Get OFF!

Two things about this OFF! elpee: It spits fury from the start and almost never lets up, and the Raymond Pettibone artwork on the cover is just perfect. I realize that Pettibone artwork on a recording of sixteen truly (really) punk rawk numbers that clock in at just under 18 minutes is about as relevant to the youth of today as the artwork on any random Sophie Tucker long-player was to me when I was a kid, but that’s just time marching on. Fretting over the passage of time is obviously something OFF! has no time for.

SOME TRUTH: I think I like this record more now than when I wrote the comic. My initial skepticism of what on paper looked like a (GASP) punk rock supergroup (an oxymoron if’n there ever was one) gave way (eventually) to the sheer force of this thing. It’s LA PUNK (Primal Stuff) done flawlessly in 2012. At first I underappreciated just how raw and ferocious these guys are, and how relevant the songs they’re smashing their way through are at this very moment. It’s a fight-back soundtrack that serves as a reminder that rebellion ain’t just for kids anymore. Kids today certainly have plenty to be pissed off about, but for the most part, they’re not. Older folks though, the working class who’ve been continuously backed into the corner by shrinking opportunities, austerity politics, an endless assault of media dumbness that most certainly is resulting in NATIONAL BRAIN DAMAGE and rules that change whenever they seem to be getting ahead of the game, they’re gonna relate to this big time.

Or maybe they’ll just watch teevee.