AntiCurrent Archive Vol 4: Kick A Cunts: 1604 Demos

For the fourth edition of the "AntiCurrent.com Archives", a collection of rare albums I'm releasing through this blog, I'm releasing the first band I ever recorded.  Click here to view all past AntiCurrent.com Archive Albums.

Back in 2002 The J's (See Previous Blog as to who we were) began hanging out with Nick Jones, the bassist of The Kick A Cunts, whom we knew from our high-school. 3/4 of the band was based out of the city of Middletown and we were based out of the country where Nick went to school with us. We went one day to check out their rehearsal spot which was located in the basement of the lead singer Chirs Kay's house, dubbed 1604 after the address of the house. We soon began to visit more and more (as did many people and bands in the punk scene) until we just began to go over near everyday.

1604 allowed the scene a place to watch The Kick A Cunts (a, if not the predominant band in the scene) practice, have the occasional show, and most importantly at the time, a place to drink. Many crazy nights were had there, and I can recall far less than I actually participated in. It wasn't out of place for us to run and take shelter at 1604 once or twice a month with the cops not far behind some member of the group, leaving the cop to just knock on the door for half an hour before giving up in defeat.  

The band consisted of Nick Jones on Bass, Chris Kay on vocals, J.D. Attenborough on drums, and Derek Busch on guitar. The Kick A Cunts played streetpunk with overtones of The Exploited, The Unseen, The Virus, and others. As my group of friends started hanging out there more and more, I began to hang out a lot with J.D. and he quickly became one of my best friends (and I'd eventually join his next band, The Jackoffs).

By the end of Chris moving out, which caused the end of 1604, the place had meant so much to all of us that the entirety of The J's and The Kick A Cunts (and many others in the scene) got a tattoo of the numbers "1604". Mine are located on the back of my neck.

Somewhere around this time I bought a 6 track recorder with the intention of starting my own band, and brought it over to their rehearsal spot to test it out. The idea was to take my very limited knowledge, record the band as a whole, and then track by track overdub each member. I recorded their entire set at the time with 2 mic's feeding into one channel as the master, but the loudness of the cramped basement and all of our lack of patience never saw the fruition of a full album. What it did produce is what is here, a debatably decent quality 9 song demo of the entire band playing live.

I gave this out half a decade ago to the members of the band, but having no formal audio experience yet, the recording was slightly sped up and reeked of tape hiss and terrible EQ. So when I started this Archive release through my blog, I knew one of the first things I wanted to do was to go back to the original tape, recapture it, and remaster it, releasing it here with both the optimal sound (considering the source) and decent artwork.

So without further bullshit, here is the remastered version of The Kick A Cunts demo, named after their (and in my opinion, the entire Middletown Punk scene's) birthplace: 1604

Download The Entire Album and Cover Art Here:
MP3 Zip Archive

The tracklist is:
1. Shit Face
2. Fuck Mike Jones    
3. True Cunt Like You      
4. Dirty Punx
5. Media Brigade  
6. Die My Darling    
7. Punx Not Dead
8. Spikey Hair Drunk Punx    
9. Tool Sucks

A Brief Synopsis of The J's (AKA: The Kafeteria Kids of America)

I was going to do this post on a story about my trading of a working car for 15 loose cans of Schlitz Malt Liquor at age 16, but I realized that to understand such a thing would require the knowledge of who the the key characters involved were. Matter of fact, for many of these posts, you would need to know who the key members of miscellaneous groups, bands, and gangs I've hung out with throughout the years are. Otherwise our actions might be wrongly interpreted as random, senseless acts of violence.... well many of them were, but that is not the point. This is the story of the group of friends I hung out with throughout high school, The J’s.

Kuban J and Drunk J

Back  then I always hung out with the older kids because most people in my grade weren't into music the same as I. Particularly, aggressive music. As it stood, none of the J’'s were into the same genre of music. We all came from different backgrounds. I listened to punk, Jay #1 listened to metal Jay #2 listened to experimental Residents type stuff, and JZ listened was a Juggalo. There wasn't anyone else in our bumfuck country town that listened to anything other than top-40 and new-country, so because we didn't have the luxury of hanging out with people of similar taste due to there being zero scene in Madison Township, we were all banded together as the group of weird outcasts.

In retrospect, it was kinda cool to hang out with people that didn’t listen to your particular genre of music. I introduced them to Social Distortion, they introduced me to Gwar, and before many years our tastes contained enough bleed-over that we discovered music that all of us could tolerate while riding in one anothers cars... although we all agreed that JZ was retarded as all hell  for enjoying the “stylings” of Insane Clown Posse.

Kaf Kids and The Kick A Cunts

So this is the story (or at the least a brief synopsis) of the J's. The J's consisted of myself, JZ, and two other members named Jay.... get it? The J's? Well we didn't come up with it, that was a nickname that stuck, given to us by a punk band in the neighboring scene of Middletown. They were the Kick A Cunts... and I’ll be covering them in my next blog.

Looking back, for being friends we were all cruel as shit to each other as our nicknames arose from the worst or most shameful attribute each of us had. We always joked at one another's expense and we were always picking on one member or the other.

Jay #1 was nicknamed Fat J for potentially obvious reasons, he was a big fucking dude... but he didn’t mind the nickname. Fat J was sort of the ringleader of the group, not that he was any more in charge than the rest of us, we just tended to mainly hang out at his place and ride in his car. He was the sort of guy who called you a faggot for having a conversation where you displayed any sort of emotion, but then would drive you to fight a guy and back you up during it if someone tried to jump you.

Jay #2 was nicknamed Krazy J. Krazy was good people, damn good infact. The kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back without you asking for it. He came from good stock too, his parents were solid human beings, a rarity in this life. A few years  prior to his hanging out with us, Jay had hung with the popular crowd, and it is my estimation that they used his good naturedness to hang at his amazing house and play with his amazing toys. I suspect he either grew too smart to deal with this or was for some reason ostracized from the group. He could be a bit strange some days, but then again, who of us fucking aren't. But his demeanor toward others and their reception to him is why we dubbed him Krazy J.

JZ was nicknamed Kuban J. Why? Because we were fucking cruel to each other and he obviously came from sort of hispanic descent... even though both his "mother and father" were as white as a klansman's hood. Kuban was a Juggalo... and if you don't know what that is, do a google search and prepare yourself for the weirdest sub-genre/cult of music in the fucking world. A brief synopsis of the movement would read like this: They dress up like hell-spawned clowns in black and white makeup, drink Faygo, and are proud to be the whitest of white trash. Its fucking strange to say the lease, and to them, that would be a compliment.

Me at 18

Me? Oh I was known far and wide (and would continue to be for years) as Drunk J. Why? Go fucking figure, even at 16 I was a committed (albeit functioning) alcoholic. I was so known for my alcoholism at this early age that even Fat J's parents didn't have a problem with my drinking in their house (though no one else could) because as they said it, "He's got issues". My issues? Getting kicked out of my fucking parents house every two weeks. I'd bounce back and forth between my mother and fathers house until occasionally they ganged up on me and both kicked me out simultaneously.

My solution? No problem, I'll just go live at Fat’s house. It never lasted more than a few weeks or a month, but there were many, many nights I stayed there due to a lack of other options, and much as Krazy's parents were solid humans, so were Fat J's. They fed me, allowed me to sleep on their floor, and never raised issue one with it. Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful about that, and for Fat J allowing me to do it as well. As I said, he WAS a cocksucker, but he was my cocksucker... though not literally.

We all even had a band called the Kafeteria Kids Of Amerika (noticing a trend with the K's? Not even I am sure about that). What did we do? Well not much, we all played instruments to varying degrees, but we never played one show because we didn't make any goddamn music. We were the only band that did not practice or play. There are a handful of 5-6 demos that we recorded, but they are as low-fi as it gets and no more than us screaming into a mic with a few instruments accompanying.

Our lyrics made fun of ourselves, and handicapped children (told you we were cruel). We were nicknamed the Kaf Kids and got our name from the fact that the "helpers" in our schools cafeteria were mentally handicapped.... Just being honest here, judge all you want, but in our defense, most of our songs made fun of ourselves, songs like "Roush is a Penis", "I Am A Piece Of Shit", or "JZ fucked a goat" are overly apparent of this. You can expect this to be included as a future part of my AntiCurrent.com Archive series.

So that's us. Now I can tell you stories of the mischief, mayhem, and disorder that we caused and don't have to re-explain who the fuck we were.