Greatest Hits .01: The Many Moods of The Vindictives

PROLOGUE:
(skip to the end if you don't feel like reading)

To give you an example of how deep rooted my geekiness for pop punk was at a certain point I used to lie awake at night in bed, and i'm not even joking about this, dream about the perfect line up I would want to see at a show. Screeching Weasel headlines, Dillinger Four opens, Sicko and the Parasites are in there somewhere and of course... of course, The Vindictives play right before Screeching Weasel and Ben Weasel hops on stage to play with them; the crowd cheers wildly. The line up changed from time to time. The Automatics are substituted for Dillinger Four, Dr. Frank of Mr. T Experience does an opening set of accoustic MTX songs, Beatnik Termites play somewhere inbetween, sometimes Boris The Sprinkler, sometimes Scared of Chaka. Oddly enough, the Insubordination Fest that happened recently would have probably been the closest thing to my dream set and I wasn't even there. Instead I was answering telephones at my deadbeat Help Desk job here in Florida, but I digress.

If I did this now, at 27, there would undoubtedly be something wrong with me but at 16 I cared about bands and records more than anything.. I liked songs about girls more than I liked actual girls. ...and The Vindictives were one of my favorites if not my all time favorite for a very long time.

That being said it's a little weird posting about them because I usually try to focus on bands that I love but I feel are slightly more obscure than The Vindictives, Screeching Weasel, Parasites, Beatnik Termites, Boris The Sprinkler, The Queers, MTX, etc.. As those bands, in my mind, define the meaning of "pop punk". Yeah, you can say Ramones, but they're really just plain "punk". Calling Ramones "pop punk" is almost an insult. They, themselves, when asked what type of music they were or asked if they thought of themselves as punk rock always replied that they were an American Rock n' Roll band. Fair Enough.

It goes without saying that if you are 16 years old now and into Punk Rock, reading the pages of MRR relentlessly searching for new 7"'s to buy and outpunking your High School friends (i'd like to think this still happens as lame as it was) there is a chance you may not know the classics and it would be sinful to leave them out. In reality, chances are 16 year old kids have better things to do then search for mp3 blogs on the internet but at least it gives the rest of us a chance to catch up on some favorites.

So without further ado, I present number .01 in The Ready Steady Smash Greatest Hits Series

END PROLOGUE

Greatest Hits .01

The Vindictives

Wikipedia does a nice job:

The Vindictives were a Chicago-based punk rock underground group during the 1990s. They were peers with Screeching Weasel and other bands from the era, they were also heavily-influenced by the Ramones. Joey Vindicitive's characteristic nasal melodies often told the story of alienation, psychosis, social-ills, and contiunally rejected rules of politeness. The lyrics were often intelligent outrages communicated through intentionally immature self defeating soliloquies.

They began their career in 1991, cutting their first 7" record later that year with the lineup of Joey Vindictive (vocals), Johnny Personality (bass), Ben Weasel (guitar) (soon to be replaced by Billy Blastoff), Dr. Bob (guitar), and Erik Elsewhere (soon to be replaced by P.J. Parti) (drums).

The band would end up releasing 12 EPs and albums until July of 1996, when Joey Vindictive revealed that his health issues would prevent the band from going on. Luckily for him, he overcame his ailments to re-form the band in 2000, cutting a new album and overseeing the re-release of a significant part of their catalog.

Guitarist Robert "Dr. Bob" Nielson died of a heroin overdose on February 22, 2003.

End Wiki.

As far as I know, The Vindictives are broken up, but they seem to be active on the internet and have released a slew of, for lack of better words, "interesting" things in recent years. Interesting things like electronic covers of their own songs ('Muzak for Robots'), unmastered original copies of all the singles compiled on The Many Moods of The Vindictives ('Original Masters'), an accoustic album of Vindictives songs ('Unplugged'), Singles and Rarities ('Curious Oddities and Bare Essentials') and a few more. They're on myspace , they're all over the place really.... Joey Vindictive even has a personal Myspace page (and no offense to him, but he's not the kinda dude i'd want to run into if I was walking in the park late at night).

Here are some favorites:

The Vindictives - Rocks in My Head
The Vindictives - Wonderful World
The Vindictives - Circles
The Vindictives - Ugly American