Bad Religion - Against The Grain

ARTIST: Bad Religion

ALBUM: Against The Grain

PRESSINGS: 
500 Yellow (avg. price $30-$40)
660 Purple (avg. price $35-$70)
??? Black


WHY IT'S AWESOME, AND THE NAME OF THE BLOG EXPLAINED:


Alright people, so this is my first actual post on a record. My ultimate aim here is to tell you about records that I think are cool, while providing some kind of information that is vaguely useful to anyone who is as interested in this narrow subject as I am.

The first record I've chosen to cover is Against The Grain by Bad Religion because 1) it's an awesome record, and 2) the name of this blog is lifted directly from it (more on this later).

Anyone whose ever listened to punk rock since the 80's will have heard of Bad Religion. Currently celebrating their thirty years together as a band, these guys are the the Godfathers of punk. Listening to punk and not listening to Bad Religion would be like watching films and not watching... well, The Godfather.

During their tenure as a band, they've for the most part released pretty amazing albums (I say "for the most part" because Into The Unknown and The New America arguably suck donkey dick), and of their amazing albums, this one is my favorite.

As far as I'm concerned, this is Bad Religion's best punk album. Not because it's the most innovative or creative (it's not, I'm going with Generator for that), but because I believe that this is where Bad Religion were at the pinnacle of writing good punk songs. This album has a whopping 17 songs on it, and in spite of the fact that they almost all have the same beat, structure, and overall sound, this album NEVER GETS BORING. Do you know how hard it is to find an album where all the songs sound the same without it being boring? Pennywise have tried this feat multiple occasions, and failed just about every single time.

This album rocks because it's Bad Religion at it's purest, most concise, and most aggressive. There is an urgency to these songs that I believe Bad Religion have tried to come back to on their last three albums, and while those last three albums were good, I don't think they'll ever regain their sense that "Hey, we have shit to say and we need to say it now!"

I could go on for hours on why this band rocks, and why this album is the best one, but I'm going to move on to the title of the blog, because I believe it all ties it together nicely: Anyone who has heard Against The Grain will recognize that the title of this blog is named after one of the songs on the album. On an album that is already incredibly concise (most songs are no longer than two and a half minutes), this one is one of the fastest, and shortest (roughly 50 seconds).

There's so much about this song that speaks to the purpose of the blog-- whether it's the correlation between negative thinking and punk music, the optimistic spin on something cynical, or the fact that the lyrics to this song can be interpreted to either be bassist Jay Bentley's lyrical crux for everything the band stands for or a mere stream of consciousness of a disenchanted lunatic-- all of these mean something to me, and why I choose to collect punk records. Plus, shit, it's the only song that Jay Bentley actually wrote on the album. When he said that shit, he meant it.

Do yourself a favor and add this to your record collection if you don't own it already. Then listen to this song on repeat and start your own blog:



- Frankie D