TKO
POISON IDEA - Pearls Before Swine: The Early Years Volume 2 LP (colour vinyl)
Limited edition of 804 copies on green colour vinyl. Includes poster.
"Seeing what an integral part Tom 'Pig Champion' Roberts is to the legacy of P.I., it might be hard to imagine the band ever existing without his six-strings leading the way. But when they started out in 1980, the band’s line-up consisted solely of Chris Tense on guitar, Helmet’s Henry Bogdan on drums and founder Jerry A. on vocals and saxophone. It might also be difficult to fathom them not coming out of the gate as a blazing hardcore punk unit, yet when they first started out, they were more inspired by the challenging and disjointed sound of NYC’s No Wave scene than anything coming from the west coast.
'The No Wave stuff was hard to understand and kind of scary, so that’s what made it interesting' tells Lang, 'But when that first wave of hardcore hit, it hit so hard. It was breathtaking, so I was like, this is what I want to do now'. Ditching Bogdan and gaining Dean Johnson, the band set out to be one of the first HC punk bands in Portland.
Sadly, recordings of their first incarnation have yet to surface, but due to the tireless efforts of the TKO empire, we can now get an earful of their first stab at hardcore sans Tom here.
Kicking off the collection, we have P.I performing their first ever gig as a high-velocity punk band on New Years Eve ‘80. The embryonic versions presented here of future P.I. classics like 'Give It Up' and 'Castration' are played in a more quirky and herky-jerky manner than how they would appear 3 years later on their debut 7” EP. This recording also holds the most unfiltered display of Germs vocalist Darby Crash’s influence on Jerry. 'His voice gave me the license to go' states Jerry. 'You didn’t have to be a trained singer. Just open up your soul and scream'.
The remainder is culled from June 1981. Hearing this ferocious set, one can only imagine the sweaty debauchery, especially during the rendition of 'Underage' presented here, yet another future Pick Your King track."
