Static Friction Reveal New Single & Video “The Balance” Ahead Of US Tour Dates
Boston, MA melodic punk band Static Friction have released their brand new single, The Balance, this is accompanied by the band's…
For the uninitiated, Sludgeworth are Chicago punk pioneers from the 1980’s that released a posthumous anthology on Lookout Records back in the day, and it sold tens of thousands of copies, which was impressive for a defunct band. With members of Screeching Weasel, they had obvious leanings towards melodic punk, but they also had a quintessential Midwest sound mixed in with some post-punk. Now, for the first time ever, Red Scare Industries have released Sludgeworth’s Losers Of The Year on vinyl, as well as on CD and through streaming services. The CD and digital version of the album also includes two previously unreleased tracks, To Be The Same and Here For A While. The reissue also comes with live photos from back in the day and liner notes featuring contributions from Jeff Pezzati (Naked Raygun),Joe Principe (Rise Against), Mikey Erg (The Ergs), Patrick Costello (Dillinger Four) and more.
This has been in the works for well over 5 years. I know Dan (Sludgeworth singer) from The Methadones records we did. He gave me the green light, but it took ages to track down the audio for this. When I finally had the good sense to contact Chrisser (Appelgren, President/Owner of Lookout Records) he immediately wrote back that he had one last shoe box of tapes, but it was unlikely. Minutes later I got an email that was basically, ‘Ope, I’ll be damned, it’s in here!’ He overnighted me the DAT tape and that was the first promising sign! He’s one of the real heroes of this salvage project. Something else I found out: not easy to transfer a DAT tape these days! I know all sortsa fancy studios, but no one can keep a machine in working order because they’re impossible to maintain. And since THE VERY LAST copy of the master audio were in my hands, I wasn’t about to put it in the mail. Next stroke of luck was that I learned Arik from Creep Records still had a working machine and he hooked me up. He’s hero #2 in this tale! When we were transferring files he was like, ‘Damn, this is good!’ Yet another promising sign! Obviously the art was lost to the winds and there’s literally no band pic or promo shot, so Eric from Wall of Youth had his work cut out for him, but he pulled it off. The final package came out great: we got a buncha live shots and some blurbs from Sludgeworth’s contemporaries. Folks like Jeff from Naked Raygun, Joe from Rise Against, Mikey Erg, Patrick from Dillinger Four, etc. It took some time to cobble together, but I think people will be stoked to finally have a vinyl copy of this.” (Red Scare Industries)