Recently I was at Record City (East Charleston) and was handed this demo by Power Pop Joey, because he understood the expanding journalistic reach of onethirtyeight.org. Anyway what we have on this disc is 6 stripped down Ska tunes with sung vocals. As a guy who usually listens to bands with barked lyrics, it was very difficult for me to understand what this band Child Support was singing about, but I did catch one line about someone thinking they were a Gandhi but really being a Nazi. That’s funny & I think a lot of people know someone like that, I am sure my former band mates will say that about me, but they are assholes so fuck ‘em. I am not really the biggest Ska fan & very rarely listen to it, but I enjoyed this. I probably listened to this Child Support demo about ten times while reading the biography of Russ Meyer & another time while riding my bike around the neighborhood. This is a good start! I look forward to getting fucking blasted, and showing up to one of their shows. For those keeping track, I think this is the first time I ever listened to a band’s music & wrote a review of it while sober.

I guess this band Agent 86 has been around in one form or another since 1982, which is news to me. I got into Punk in the mid 80’s & never heard of this band till they moved to Las Vegas a few years back.

 This 12" features 6 Punk numbers that would receive a glowing review if this was on a CD-R and handed to me by a 17 year old, but since this is being played by people my mom’s age I expect a little bit more. Maybe it’s just the Singer, he sounds like he is constipated.

Now back to the record, 2 covers are included & the record sleeve states very clearly that they are using these songs with permission… like anyone gives a fuck! They do an entertaining version of the Bob Marley tune Redemption Song & the other cover being a horrendous version of The Clash tune Armageddon Time. The rest of record is standard Hardcore Punk that is forgettable. I assume the lyrics are socially aware, but since I am fucking wasted I can’t be certain.

To end this on a positive note & so that I don’t come off as a total asshole, I must mention that I caught Agent 86 live recently and thought they were really good. Not sure what the deal is, I assume they have a different line up now.