In high school, there was a time when my favorite bands were Less Than Jake, NOFX, MxPX, and Goldfinger (side story: I had a shirt that looked like the goldfish crackers box but it said “Goldfinger” instead and one time Fred Durst saw my Goldfinger shirt and raved about the band and how they were
his best friends. Anyways.)
For one brief summer I had bleached, spiky hair and went to all the ska punk shows at the all ages club in Tacoma. Fred Meyer (a local grocery store) had an electronics department that had an impressive CD section and they had listening stations with featured albums, often less mainstream artists that were priced at $7. They seemed to always feature Fat Wreck artists, so I really stocked up on their catalogue and I loved all of it. That was when I first heard NUFAN and I bought
Making Friends immediately after hearing the opening dialogue: “What’s your name?” “Fuck YOU,
that’s my name!” It was the punkest opening to a record I had ever heard and their music/harmonizing reminded me of NOFX which made the purchase a no-brainer.
I honestly can’t explain why I didn’t continue following NUFAN after that; I don’t even remember seeing
More Betterness! being released, but the internet was still in its infancy at that time. By the time I was off to college, my skate punk days were behind me, and I bought Less Than Jake’s
Borders & Boundaries out of a sense of obligation, but it felt like my signing off from the genre.
Luckily the
Hard Rock Bottom PIF from
@scotthilk (in addition to a Mad Caddies classic and Hi-Standard, a band I was unfamiliar with), I was reintroduced to NUFAN/Fat Wreck and am sorry to have missed all of those records when they were first released. I’m treading lightly now, because I love a good rabbit hole and will often buy an artists’ entire discography if I’m not careful (I see you sitting there, NUFAN box set…), but for now I’m going to try to track down a copy of
Making Friends for nostalgic reasons, as well as the Tony Sly/Joey Cape
Acoustic record that I mentioned before because it’s a gorgeous record. And then
More Betterness!, and then
Leche Con Carne!, and then -uh oh…
I’ve been listening to this Tony Sly album these past few days as I drive to and from work and it truly is wonderful, and although in style it is quite different from those skate punk records, the harmonies and songwriting really do take me back. Thanks again,
@scotthilk !!
