Various Artists III: How Compilations Influenced a Generation - Punx Unite 1-3 Penned By: John E. Swan (Charged/SideOneDummy Records)

INTRODUCTION: Maybe, it's in the gray hairs that I've started finding in my thinning hair. Maybe, it's that dreaded third decade of life that seems to have been rearing it's ugly face around every corner. Maybe, it's a quarter life crisis, but something has been keeping me up at night. I sometimes, stay awake into the early hours of the morning spinning records and fumbling with CD jackets from high school, grasping hold of my youth for dear life. I search out elusive first presses of albums I'd somehow, lost to time, hoping that they'll somehow, tighten the thread leading from middle school to adulthood.

To be clear, I'm not fishing my torn band T-shirts or bondage pants from the depths of my closet, but as I make the transition into my 30's, shedding roommates and getting oil changes at regularly scheduled intervals, I can't help ruminating on where these albums came from and how they've shaped me. I can't help begging the question, "How did I get here?"

How I've come to be surrounded by this specific collection of music is largely, the consequence of efforts made by larger labels and their annual sampler CD's, but even today, I search out small Indie labels that pump out quality collections of exclusivities and excellent representations of a variety of music scenes.

Typically, priced at $4-5.00 and featuring, sometimes, up to 40 songs from just as many bands, compilations have always served as convenient and affordable ways to discover new and obscure bands. This is imperative to the formative years of a generation of listeners; compilations were the compass that one used to navigate the endless sea of Punk Rock and consequently, Hip-Hop, Hardcore, Indie, Reggae, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Many of these discs were used as shovels to tunnel into cozy nests of Punk records and artistic eccentricities.

It's this ability to influence and inform listeners that I'll be here every month to discuss. I'll be stopping The Witzard by to shed light on those discount albums in the so often overlooked "Various Artists" bins of the world, along with their influences within their communities, within their genres, and within the chronology of listener interests all across the globe, here in, Various Artists: How Compilations Influenced a Generation.


VARIOUS ARTISTS III: Imagine a choir of machine guns as "tenors" with chainsaws as "altos." Picture shotguns and car wrecks acting as "percussion." Now, imagine that you've spent your adolescence hearing Pop singles and boy bands delivering feathers and snowflakes to kids who are thirsty for blood.

Some things you don't know you've needed, until they've found you. In the excitement of the Pop-Punk and Fourth Wave Emo explosion of the early 2000's, it's forgivable to have missed the boat on The American Street Punk movement that took place in the middle part of that decade. So much of what listeners heard during that time was a painting of a wistful and care-free music scene that, in retrospect, seems comparatively tame, next to its more abrasive counterparts.

While the initial genesis of Street Punk is found in early 1980's England, the sub-genre didn't seem to gain much recognition in America, until the mid-late 90's, with bands such as Defiance and The Casualties embarking on grueling tour schedules, driving problematic cargo vans, and playing across the continent to small, but dedicated, groups of fans.


It was this latter band and the efforts of Charged Records (Jake Kolatis of The Casualties) and Long Island-based Punkcore Records, who eventually popularized the genre in a way that made it accessible for suburban youth, helping to concoct a perfect storm that put bands like Lower Class Brats and Cheap Sex in the position to tour internationally.

When looking to the humble beginnings of Charged Records, it's easy to overlook the involvement of Punkcore. However, in many instances, the two labels rosters were interchangeable, Punkcore having gone as far as offering up many of its most promising bands to Charged Records' first release, Punx Unite 1 (1998) a startling tour de force and introduction to the New Jersey-based label. The young label released two more 7-inch records with The Oi! Scouts and Endless Struggle, before re-connecting with Punk Core to release The Casualties' sophomore full-length, Underground Army, an impressive first year for a burgeoning band, cementing a relationship with Punkcore Records that was at once beneficial for both The Casualties and Charged Records.


With the label being run by a band out of New York and taking its roots in New Jersey, it comes as no surprise that Vol. 1 is a nearly flawless representation of the East Coast Underground scene of its time. Over half of its roster hails from New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia alone. For what it's worth, Charged allowed their ambitions to wander as far West as Texas, Montana, and California, but for all that the label owed to England for its overall aesthetic, this disc remains landlocked.

If Vol. 1 evokes a sense of East Coast claustrophobia, then, Punx Unite 2 (2000) is representative of the restlessness felt by Charged Records and, by extension, the Street Punk community, in general. As evidenced by its sub-title, "International Chaos," this second installment is a manifestation of the wanderlust felt by Charged and so many of the bands and young people that it represented. Punx Unite 2 is a cornucopia of international acts, putting flags in the soil of countries like Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Sweden, and Belgium, finally validating the sub-genre and authenticating the label's reputation in non-English speaking countries.


While Charged Records had its sights set on illuminating these marginalized acts, Street Punk luminaries, The Casualties, were honing their craft and tightening their sound. The band were preparing for appearances on the Vans Warped Tour, as well as their 2001 SideOneDummy debut, Die Hards. Meanwhile, contemporaries such as The Unseen and The Virus weren't far behind, bringing cohesive melodies and sophistication to a style of music almost exclusively reserved for less ambitious artists.

It is inevitably, this determination that resulted in the shift in tonality that eventually propelled these acts to success, in the first place. It's this humorless approach to artistic progress that landed their albums in outlet malls, making their music accessible to suburban youth for the first time. Consequently, it's this same progress and propulsion that "took the wind out of the sails" of the sub-genre as a whole.


Presumably in the interest of cornering all conceivable iterations of the Punk Rock cannon, California DIY giants, SideOneDummy joined forces with Charged Records five years after International Chaos for the third and final installment in the franchise, Punx Unite - Leaders of Today (2005.)

With SideOneDummy's influence came Poppier hooks from bands like The Briggs, The Forgotten, and The Street Brats, rounding the conceptual edges of a more abrasive franchise. At the end of the day, the result is a comprehensive trilogy, offering a tracklist that delves deep into the Street Punk cannon to deliver many bands neither heard before, nor since the compilation began its run.

It's this third installment of Punx Unite that seems to speak so holistically to fans, a single shot in the night that condenses and illuminates an entire movement. With a fully-formed iteration of A Global Threat, fresh blood in Monster Squad, and The Casualties in their prime, it serves as a statement to the rest of the American Alternative music scene.


We've evolved, and so has our idea of art. However, there is a sense of familiarity in hearing Volumes 1-2 for the first time today. There are the memories of washing glue from our hair and 40 oz bottles of malt liquor in parking lots in the middle of December. There are ill-fitting leather jackets that smell of bonfires and cars packed so tight that kids have to lay down in the trunk. There is a continuity of education that's been put on hold for over a decade here. Hearing Punx Unite 1-2 now 20 years after their initial releases, I can nearly feel my fingertips pricked bloody from needles, after sewing canvas patches onto thin torn hoodies and women's jeans, whose seams are bound by dental floss.

Even now, there are times where a great sense of sadness swells in my heart at the realization that I'll never know any of this for the first time again. With the stereo at the right volume and the breath of Autumn on my neck, the wind escapes my lungs and I can remember everything in its excitement and novelty. I can taste my first Mickey's "hand grenade." My fingers smell of USA Gold cigarettes. My coffee tastes different. Weaker, but new.


There's a flash of clarity and remembrance so strong that I'm 15-years-old again. Then, I'm graying at the temples; my back hurts; my eyes are painted like a raccoon's, run black and blue with broken blood vessels and lack of sleep. You consider the emotions and memories that can be evoked from a genre collectively, but there is a sense of rose tint and age that puts distance between these feelings and our ability to experience or re-live them with any authenticity.

Short of failing memories, many of these bands only exist on compilations, and in many cases, they no longer exist at all. So much of what we experienced as teenagers, what these compilations and bands and record labels helped to create, exists only on the other side of a glass of recollection. It's sealed off, protected from itself, and protected from a legion of fans that can be greedy with nostalgia.

Somewhere, there is an army in middle age, the word "Oi!" painted between the shoulder blades of their leather jackets. They're patiently awaiting debut LP's from bands that were long ago doomed to disappear into the ether of flawed recollections and dusty compact discs.

John E. Swan (@midwest_stress) is a novelist and short story writer, as well as freelance editor and journalist. His first novel, Any Way to Elsewhere, takes its name from a compilation cassette that he curated during his time with Berserk Records. When he's not writing, he can be found making music under the moniker "t h e m e s" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he lives with his girlfriend and their dog, Diesel.