Leftover Crack

I was talking to my dad the other day about punk music, and how he got introduced to the genre. My dad graduated from a middle-class L.A. high school in 1978, which put him in the perfect demographic to be a part of the L.A. punk scene. He said that when stereotypical “punk” bands were getting started up, they relied on word of mouth to survive. Venues that let punk bands play never had that big of a capacity, and the subject matter of the music made it hard to get any radio time, so without a fairly loyal following, most bands would roll over and die. My dad remembers first hearing about Black Flag when he saw half a handmade flier tacked onto the door of a headshop.

This got me thinking about how I generally discover new music. I have fairly eclectic tastes, and i generally make a point of not discriminating between genres, so this allows me to steal an almost infinite amount of music from my friends, much of which is often new to me. Almost all of the rest of the bands I find, I hear about on the internet. But there is also a small minority of groups which i discover at shows or festivals, most often as opening acts.

About a month I went with a friend to see a ska show in San Jose. I knew that some of my friends from L.A. were following them, so I thought that I might as well check it out. The main act was a band that I had never heard about before, called Leftover Crack. The moment they got on stage, I knew that it was worth the trip. Everyone in the band was dressed in black jumpsuits, with makeup that made them look like some Scandinavian black metal band. They played for about 2 hours, and I don’t think that the singer stopped moving the entire time, even though he seemed so inebriated that he could hardly stand up. Though the sound quality and acoustics were horrible, the band really played well. The bass player didn’t saw away at his instrument as is common in most punk shows, and the drummer played some of the cleanest fills I’ve ever heard.

After it was all over, I decided to buy a few cd’s to see if this band sounded better sober. And lo and behold, they did!

I bought two albums at the show, Fuck World Trade and Riot Ska, Fuck World Trade being my favorite. All in all, this is one of the best punk albums I’ve heard. Leftover Crack gets a reputation for being a very political band, and this album is no exception. The lyrical content seems to convey that they are anti-. Anti-religion, anti-government, anti-police, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist… The seem to be against everything except for reckless intoxication, but the tongue in cheek death metal influences seem to make their never-ending grievances tolerable.

Leftover Crack seems to have found the perfect blend of genres: traditional ska/punk with a screeching death metal edge. The drummer plays fairly basic beats through most of the album, breaking out of the expected high hat/snare ska rythym only a few times, to pound out a very clean-sounding double bass beat during the crescendos of a few songs. The bassisst is solid, and clearly isn’t limited by his role in the band.

But what really made this album for me is Sturgeon, the lead vocalist. On stage, he put on a decent performance, though he is so scrawny, it occasionally looked as if his 40 ouncer of Mickey’s might drag him to the floor. But on the recordings, in the words of Judas Priest, he cries like no other. At the start of every song, he keeps a subdued tone, concisely rattling off lyrics as fast as is intelligible. During the choruses, however, he breaks out a screech to rival the most excited Jonas Brothers fan.

Altogether, one of my top 10 albums.