Moments before the lunch bell would ring on a warm September day in grade 10, my friend Bennett handed me the headphones from his Walkman and said, “You gotta check this out!”
Bennett was a year ahead of me, played in a band with his older friends and was far cooler than me. I trusted his taste.
Guns n’ Wankers was the band he was showing me and as the thick chords rang through those headphones, drenched in that trademark Snuff/Guns n’ Wankers reverb, I was hooked. What a sound!
Later that year, Fat Wreck Chords would issue the “Survival of the Fattest” compilation and between the NOFX album that my friend’s older sister’s boyfriend would play at her house parties, the Face to Face “Don’t Turn Away cassette” that pumping in the stereo of Doug CHeckley’s tiny red Ford Fiesta (I think?) as he sped us around the community during spare periods, it was a big year for the discovery of that wave of punk rock.
While the radio stations up here (taking their cues from KROQ) and Much Music would play Green Day and The Offspring, it was the lesser known stuff that we could only find at Megatunes, Sloth, or Melodiya record stores in town that really drew me in.
Guns n’ Wankers, on top of having an amazing band name, contributed to that discovery in a big way and the “For Dancing and Listening” remains a favourite for me.
Check out, or rediscover, “Skin Deep” on our #radmixtape this week right here: https://fanlink.fizzgi.gs/radmixtape.
