collection, we have POISON IDEA giving their very first concert as a hypercharged punk band on New Year's Eve 1980 — a true find! "We put our gear in shopping carts and pushed them to the venue," Jerry recalls, also mentioning the reaction of Portland's first wave of hardcore kids: "They only had 30 seconds per song to go wild, so they went all out. It was instinctive, like the music possessed them." The embryonic versions of future POISON IDEA classics like "Give It Up" and "Castration" presented here are played in a more off-kilter, jerky style than on their first 7-inch EP, Pick Your King, three years later. This recording also reveals the rawest influence of Germs singer Darby Crash on Jerry. "His voice gave me carte blanche," Jerry says. "No need to be a professional singer. You just had to open your soul and scream." The rest of this album comes from a recording made in June 1981 at the birthday party of Kim Kincaid, singer of the local punk band Neo Boys. The event took place at Clockwork Joe's, a short-lived but iconic punk venue in Portland. "Clockwork Joe's was like Peter Pan's island, populated by lost children," Lang recalls. "There was a lot of booze, a lot of drugs, and a lot of young people." Listening to this fierce, intense set, you can easily imagine the dripping debauchery that reigned that night, especially during the punchy rendition of "Underage," another track that would later appear on the album Pick Your King.