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| Backpack contents after the third time seeing UL live |
My first exposure to real Unwritten Law was Y100 playing
either Seein’ Red or Up All Night. Up All Night came out first by about six
months, but I just get a vague impression of hearing Seein’ Red first. It
charted way higher, so it could be that Up All Night didn’t really hit at first
and got renewed airplay after Seein’ Red smashed. I mean, that song was all
over the place; it’s really easy to forget, or rather its hard to tell if other
people remember. I thought I remembered it being in the trailer for that Ultimate X Games
IMAX movie that I was kinda disappointed to finally see on DVD at 30, but it turns out I was thinking of when I saw Grind. In any case, I liked Seein’ Red alright but thought Up All Night was
the better song. Still do. This whole thing is even coming up because I just
ripped the CD single to my computer. I got that first, the Up All Night single,
at the back of Sam Goody where they had the domestic singles and comedy CDs. Of
all the things at that store, that part is the one I’d like to most reexamine
if I had some kind of time periscope or happened upon photos. Maybe its just my
newfound second wind of enthusiasm for the CD single format. I don’t listen to
them in the car, no that’d suck to keep swapping or repeating, but its cool to
check out b-sides. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t hold every single
track every band I like puts out up on a pedestal, but some of my favorite
songs by some of these bands are b-sides. This doesn’t apply to Unwritten Law,
but I was super stoked to finally get the UK CD2 of Weezer’s Island in the Sun
a few months ago. I had all the b-sides downloaded from a fan site before Make Believe
came out but Brightening Day has always been one of my favorites and hearing it
in high quality finally was just awesome. Quite a few of those upgrades lately
but I digress.
I bought the Up All Night single at Sam Goody and within a
year or so ended up giving it to this girl who had an Unwritten Law t-shirt.
Ended up finding it about ten years later on amazon for ¢1 plus shipping and that was pretty
cool. Way low stakes but it really is satisfying to replace different things
like that sometimes. I also got this compilation CD at Target around that time
called The Sound which had mostly bands from Island records on it and featured some
rarities like Jimmy Eat World’s A Praise Chorus (Live at La Scala) which,
having not purchased Dragging the Lake, it took me until reading a recent
retrospective review to realize it’s the same version. Anyway, one of the
tracks on The Sound was Seein’ Red, just the regular version, which is why it’s
coming up now. I didn’t end up getting the full Elva album til maybe a year
later when I signed up for BMG club. Not sure if it was one of my first 12-for-1
selections, but it wouldn’t have been too far after that. The CD I had to buy
for full price I’m pretty sure ended up being Otep’s Sevas Tra, which is just dreadful.
One good song tops. This was still a little bit before I heard the full Robbin’the Hood Sublime album, so I don’t think I appreciated at the time the source of Raleigh Soliloquy or was at the point where I thought it was stupid anyway. Let’s
go down that branch for a moment.
Around 2003 or so this label Erika Records (which was also a
pressing company) started putting out these abridged picture discs of all Sublime’s
albums. Since they were at various points the only vinyl records Exton Mall’s
Hot Topic had I ended up buying the first three, which was kind of a waste I guess.
I remember bringing at least Robbin’ The Hood to Webfest ’08 trying to sell it but
they all just ended up on amazon or eBay. No idea what they’re worth today and I
don’t care. Overall, a really terrible way to present these albums. 40 Oz.,
which I’m not sure if it was the first one I got or not, skips the first song.
Come to think of it, that’s actually an improvement in that case, but I don’t
understand what they were thinking chopping so many songs to fit onto one disc.
Records were not that expensive back then, but maybe shaving a disc off helped
offset the cost of putting picture discs on color vinyl. I gotta admit that the
records themselves looked nice, especially 40 Oz. cause the artwork really lent
itself to being reformatted into a disc, notwithstanding all the different color
variants which would seem to foreshadow the variant glut of the vinyl revival
to come a few years later. In any case, I remember Robbin’ The Hood opening
with an unlisted Raleigh Soliloquy, and with the level of information I had up to this
point (very little), I had no idea what was going on. Even thought it was a
mispress with some other random recording on it for about a minute. I don’t
like Sublime anymore but even then I thought that album was rubbish. Real surprised
when I learned it was a main-canon studio album.
The point of all this is to say that as time went on it made
less and less sense that further Soliloquys were included on an Unwritten Law
album at all. I mean Miguel has some production credits on Elva but as much as I
love UL, I can’t understand who thought they were the heirs to Sublime’s marginalia.
The stuff Raleigh Theodore Sakers says on those “skits” isn’t even that funny
or shocking, and the album was plenty long without any of the filler. Not just
the two additional Soliloquies, but that Nick & Phil voicemail before Hellborn and
that hidden track voicemail from Tom DeLonge praising Up All Night. What’s with
all the spoken word filler on this album? Was the release delayed so they could
add that to the end of the album, almost as if someone thought it would be a
good play to shoehorn in an endorsement from the top of the pop-punk world that
not too many people would probably hear anyway? That actually seems more
tasteful than if they had it in the middle of the main program, possibly right
after the song itself. That would have made Elva age even less well. There’s a
lot of decent songs on it for sure, like Blame it on Me and Geronimo, but it’s just
kind of diluted with the spoken tracks and a few underwhelming ballads, and the
sound is compressed as hell. Par for the course of the era, but I notice it much
more listening nowadays. Lots of great albums suffered that way. Rival Schools’
United by Fate comes to mind. Now that’s a standout record!
Anyway, I liked Elva enough to order the follow-up Here’s to the Mourning from BMG when it came out and was real excited to see them live when
they opened for 311 that Summer. Great show on a lot of counts, but
Unwritten Law was kind of a mixed bag. Founding drummer Wade Youman had left
the band between albums and was replaced by Tony Palermo, who would eventually
join the other opener, Papa Roach. I thought he played pretty well at this show
and when they opened with Get Up off the new record and he was the first to
start playing during the buildup intro. Really great seeing Pat Kim on bass and
backing vocals too, but since the album came out they fired guitarist Rob
Brewer and the other guitarist Steve Morris was temporarily off the road cause
he just had a kid. Russo’s performance wasn’t that impressive itself. My friend
I went with said it sounded like he smoked too many cigarettes. I’m not too
sure about that assessment, but I’ve seen him do better since.
It took ages before I got to see them again but by then I had
picked up the 1998 self-titled CD used at Long in the Tooth and was blown away.
I always rather enjoyed Elva but I absolutely couldn’t believe how sharp this
prior album was, especially when also compared to 1996’s Oz Factor, which I picked
up at EB Games of all places back in the day and seldom replayed. Now this
self-titled one was some exemplary skate punk to rival Dude Ranch and most Fat stuff I used to listen to, and its largely replaced Elva as my go-to UL disc. After
briefly considering going down to see them at Virginia Beach for some Festival
at the end of Summer 2015 (which I think was cancelled anyway), they announced
a Spring tour which included a stop at Underground Arts. By then the band was
even further shuffled, with Pat and Steve having quit a few years prior, but
Wade came back so it was actually more “original” than the Unwritten Law I saw
at Festival Pier. Show was awesome too, but I thought it kind of strange that
two of the openers both played blink covers. The contemporary version of UL
also included Russo’s younger brother and Chris from Fenix TX, who co-headlined
the tour. They were one of those bands I had heard of but never heard back in
the day. Maybe they were on a popular movie soundtrack, but I think my exposure
to them consisted entirely of my cousin giving me a burned copy of Mark, Tom,and Travis Show full of wrong versions, including an alternate live version of
Blow Job (from Philly actually) where Mark gives a shout out to Bad Religion
and Fenix TX. I guess if you saw blink live back then you got in the know [Is this the only context such a sentence would ever make sense?], but
I don’t recall ever hearing them on the radio or at friends’ houses and haven’t
checked out their albums to this day.
About 11 years it took UL to come back to Philly, but I was
thrilled that it wouldn’t take as long for round three. Coming up to the end of
my first Summer in Boston, they came to the Middle East the night before my
birthday. It was particularly exciting to go there because of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones live album, but the real boost came when I was enjoying a pre-show
burger at the bar wearing the 2016 tour shirt. Out of nowhere comes Wade
enthusing how we’re gonna “fuckin’ rock this place” with a “let’s go!” kind of
pose. He introduced me to his sister who was sitting next to us at the bar and
rocked out harder than most all of the crowd during the show for sure. They
opened with Blame it On Me, and Scott did a few acoustic songs solo in the
middle of the set. It was also cool to see Wade drum on some Tony songs, but I felt
so dumb at the end of the show after I caught then dropped a stick he
threw into the crowd. Some other fan was like you dropped it you gotta pass it,
and I didn’t but still think of that sometimes when I see the stick, and as an
aside that stick has to be the most difficult piece of memorabilia I have in
terms of figuring out how to store or display. Might be kept diagonally in a
large shoebox. Whatever.
Before the show I approached Wade with my Short Music for Short People CD to sign. Did that ever light his eyes up. He probably had fun
contributing and listening to that comp and it was sure a gateway for me. I got
it as a special order from Sam Goody in early 2002, probably before I got the
Up All Night single, and remember their inclusion adding to its amazing value
in my eyes but, yeah, there was a good period of time where my exposure to
their actual music was limited to a handful of unrepresentative comp tracks, or
at least just that one. Come to think of it, I didn’t hear their Adam Ant cover
until I ordered Before You Were Punk from BMG Club later on. Anyway, I thought
it would be cool to have a various artists compilation signed by members of
multiple bands, and while I only remembered that plan this one time, I figured
it would make sense to save cover real estate and bring something else for Scott
to sign.
After the show I approached him at the bar with my copy of Y100 Sonic Sessions Vol. 6. Now that cd’s a subject for another day, but I can
recognize that it was more of a footnote in their career than Short Music for
Short People, and Russo didn’t seem inspired to make any specific comments on
it when presented. I took the opportunity to ask him about the Smelly Shoes
demo, which he confirmed he didn’t sing on, and also who the guitarist was at
the Penn’s Landing show. That he remembered, but I don’t. It was their guitar
tech but I forget the name. He also gave a little bit more of a behind the
scenes story about Rob being fired. Something about Pat Kim’s father passing
away and taking a flight as band to a gig very soon after and there being a
fight. Definitely don’t remember enough to be a secondary source on the matter.
Its always great getting these little scoops at shows, but I didn’t wanna bother
him too much so I said thanks and left soon after.
For a while after that it seemed like not much of note was going on. There was this Christmas song they had on a DJ Promo or comp I never heard of about 20 years ago that got a Record Store Day 7” recently, but I still haven’t picked that up. Record Connection had it last time I went, and I hope they still do cause I’d get it next time maybe. At some point after the Middle East show Wade was out but he’s once again reinstated and things seem to be picking up. They played Soma San Diego a few weeks back, brought out Rob and Steve as special guests, and filmed it for what I hope is a DVD. Then basically simultaneously a new studio album, The Hum, was announced. The first studio album to feature Wade since Elva, this one comes out July 29 as a joint release between Siren Records and Licorice Pizza. Preorders are up now and the CD includes three bonus remakes of Seein' Red, Celebration Song, and Save Me.
I haven’t heard the Swan album they put out after Here’s to the Mourning or the 2016 Acoustic one yet. Between the budget emphasis of adulthood, burnout from too many artist's' tepid late career albums, and the decision fatigue that is Bandcamp Friday, keeping up with the latest albums by my favorite bands these days just isn’t what it used to be, but pregaming The Hum's launch with some catching up sounds alright. My expectations of any new UL music these days honestly hadn't been too high, but I'd say I'm actually more interested in checking out Swan and The Hum than Ok Human and Van Weezer. However good The Hum is, I just hope I get to see them live a fourth time.
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