Brett Callwood“My Favorite Album” is a weekly column in which we ask a musician exactly what the title suggests — to name their favorite album of all time. This week, it's Bones, singer with local punks the Lower Class Brats.
The Damned
Machine Gun Etiquette (Chiswick)
The Damned are the quintessential punk band. They never let the punk genre define them; instead they defined and challenged punk rock with every album they made. Their first record without Brian James to control the group, Captain Sensible moved to guitar and chief songwriter duties and it definitely had everything to do their sound expanding. Machine Gun Etiquette is not just a punk rock classic — it’s a classic rock & roll LP, period.
It’s got it all: the aggressive proto-thrash of “Love Song,” the gothic punk ballad “Plan 9 Channel 7,” the foot-stomping glam of the title track. And closing the LP with one of the greatest pop-punk anthems ever written: “Smash It Up.” It’s their Sgt. Pepper and they didn’t have George Harrison to muck it up with some horrible sitar tune!!
The entire lineup of Lower Class Brats find this album to be their best effort, and probably one of our favorite albums of all time. This LP isn’t just mandatory listening for punk music fans, it should be mandatory listening for all music fans. There’s a reason that 39 years after its release, this gem is still in print on CD and vinyl.
As our buddy John Brannon [Negative Approach/Easy Action] would say, “Check it out!!!”
Lower Class Brats play with The Briefs, The Flytraps, The Stitches and Generacion Suicida at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12, at the Bootleg Theater.
Credit: Chiswick Records
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