We Know You Suck

Proto skate punk- early hardcore from Phoenix (Tempe actually). Teenagers who captured the essence of being a punk with a skateboard in the grueling heat amongst suburbs, frat boys, and retirees. Jody Fosters Army had all the speed and tightness of Dischord DC bands with the power and spirit of LA hardcore. Don played a searing surfy guit more along the lines of East Bay Ray (the DKs). The drummer Bam Bam (who was about 15 I think) loved all things metal. The bass is plunky and played with precision- Michael always seemed to be the “responsible” one in the band (all punk bands needed one to survive, feed themselves). Brian had the quintessential hardcore vocal delivery (thank god for lyric sheets). It all came together with a bang. A huge draw, JFA shows were teaming with kids with Independent t-shirts and X’s on their hands. I’ll stop here before I reminisce more than the folks in the liner notes. However, I cant resist scoring mucho punk rock cred points here: my old band (a lablemate of JFAs) makes the flyer on the very back, right below “meat puppets”.

1) upbeat
2) theme song
3) brief song about sadistic ranchers on AZ/Mex border who would torture the undocumented hired help
4) super brief
5) fucking every AZ punker’s theme song ca ’82: “the hippies they hate us, we take their chicks, they beat us up, but theyre still the dicks. DICKS!”
6) driving hardcore
7) smoking
8) slow/fast
9) KROQ Rodney fame song, FCCs, see #28
10) cool breaks
11) FCC, slow/fast
12) surf classic, ventures
13) driving
14) another surf classic
15) fast
16) title song, FCCs
17-19) fast
20) ode to the freeway that used to end at Phoenix, just west, instrumental
21) FCCs
22) fast /breaks, FCC
23) almost captures the live effect
24) classic crowd pleaser- I got my nose cracke in the pit once to this
25) this appeared on “this is phoenix not the circle jerks”comp
26) swingy slow/fast
27) great intro
28) “hit”with FCC well buried
29) from the above comp
30) smokin’
31) FCCs
32) cleaner Peanuts theme
33) third and last comp (above)song, this song ended that comp and it ends this