Customer Reviews

Dangerhouse, Vol. 1

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Man, there are some classic songs here for sure - But what a rip-off - Less than 30 minutes of music here on a CD fer crapsakes - So why didn'cha include the great B-sides from these 45's? (like Black Randy's "Loner with a Boner" & "Sperm Bank Baby") - Oh yeah, then you woulda hadda buy the rights to those songs, too, cutting into the profits you'd make on this collection... Yeah, whatever, my friend burned me a copy of this so it's not like I hadda pay for it...

Still I'm going to give it 5 stars because it's the only way to get many of these recordings on CD, and that other Amazon review herein is unfair, so it needs to be counterbalanced. Between this volume and the second are some of the best late 70s punk recordings ever. No early US punk label had such a consistently great output (though there were some other great ones: Drome, VVV, No Threes, Trap, Bomp!, Slash, and others), with classic singles from X, Dils, Avengers, and Weirdos (the most well-known bands who released singles on the label) along with some amazing lesser-knowns like Eyes, Deadbeats, Bags, Rhino 39, Alleycats, Randoms, and local scene star Black Randy and his Metrosquad. Every track on these two volumes is great early punk (well, except Howard Werth, though it's still pretty enjoyable new wave) and there are a few tracks unreleased back in the day from Eyes ("Eniwetok"), Bags ("We Will Bury You"), and Deadbeats ("Let's Shoot Maria"). But it is true that this is a frustratingly incomplete collection. Though the two volumes do include all of the Dangerhouse single sides from Weirdos, Dils, Randoms, Rhino 39, and Alleycats - and you can buy separate collections to get those missing X, Avengers, and Black Randy recordings - there's still no sign on CD of the herein missing Dangerhouse recordings from the Bags ("We Don't Need the English" from the Yes L.A. compilation), Eyes (the excellent "TAQN/Topological Lies" singe), or Deadbeats (their entire classic EP). What I hope Frontier will do is release a volume 3 that fills in all of the gaps (save perhaps the Black Randy album which would take up too much space and has been elsewhere reissued). The ideal Dangerhouse collection should have EVERY single side released on the label, the COMPLETE contents of the Yes L.A. compilation, and any other unreleased studio tracks that may be still hiding out there...