Ground Zero

One of the interesting things is to go back and find stuff you missed from your youth. Sometimes it's with regret that you weren't aware at the time of something that you find totally awesome thirty years later and knowing that you may have had an opportunity back in the day to experience it in person. This Ground Zero was from Boston.

 Ground Zero

The thing is that I also know that at that time I would have not been impressed. This was totally nothing like the crap I enjoyed as a teenager. It has synthesizers. It's not loud hard and fast. It's kind of weird. It's a bit New Wave. It's a bit Punk Rock. But enough in either direction to appeal to my half formed brain. It's kind of dark. It was local. It looks like it was all packaged and put together by hand unprofessionally. I would have hated the fuck out of these guys.

Now I can listen to it and I really rather enjoy it. It sounds like the club where I would see as many all ages show as I could afford to take the bus to see, the Channel. It gives me sense memories of the stench of Boston Harbor in the Channel parking lot. It's nostalgic even without actually experiencing it the first time.

Of the two Eps I think "Born to Be Bombed" is the more successful. The most consistent anyway. It's the sound of an imagined computerized future and the paranoia of nuclear annihilation that permeated everything in those post 70's decadence Cold War/Reagan Years. The future was either a bleak expanse of cold digital styling or a glass parking lot. It was a great time to be alive.

(I will also note that "Ditch" in this package is unfortunately is a 256k rip. For whatever reason as I was rerecording these this time for an improved rip my turntable didn't want to let that finish. I had to use an older rip. C'est la vie.)