Sub Pop (1995)
For me, the key Supersuckers albums are the first three and while La Mano Cornuda has always been my favorite, The Sacrilicious Sounds of the Supersuckers has been a very close number two. Sacrilicious hit my freshman year of college. It had a big rock and roll sound with just enough pop hooks to satiate my newly forming interest in pop punk. The band had a similar group of fans as Rocket From The Crypt at the time and I'm pretty sure that's how my good friend at the time Joe and I stumbled across them.
Supersuckers were also one of the first bands he and I interviewed for our college paper at the time and I have odd memories of that Maxwell's basement interview. I remember coming out of thinking the dudes in the band weren't particularly nice, but I have no recollection of anything they actually did that would make me think that. Bizarre for sure. I also remember sitting on the speaker that was at the right hand side of the stage during the show, back when they had one speaker on the ground and the 2nd speaker hanging from the ceiling. I don't think that set up lasted much longer after that at Maxwell's.
All these years laters, I think the album holds up well. "Born With A Tail" is still a smash hit and is probably one of the best two or three songs the band ever wrote. The mid album trifecta of "Marie"/"The Thing About That"/"Ozzy" still smokes pretty hard. This isn't the sort of album I can listen to every day and I'm not even sure I would like it if you played it for me for the first time today, but it has those early college memories baked into it and twenty six years later, it's sometimes nice to revisit those feelings.
It took forever for me to add this one to my collection and it ultimately involved me trading my copy of the first Carbonas record on red vinyl to obtain this copy, which was still sealed. It wasn't a one for one trade, but it did take a deep dig into the archive and relinquishing a fairly rare record. I justified the trade for three reasons. One, I got some cash on top of the deal. Two, I still have the record release version of that Carbonas record, which is the rarest variant of the three. And three, I don't even like that specific Carbonas record. Everything they did after that one was way better.
All in all it ended up being a good trade, but I'm surprised I had to make it at all. It strikes me as being very unusual that the Sub Pop Supersuckers records have never been reissued. I wonder why. I still need to hunt down a copy of The Smoke Of Hell eventually. Hopefully it doesn't require another collection sacrifice.
