SNFU
Let’s Get It Right the First Time (Megaforce)
by Jon Sarre
A couple of nights ago, I was at my night job, pouring drinks, talking with a couple of rockabilly guys about, first, Elvis and Charlie Feathers and then, after noticing the hardcore ink on their arms, about our collective formative years as suburban punk rock kids.
“Are you goin’ to see the Bad Brains next month?” I asked.
They kinda hesitated, then started off on how incongruously soulful and aggro and crazy and great Rock For Light sounded when we heard it at fifteen. Now, being old, and the Bad Brains older still, hanging out with a couple of friends, some beat-up vinyl and a case of cheap beer somehow sounds like a better plan.
“Olympia,” one of them laughed.
“Lucky Lager,” the other guy offered.
“Schaffer,” I countered, remembering an impromptu pit in someone’s parents’ backyard outside of Boston with HR’s feline yowls out the speakers of a beat-to-shit ghetto blaster.
I still may go see the Bad Brains, mainly cuz I can’t see ’em not giving me my money’s worth. That’s the way they are. On the other hand, I can’t quite say the same for either The Smugglers or SNFU. It’s not that I have anything against Canadians, I just don’t think that either of these bands has done all that much to justify their collective existences (ten years for the former, and since the last ice age, give or take a couple decades, for the latter). That goes double for masturbatory, long-strange-tour live retrospectives (The Smugglers’ release is a set recorded in Madrid, Spain, and SNFU’s is a hometown gig in Vancouver, BC, from November ’97). Both records sound pretty good (always a plus for live albums), but, to me, the big question is “who the fuck would need these discs?”
For those who care, well, SNFU’s had their moments for a band of don’t-drink-don’t-smoke-what-ya-gonna-do-about-it killjoys. Their concept of “hardcore” tilts to moshpit singalong-style without as much of the Jehovah’s Witness door-to-door sermonizing that characterizes much of the genre. They pepper Let’s Get It Right the First Time with chestnuts like “I Forget,” “Bobbit,” and “Eric’s Had a Bad Day,” which stand out amongst clunkers like “Better Than Eddie Vedder” and others my selective attention span glossed over. SNFans take note!
If SNFU’s fellow Vancouveronians, the Wellington-boot shod Smugglers, have fans out there, then not only have I never met one of ’em, but he or she’d be foaming at the mouth to pick up this Growing Up Smuggler thing. It’s, uh, got a lot of songs! For the uninitiated, I’ll supply this mathematical equation: Anglophile garage pop + Lookout! = it’s no wonder they had to go to Europe to make a live record. Like I hinted earlier, the Smugglers do a buncha songs (twenty to be exact, one more than SNFU cram on their CD), several of which the label’s press release denote as “out of print or exclusive track(s).” Wow, smells like a collector’s album! It smells like something anyway.
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