Skate Punk

I traded a bunch of stuff to Amoeba the other day and picked up a copy of We Know You Suck, a compilation of Arizona skate punk band JFA's stuff. It's basically their Blatant Localism and Valley of the Yakes albums, with some bonus tracks and live stuff. I had a cassette of their albums when I was a kid, and it was one of my favorite punk albums. They mix 80s hardcore with a slight surf vibe, including covers of "Baja" and "Walk Don't Run." None of their songs clocked in at more than three minutes, and you couldn't really understand a word they said. They thankfully broke up before turning into a shitty hard rock band, although they have reappeared in paunchier form to crank out their old hits to aging punkers on a nostalgia trip. Like myself.

JFA (Jody Foster's Army - how cool is that?) were skaters, like my 13-year-old self, and I first heard about them on Thrasher's "Skate Rock: VOl. 1" comp. I just found a download of that cassette-only release, and I have to say, for how impactful it was on my as a teen, it doesn't really hold up. The highlight are two Skoundrelz tracks, which I guess was Tony Alva's band. They played fast and dirty hardcore, a little like Fishsticks, who none of you have heard of, because they sold like twenty albums.

I originally found the download at some Spanish site, the profile of which was a swastika made out of a confederate flag. So then I ask, do I download it anyways? A: No, because the links didn't work.