V.A. The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore (2012)

When I tried to order The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore from my local workers-collective-anarcho-metal-punk store, War On Music, the man who does the orders (not to be confused with the man who gives the orders!) said "Oh, I never even saw that, I always just skip over the Various Artists section in the catalogs".

Let's let's not fiddle-di-di, it's the nineties what caused that sort of antipathy towards the initials V. A. The once venerable reputation of the underground compilation album (see wordy defense HERE) plummeted in that decade, when ever-lowering production costs led every label in the world to flood the markets with cheap sampler CD's and ill-themed collections.

The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore is a 2012 pop-punk compilation L.P. put together by the Lookout Records (lots more HERE) founder of the title put together at the behest of Adeline Records head (and Green Day dude) Billie-Joe Armstrong.





The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore is the best compilation of the century and it pantses every Lookout compilation. I mean, really try to listen to The Thing That Ate Floyd or Can of Pork without skipping multiple tracks. One could argue that those compilations featured a greater variety of styles then this one does. However, consistency has its rewards and the fact there's no cheap filler here is an achievement. Part of thre greateness herein is that Livermore has lined up the relatively obvious choices like The Copyrights, Houseboat, Night Birds and the Dopeamines. But Livermore, with help from the denizens of the Pop-Punk Message Board, has also chosen some impressive lesser-known (to me) like Emily's Amy, Mixtapes and The Weekend Dads.





So fuck all that Epit-Fat-Hopeless-Tooth'n'Nail landfill from the nineties and chow down on The Thing That Ate Larry Livermore!


Adeline Records