The Drolls' on 7" 45RPM Single

Is anyone out there getting their vinyl fixes off 7" 45RPM singles? I'm sure the answer to that question is dependent upon how old you are. I suspect plenty of young people, not to mention people of all ages who still love indie rock from small indie labels, still grab the little 45s whenever they can. They're fun, they're relatively cheap and it's a great way to get a new band's music out there to the fans in a very specialized way--one that can't be replicated by digital streaming. I also believe there are plenty of people my age and older who started off their love for music with a stack of 45s and a little record player. This group may still be attracted to the novelty of the 7" single for purely nostalgic reasons.

I've noticed that my own collection of 45s is growing quicker now, in 2018, than during any other time in my life. I lot of this has to do with the connections I've made with the indie rock world over the last decade or so, going back to my days in Portland and up to and including the local Syracuse record labels such L.R.S. I've mentioned Ean Hernandez of Top Drawer Records before--he was my source for Date Night with Brian and the recent 14 Soda Punx LP. He sent me an email a few weeks ago about "a new 7" that I'm putting out for my old bandmates: Denny and Josh from Sicko." The new band is named The Drolls, and they actually provided one of the tracks on the Soda Punks album. They're joined with Julie from Guest Directors to form a true power pop trio.

In the past I've reviewed singles, and in recent years it seems as if the goal is to cram as much music as possible onto this little discs--at least two songs per side, accompanied by a nice dollop of inner-groove distortion by the time you get to the dead wax (which is minimal at this point). Ean keeps it old-fashioned and clean, however--just two brief songs, "Follow That Dinosaur" and "Alternate Timeline," one on each side. This single has the same minimalist indie production values as Soda Punx, but as I mentioned in that review it's sort of desirable for the punk and post-punk ethos. So you're not getting brilliant sound quality, but you are getting a purist approach to this kind of music which is essential to its enjoyment.

That said, if you loved Soda Punx, you'll love this. Ean and his friends at Top Drawer straddle that bridge between old-fashioned punk and power-pop from the '80s and '90s. (Ean officially calls it "pure power pop punk rock.") There's that same quickness, same grittiness (especially in the vocals and the Nirvana-esque chord progressions). There's also a distinctly happy feel to these two songs--Top Drawer isn't about gloom and doom and terror and sheer unbridled anger, but energy that invigorates. I don't know if I can dig that deeply into a two-song single, but I can tell you that you can check it out yourself without making a major investment, and maybe you'll browse through the Top Drawer catalog and re-discover how much fun this music truly is...especially on 45 singles!

You can order it here, complete with download card, for just $6.

14 Soda Punx on LP

And now for something completely different...punk rock! On colored vinyl! This is a genuine blast from a very specific past, my own, back in the early '80s when I finally decided that I was through with so-called dinosaur rock and started listening to KROQ in LA and discovered a whole big bright beautiful world of something that definitely wasn't boring. I was a middle brother--my older brother left school in 1974 because he refused to cut his shoulder-length hair, and my younger brother dropped out in '81 or so because he found his new calling as a hardcore punk and didn't fit in. I was in the middle, the safe years, and I made it to the end while having the luxury of enjoying the best of both eras.

14 Soda Punx is a good old-fashioned compilation album, 14 songs by 14 Seattle bands (you can see all the names on the album cover), all of them still firmly standing in the world of punk. Sound quality is what we used to call "punk minimalism"--low budget, lacking in dynamics, but that's part of the charm and sort of the point. It's DIY, and proud of it. The surprising part, however, is the fun quotient. What used to be viewed as subversive--I remember one high school teacher telling the class that the so-called New Wave, exemplified by Devo's first album, was "the fall of Western Civilization"--is now cheery and joyous and utterly charming.

This isn't what we used to call punk lite--Green Day, Rancid and other traditionalists providing clean and gussied-up versions of what the pioneers used to foist upon unsuspecting masses. It's rough and fast and based on a handful of chords that anyone can find with two or three fingers. It's gloriously free of hybridizations with other genres of rock. It's the real stuff, in other words, and I can't be more happy about it.

This album was sent to me courtesy of Ean Hernandez of Date Night with Brian, whose CD I reviewed back in April 2017. "Seattle has a great pop/punk scene going back to the late 1970's, and this is just a slice of that scene in 2017. There is a lot of talent walking these rainy streets. Date Night also has a track on the comp, about weather again, I'm afraid." I'm glad he did--this music really puts me in contact with my past, growing up in LA, discovering something new that keeps me in love with music.

You can buy this for just $15 right here at this link.