The sixth installment in the Live In A Dive series comes from San Francisco’s finest street punkers, the Swingin’ Utters. The show, recorded in a club in Hollywood about a year ago, sees the Utters delivering the finest songs of their carreer. Featurng 23 tunes, the live set is sure to please all the ears of the lovers of well played live punk music. You can hear all the best songs the band ever wrote, from “A Juvenile Product From The Working Class” to “Five Lessons Learned” and the latest album. The record comes out as an enhanced CD with a really funny comic book that tells a story about the Utters and a club haunted by four famous punks. Also, there is a double vinyl of this record that comes out with two bonus tracks, “Tell Me Lies” and “Sign In A Window”.

The 7th release in the “Live In A Dive” series comes from Lagwagon, and it is quite possibly the most complete, original, interesting and best played show on the series. The live set of the band ( recorded at the “House Of Blues” in Hollywood on the day of by birthday, 5/31/2003, and on another day, 6/1/2003 ) is made of 22 songs and a cd-enanched part ( with a band interview by Fat Mike) and with a full comic book for the LP version. The tracklist is very great and includes anthems from any of the band’s releases: you get a lot of the best stuff Joey Cape and friends ever wrote, such as “Alien 8″ and “Making Friends” from Double Plaidinum, “Violins”, “Bombs Away”, “Sleep” and “Sick” from Hoss, as well as newer songs like “Never Stops” and “Falling Apart” from the band’s latest effort “Blaze”. The show is very powerful, and even tough it is recorded perfectly by Ryan Greene, you can still hear the crowd screaming, the mistakes that a band does when they play live and it’s not as polished as the No Use For A Name live disc. There are also plenty of songs from “Let’s Talk About Feelings”, like “After You My Friend”, “May 16″ and “Messengers”, which are amazing tunes. The band does dedicate a lot of space to older tunes as the ones taken from “Trashed” but not a lot from the almighty “Duh”: from the first one they play “Island Of Shame”, “Give It Back” and the closer “Stokin’ The Neighbors”, while from “Duh” they only have “Beer Googles” and “Mr Coffee” only the enanched part. There is still one new never released before song, which goes under the name of “The Chemist”, as well as some “rare” stuff as “Coconut”, “Mister Bap” and “Back One Out” off the “Trashed” CD. In the end the disc is real fun and it’s more than a full hour of live crazyness, with Lagwagon really making you feel like you were there.

The fourth installment from Fat Wreck Chords “Live In A Dive” series comes from Strung Out and let me say this is the best live album Fat ever released by now. The album features some of 21 Strung Out finest songs, and I guess the tracklist could not be better: some older songs, some newer songs, some unrelesed stuff, there is really all on here. The album is opened by “Too Close To See” and Strung Out really puts all of their energy in playing songs: “Ultimate Devotion”, “The Kids”, “Rottin’ Apple”, “Klawsterofobia”, “Lost Motel”, “Exumation Of Virginia Madison”, “In Harm’s Way”, “Support Your Troops”, “Cult Of The Subterranean”, these songs and others are just enough to make me cry out like this is the best band I ever heard on a live record. Then the cover of Ozzy’s “Bark At The Moon” and the classic closer “Matchbook” just make the album perfect. I really had fun listening to the CD, the production is polished but the band did not delete the live effect of the crowd and their own little mistakes, plus, you can really close your eyes and live like you’re at a Strung Out show. This CD is a must have!

The fifth installment from the Fat “Live In A Dive” series comes from a non Fat band, English punk rockers Subhumans. The live record, recorded in California during the band’s last US tour in 2003, is filled with 26 tracks from all of the band’s discography, plus one new song, “This Year’s War”, about the situation in Iraq. The CD, recorded by Ryan Greene, displays one real great production, and even tough Subhuamns clarly play in a pure punk way, the thrill you feel from the show is quite real, the same one I felt on the Sick Of It All “Live In A Dive” record. Now, naming songs would be useless, the disc features really anything you could want from Subhumans, so, if you’re a real punk, get this.

The third installment of Fat Wreck Chords’ “Live In A Dive” series comes from NYC hardcore heroes Sick Of It All. Recorded at SF’s The Bottom of The Hill, I can finally say this “Live In A Dive” is a live album. Not that the previous No Use For A Name and Bracket albums were not live, but they were a little too perfect for being a live recording; instead with Sick Of It All, you cannot go wrong. The sound quality is amazing, yet you can still hear the band is playing live, as if you were there in the venue, you can hear the little mistakes done by the band, the fury of the live show and the moments of imporvisation done by the band, as when Lou Koller calls some dude on stage to sing a song.

The CD version features 23 ( the LP has a bonus track ) songs taken from all over the career of Sick Of It All, from the band’s first seven inch to “Blood, Sweat And No Tears”, to the fundamental hardcore album “Scratch the Surface” and the latest works on Fat as “Call To Arms” and “Yours Truly”: songs like “Us VS Them”, “Sanctuary”, “Potential For A Fall”, “Scratch the Surface”, “Call To Arms”, “Busted”, “Disco Sucks Fuck Everything” sound like you can own a little piece of history of hardcore music on one album only. But in general, I guess all of the songs on this live album were chosen very carefully by the band, so we can say this is a record with the 23 best songs Sick Of It All ever wrote. And then they have the energy of a live show.

Among all the usual goodies of the “Live In A Dive” series, you can have also an enhanced CD, with an interview with the band and some live footage, and of course, the booklet is an awesome comic book, the best by now of the series, as it has some drawings that are really amazing.|carlo@staff.truepunk.com

The misfortune of a band happens when their musical genre is played by ten thousands other bands all over the planet and is taken to success by three fucked up kids that know nothing about it, or worse, when a band can play a genre very well and is not considered at all, for some strange unknown reasons. Unluckily, this is the case of Bracket. The californian band plays some great pop-punk influenced music, with great guitar hooks, catchy choruses and melodies and some decent lyrics, which are much better than the average stuff around today, especially on MTV. But for some reasons, they do not sell alot, they are unknown compared to other bands that play their genre and, most important, Fat Mike himself said he was sad because Bracket do not get the attention they deserve.

With the second issue of the “Live In A Dive” series on Fat ( recorded at “The Bottom Of The Hill”), Bracket try to gain some more attention, giving us a live record full of their older songs, even before they were fat. The seventeen songs are mostly taken from the first records “924 Forestville St.” and “4-Wheel Vibe”, now out of print, a few others as “Talk Show” are taken from the “E is For Everything”, a couple from “Novelty Forever”( the most under rated pop punk album of all the time ) and only one from the latest “When All Else Fails”. Songs as “Traler Park”, “Green Apples”, “Happy To Be Sad”, “Lazy” make see how Bracket were strong even before Fat discovered them, with probably their best songs. Instead, the newer “Parade”, “Hearing Aid” or even “Back To Allenton” and “Sour” show a poppier side of the band, which is the most famous, as all these tunes can be heard on Fat Wreck albums.

In general, I could say the same things I said for the No Use For A Name live album: the songs are recorded in a perfect way, even better than the one in the studio, and I wonder why the crowd disappears when the guys are singing and start clapping their hands only during the pauses, even tough Marty and Bracket change some chords here and there from the album version of the songs, going faster or slower or trying to jam with guitars, and this is a nice thing, as there is no use in listening to the same versions on the record. Also, the CD contains some enhanced features, with Fat Mike interviewing the band, and some music videos, as well as a semi-comic book:in the LP you get the actual comic book.

So, the work is pretty enjoyable if you never heard Bracket and want to have an idea about this band, and “Live In A Dive” has a lot of older songs too: a great way to start knowing the band from the first time of just a way to see how Bracket played when they started. |carlo@staff.truepunk.com

No Use For A Name is the first Fat band to release a live record for the “Live In A Dive” series, and I guess that many other live albums will come, probably from almost all the Fat bands ( can’t wait to hear the Strung Out and the Lagwgon albums, if they will ever come out). Talking of the first issue, No Use For A Name delivers a great live record, with 20 songs that covers more or less their whole music career.

The band recorded this album during two live shows, one in Los Angeles and the other in San Francisco, and the sound quality is just perfect, you may almost think there was some extra-work in the studio, but I doubt it, as it’s no news that No Use For A Name is just great playing live, I heard them once and I was stoked how these four guys can play, of course there are some moments where teh band is out of time or out of tune or has slurred speech, as the guys themselves admit, but the whole recording is just great.

About the songs, they put in this album a lot of tunes from “More Betterness”, as “Coming Too Close”, “Chasing Rainbows”, “Room19″, “6 Degrees From Misty”, a few songs from their best album ever “Making Friends”: “Invincible”, “On The Outside”, and the ghost track of that album, here called “Gene And Paul, I Hate You Most Of All, And Ace, You’re the Ace, And Peter, You’re the Cat”which by the way is the lyric of the song. Some other songs are taken from “Leche Con Carne”, as “Justified Black Eye”, “Exit”, “Soulmate”, “Straight From the Jacket” and the Bob Marley’s cover “Redemption Song”, plus a tune off “The Daily Grind”, “Feeding the Fire” and a couple of really old ones, before the band was on Fat, named “Hail To the King” and “Don’t Miss the Train”. No Use For A Name also played the 30 seconds song “Sara Fisher” ( with some different lyric) and the Misfits cover “I Turned Into A Martian”.

Of course a lot of fans may get pissed because the band did not put enough old material or your favourite songs ( I myself cannot understand how they couldn’t put my all time favourite “Sitting Duck” and “3 Month Weekend”) but there is no wonder, as the band has so many good songs and if they put them all in a live record they had to do a double CD and it was not even enough.

Also, the CD that comes out is enanched, this means that you can put it in your computer and see a 15 minutes video with 3 live songs ( the same of the live record, “Invincible”, “Straight From the Jacket” and “On the Outside” ) and an interview in which you can see what is the favourite hobby of singer/guitarist Tony Sly. Plus, the booklet is also a small version of the comic book with a funny story written by the guys of NUFAN. The LP instead, comes out with an actual big comic book but if you get the CD you can buy the comic book for 2 dollars without the LP.