Peer Pressure – Sound of the ’80s 7″ (1980 Peer Pressure/Resistance Records)
This is another one of those records that was so obscure that it wasn’t until it was put on one of those Killed By Death compilations (bootlegs) that anyone took notice. In fact, it was because of that leading Ryan Richardson to go on a nationwide hunt and document his adventure, that I came to hear of this band and their one and only release.
I ended up getting a copy of this in a trade I did, and I gave up a fair amount of stuff for it. Not too long after that, someone tracked down a friend of the band who had a small stack of them and sold them on ebay for less than the value of the stuff I gave up for it. There’s some timing for you, had I put off trading awhile, I would have been able to get one cheaper in essence, but either way I’m glad I have the record.
Ryan did a thorough writeup on the band and his quest for this single over on his site and its well worth a read. I really do miss his MRR columns. Here’s a few highlights.
The band was a two-piece band consisting of J Paine and B Estes. They were around 30 years old at the time of this recording but if you didn’t know better, you’d swear it was a group of high school kids. J Paine played ALL the instruments on the record while B Estes contributed the vocals. The two were long time friends. They put out this single which they only pressed a couple hundred copies of. One of the members hopped on a greyhound bus and tried to hand-distribute the single to stores in other states (they were from CT). The “band” called it quits shortly after and never played any shows since it would have required them finding more musicians to play all the instruments that J played on the record.
A few years ago, there was a 7″ that came out of a few unreleased songs that were recorded before this single. I believe it was Ryan who put it out. One of the members lives in the UK now and the other one lives in San Francisco.
Listen to “Sound of the ’80s” from the record (right click and “save target as…”)
Love this record, not just because they are from my home state and I’m nutty about CT punk bands but because this record is punk perfection. Funny that I never even heard of this band/record until a few years ago and they lived not 40 miles away from me. This sucker is truly obscure. Don’t worry MXV once that stash dries up your copy will again be worth mega-bux!
( I haven’t forgotten about your email either, I’ll be getting back to you soon)
It’s not that I want it to be worth big money, I’d prefer people not pay huge cash for these things so I could someday afford to complete the vault. The timing was just bad in this case. I guess I’m just happy I traded because these days everyone just wants to sell their stuff on ebay.