The Vandals
"Internet Dating Superstuds" CD (Kung Fu)
I think I might have liked this album about 10 years ago, but that was also when I started feeling like Epitaph and Fat had so completely inundated the market with shit that sounded the same that I quit listening to punk because there was no goddamned difference between one record and another and none of it spoke to the things I was feeling and going through. I loved punk because it always seemed to relate to my life, but for a few years in the mid-1990s, punk rock fucking sucked. Thankfully, bands like Dillinger Four, Hot Water Music, PUKU 13 and a slew of other Mongols who resembled hordes rode in on steppe horses and decapitated motherfuckers like they were playing cranial golf or polo or some such shit and saved the scene from wanky Forbidden Beat bands writing fart songs. I'm sure that this record is catchy as all hell for the kids who like Blink-182 and The Ataris and other pop-punk or for people who thought that the Inland Invasion / Sex Pistols show was a good idea, but this means absolutely nothing to me or my life. I know my roots. These ain't them.