MYSTERY BAND SERIES, PART 2
X-PATRIOTS “HARDCORE / MYTH OF YOUTH” ACETATE (NEW JERSEY? 1982)
Here is a picture from the November 2010 eBay auction for this ultra-rarity,
the winning bid for which was over $400. Thank god someone scribbled something
on these handwritten labels, or we wouldn’t have known anything about this one!
Seller: let’s talk aesthetics, though- if it were me, I would not have posed
this on top of some ugly gray carpeting.
Hearing an unknown KBD-ish obscurity in 2011 is a rare occurrence but here is one. A rare occurrence because most stones have been overturned when it comes to KBD-ish sounds. KBD collectors were good at “the hunt” long before the whole internet thing took off in the mid-to-late 90’s. Between the late 90’s and 2005, volumes of info about rare records were available online for discovery and the whole learning process became much faster. But then when music blogs came around 6 years ago- fuggedaboutit!! That hyper-speeded the whole process ten fold: after a few clicks that rare record or unreleased demo you always wanted to hear is yours, virtually.
With the X-Patriots I believe we have a unknown obscurity (at least to those of us who are not “elite collectors” or whatever). I never knew about the existence of this acetate until some kind gentleman surprised me with some mp3’s of it 3 months ago. Thanks again! A copy of this acetate was sold in November of 2010 on eBay for the tidy sum of $428. As you can see, the handwritten labels only give the band name, song name and year. Then you have a plain white sleeve with no band member names, nothin. I am guessing the band may be from New Jersey, though, since at the :20 second mark of “Hardcore” I swear I hear the singer say “Driving hard on the Jersey Shore”.
Musically, “Hardcore” has strong female vocals and is good driving punk for the most part (and does not refer to the musical type of hardcore, ya hear). I say “for the most part” because there is this long, weird break in the middle where they almost lose their momentum and slow things down a bit too much. But it picks back up again towards the end. And let’s not forget that the song possesses the punk-friendly length of 2 minutes. The B-side is another story- I find it too introspective and slow and I get bored listening to it. There’s some traces of the dreaded (no pun intended) white boy reggae on it which always makes me grit my teeth in a bad way. [Which is different of course than gritting my teeth in a good way which happens when I when listen to a prime cut like Snails Love Theme or something of that caliber but that’s another posting].
Do you know anything about the X-Patriots? Were you in the band? Leave some comments and let me know, thanks.
/files/98398-90993/02_Myth_of_Youth.mp3″>Myth of Youth.mp3