Saturday, January 24, 2015

Vicious Circle

VICIOUS CIRCLE
"Vicious Circle"
LP/DVD
TKO Records
Released: January 22, 2013
This LP & DVD documents two boombox practice recording tapes of the late 1970s hardcore punk band Vicious Circle. There are many Vicious Circles out there (my other favorite being the Australia HC band from the Vicious Circle/Perdition split LP on Flipside records 1985). This Vicious Circle features Steve Houston of Posh Boy Records' The Klan along with Jack Grisham and Todd Barnes, who would go on to form T.S.O.L. 
The rudimentary recordings were cleaned up with modern technology to make them listenable. Most of us who were in bands through the 1980s remember recording our bands in exactly the same way. I have boxes of cassettes from bands from the 1980s.

The Lehigh Valley archives was a short lived project of mine where I transferred some vintage Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania punk and hardcore band's music from cassettes and brought them forward into the digital world. Have fun knocking yourself out streaming and downloading the likes of Mr. Yuk, Mugface, Youthquake, Strained Existence, Last Cry, No Win Situation, Russian Meatsquats etc...
Back on track. I first learned about Southern California's Vicious Circle by reading Jack Grisham's amazing book, "An American Demon". My write up on that book is here: http://frankfoe.blogspot.com/2015/01/an-american-demon-jack-grisham.html

Read the book. Seriously. Basically, these full time criminals/delinquents/punks formed a band that attracted criminals/delinquents/punks and chaos ensued. The LP is  accompanied by a must see DVD where Jack Grisham gives a 40 minute eye witness account of the crimes, delinquencies and punk rock chaos that surrounded this record and time period. There should have been a box set of the LP, book and DVD. 


I love this record. Because it is a raw document of a time very different from 2015 and many of us have nostalgia for those late 1970s (in Jack's case), and early 1980s (from my perspective). Vicious Circle could have been any band in any early punk scene that laid the groundwork for the scene to follow. The LP and accompanying DVD's stories, along with the book "An American Demon" really should be experienced for the complete story.

The LP, DVD and book are amazing.

Cheers,
Frank FOE




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