| V/A - :30 OVER DC LP | |
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Penetrators - the Break / Rudements - Imagination / Mock Turtle - Thank You for Sending Me an Eno / Slickee Boys - Attitude / Chumps - Jet Lag Drag / Billy Synth - Every Time You Give me a Call / Jeff Dahl - Get Up'N Dance / Half Japanese - I Want Something New // White Boy - I Hate / Nurses - I Can Explain / Mark Hoback - No Fun / Judies Fixation - Martyr Me / Tina Peel - Knocking Down Guardrails / Young Turds - Murder One / Da Moronics - Mr. President / Raisinets - Stay Limp
1000 copies on translucent red vinyl
500 copies on gold vinyl
500 copies on black
Limp Records 1001, 1978
lotsa copies on CD
21361/District Line Records, 2004
Recording Info: 1 engineered by Bill Murray at Soundbox Studios, produced by Malcolm Peplow. 2 recorded at the Psychedelly April 28, 1978 (probably engineered by Don Zientara). 3 engineered by Don Zientara, produced by Andy Charneco and Don Zientara. 4 engineered by Don Zientara at the Psychedelly April 28, 1978. 5 engineered by Don Zientara. 6 no info available. 7 engineered by Malcolm Peplow and Bill Murray at Soundbox Studios. 8 recorded August, 1978. 9 engineered by Malcolm Peplow and Soundbox Studios. 10 engineered by Don Zientara at Zientara B Studio August 19, 1978 (Howard's birthday), produced by Howard Wuelfing. 11 engineered by Don Zientara, produced by Mark Hoback and Don Zientara. 12 engineered by Pete Johnson at Rabbit Reproduction. Produced by William Dempster Smith (Bored Bill). 13 recorded and produced by the group. 14 no info available. 15 recorded live at CBGB. 16 recorded by the group.
Notes: Comes in a plain cardboard sleeve with two 11.75"x11.75" flats. There was a red vinyl copy rubber-stamped with the number 17 (the same way that the Best of Limp was stamped, except on the front) that I should have scans of soon. Note, for the numbered copy the loose flats are actually glued to the plain white LP jacket, not loose like all the others I've seen are.
Skip's Comments: Where did you get the idea of using two 12"x12" sheets of paper instead of printed LP covers? I assume it was a cost-cutting measure, since printed sleeves are ridiculously expensive.
That's part of it, the other is that seventies bootleg albums came packaged that way and we thought it was a punk thing to do.
What made you pick the Penetrators to open up the album?
There was no question that that cut was...I mean, that was something that I would have been proud of if I had produced. It just soared and had great production from start to finish. It was definitely the thing on the album that sounded the best produced.
We wanted the sampler to be representative from A to Z, start to finish, good to bad, of what was happening in the local DC scene. So we had to balance out stuff like Get Up And Dance by Jeff Dahl with something like that. We wanted to get all the variants, and the things that were happening in DC at the time.
As I said, the purpose of the album was not particularly to please the artists or musicians that were on it, or to sell records locally, but to educate people in other cities and towns and across the world about what was happening in DC. Everybody was focusing on Los Angeles and New York and London and that was it. Later on it was Akron with Devo, Cleveland with Pere Ubu, and Washington, which I thought had a great scene, was not getting any attention.
Did you work with the band at all?
No, no, as far as I know they were down in Virginia.
Alexandria.
They only released two cuts, both on Limp Records, were there any plans or ideas for any more?
What was the other thing? The Break?
Best of Limp. Broken Promises. The Break was on :30 Over DC.
Broken Promises, see you know this better than me.
I also planned the Best of Limp Volume 2, which would have rounded up some of the other cuts. I had a lot of outtakes from the Razz and the Slickee Boys and the Nurses and things like that, as well as some leftover cuts from :30 Over DC. The Rudements, which I think were one of the better bands on :30 Over DC, gave me a whole four song EP that they never released. I still have the master tapes in my basement.
I guess I had forgotten that the Penetrators were on there. Nobody will put that one on CD, so...
Who was Don How--
David, David Howcroft.
Why do I have Don Howland written down? Anyway, who was David Howcroft, who wrote the :30 Over DC liner notes?
I told you about Steve Lorber having a show on WGTB. David Howcroft had a show on WGTB as well. David's show was oriented more towards the current new wave stuff, the bands coming out of--and you've got to remember this is all brand new at this time--the bands coming out of New York, the B-52s, and local bands like Urban Verbs--the more progressive end of things.
Steve would occasionally play some of the British stuff, but he was more into the sixties psychedelic and punk rock stuff and that was the basic thrust of his show. So when it came time to start getting interest and putting together the album to showcase the DC scene, David's show was much more of a place for that kind of thing, and he had contacts. I had contacts through the store. My friend Howie Horowitz from the Music Machine up in Baltimore had contacts with Jad and David Fair from Half Japanese, who hadn't even recorded yet, but were regular customers at his store, buying the new releases and things. That's how he ended up writing that for :30 Over DC.
And the CD?
Well, I'm certainly happy with the way the cover looks on the new thing. I think Henry did a great job with that. I love pastel colors. Kim Kane's artwork was always great but it felt like a watercolor waiting to be painted, especially with the way we had the stars with all the groups, so the way Henry did it was just perfect.
It took ten years to get the CD put out. He started working on the release, getting permission from all the group members, and then Jim Kowalski from White Boy got arrested and went to jail for life, so he was gonna drop the project. For two or three years it sat there, and then Dischord encouraged him to go ahead and do it. He picked it back up again and had to go back and get all the permissions from everybody.
The last few months before it came out I had to help out with his office manager and contact a lot of people and get their publishing affiliations and things of that nature. I didn't get any money off the record then or now.
Henry's Comments: :30 Over DC is a compilation record of DC area bands from the late 70’s that was released by Skip Groff who owned and operated the now legendary Yesterday & Today record store in Rockville Maryland. Skip had a label called Limp and he released a lot of cool local area bands and helped a lot of local musicians get their first records together. Look at the producer credits for the fist few Dischord releases and you’ll see Skip’s name. Anyway, this record was one of those cool LPs we all grew up with. One day I was talking to Skip about that record and what the deal was with it and a few weeks later, he sent me the masters and told me to do something with them. Sounded like a release to me. It features DC luminaries such as Half Japanese, The Slickee Boys and The Nurses. It’s a great slice of music and history.
I sat on the tapes for about a year and at one point, I was at a wedding in DC and was talking to some Dischord types and told them about the tapes and my plans to perhaps some day release the record. They looked at me like I was nuts, "That record is so cool, you gotta put it out!" That was the shove I needed.
Anyway, last year I worked back and forth with Skip on new liner notes and we got it together. I had it mastered by the great Phil Klum in NYC who specializes in old tape and it today, it came in. I just finished listening to it and it sounds great. We are lucky that the tapes held up, I was expecting some problems because of their age but we lucked out. I can’t wait to play a track off it tonight on the first broadcast of my radio show less than four hours from now.
Reviews: As is the way with samplers, this record has some definite duds, but the duds are just that--duds, not atrocious excursions into the world of suck like some compilations I can name. The standout tracks are the Penetrators, with a massive collection of power chords and some great frustrated lyrics, White Boy with a tune that's every bit as mean sounding as it's title implies, and Half Japanese clatter, bang, and crash around for a bit less than two minutes, producing one the single best distillation of the Half Japanese ethic that you're likely to find. D'Chumps try to do arty spazzwave in the same vein as their 7", but it sounds kinda flat here. The Slickee Boys, Tina Peel, and da Moronics churn out respectable rock songs. The Nurses song was the only disappointing track (since I didn't know the rest of the artists, how could I be disappointed?) because it's a bland acoustic love song without any of the fire that made the band so great. A lot of the bands I mentioned play styles that mean absolutely nothing to me, like Mock Turtle (stupidest band name ever?) piddling around with their synthesizers or Mark Hoback's folky playing or Jeff Dahl's vague rockabilly stylings.
I have to say that the CD version sounds miles better than my red vinyl copy. Hard to tell if that's because the original version was poorly mastered, the colored vinyl just sounded bad, the new version was remastered (the one thing I did notice was that the tape droput in da Moronics' song has been fixed), or some combination of the three.
I'm still hunting for a test and third pressing (both on black vinyl) of this record. Email me if you've got copies for sale or trade.
