Social Distortion: Daytrotter Session

Three new versions of old tracks, "Prison Bound", "Ring of Fire" and "Reach for the Sky" make this another one of the great 2011 Daytrotter sessions. MRML has more more Social D. HERE!





Let us know what you think of Social D.  in the COMMNENTS section (where you'l find the link for the Daytrotter Session).


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Mike Ness: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Since Social Distortion is so clearly Mike Ness' souped-up vehicle, what's the difference between his solo career and the band's? Here, with these two take on the Bob Dylan (likely via Johnny Cash) song, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" the distinction is laid out pretty clearly.

"It used to go like that..."

"...But now it goes like this..."

Ness does usually tour with a band, albeit a more country-rockabilly-folk one, as this 1999 FM broadcast from Boston demonstrates well.



Live In Boston link is in the comments

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Social Distortion: Recordings Between Then and Now

"I saw Mike Ness on TV and I said 'This is the perfect blend of everything my mom played for me The Who, the Stones, Dylan and punk stuff I was getting into'."

Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem (Rolling Stone, April 2010)

That quote reminded me of the impact of Social D. on this generation of punks (in the school where I teach there's always a cadre of fans) in general and The Gaslight Anthem, whose legitimate debt to Springsteen is as over-stated as their debt to Ness & co. is under-stated (when I saw them on the '59 Sound tour they had a Social D. song as their intro music) in specific.

So for our last rarities bootleg, here's the spookily-real looking Recordings Between Then and Now, which while it does contain some overlap with previously posted bootlegs, it worth hearing on its own merits.


Recordings Between Then and Now link is in the comments

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Social Distortion: Lost Tracks

Twenty-some extremely rare demos, live, acoustic, B-sides, comp tracks by Social D. and still without great overlap with our last few boots. While there are, obviously, some justifiable throwaways here, there are some excellent items here including a beeped by by our ever-more-timid major labels version of the Clash's "Death of Glory".

I removed a few obvious gaffes from this compilation (including the frequently mis-attributed versions of "Pretty in Pink" and "Tainted Love" that are actually by Automatic 7 and Shades Apart, respectively) but since there was some solo Ness material already, I added this live duet on "Bad Luck" with big-time Social D fan, Bruce Springsteen.

Rare Tracks link is in the comments

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Social Distortion: Girls, Cars and Loud Guitars

Social Distortion's first album, 1983's Mommy's Little Monster, is a stone-punk-classic but their self-titled major label debut* from 1990 is the better still. By better, I mean while Mommy's Little Monster is, in style, words and music, inextricably linked to 1983 those songs from Social Distortion sound gloriously unstuck in time, as if beamed in from a radio station from a better world.

In-between the mid-eighties major labels scooping up (and subsequent destroying of) Husker Du and The Replacements and The Grunge Frenzy 0f '92 Social D. quietly signed with the big boys at CBS and had a modest hit with "Story of My Life", one of the best singles of the decade. While the lyrics and the melody boast a country simplicity, the execution smacks of punk aggression; it's like Buck Owens and His Clasheroos. It's also that singular kind of song that you'd give days off of your own life just to have been at practice when the author came into the grubby rehearsal room, acoustic guitar in hand, and said, "Okay guys, listen to this new song".

* In-between these two lies Prison Bound which starts of with one of their defining tracks ever but is otherwise not in the in the running for best-Social D. album.

Girls, Cars and Loud Guitars is a bootleg collection of B-sides, live tracks and outtakes from the early nineties that is crucial primarily for those who already own the real thing.


Girls, Cars and Loud Guitars link is in the comments.

Speaking of comments, What is Social D.'s best album?



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Social Distortion: 1980 Demos

What hit me was that voice, that barbed-wire yet melodic voice of Mike Ness' that sounded snotty and world-weary all at once.


It was back in the early eighties when the Rodney on the Roq compilations of SoCal punk were warping my taste for all time, that I first heard Mike Ness' Social Distortion detonate the song "1945". When Ness growls those almost standard-issue punk lines, "Flying over Hiroshima, 1945/The city looks small from way up here/I wonder who'll survive", they stay stuck in your brain till you find yourself singing along to that voice.

Ness has never lost that voice, one not notable for its great range but rather for its serrated-edged passion that never gives a song quarter. And his voice as a song-writer voice has also never wavered, every new development seeming to just uncover something we always knew was there but hadn't quite cottoned onto. To mark his early growth, here's footage from the documentary Another State of Mind of the very young Mike Ness taking us through the writing of a deceptively simple song of longing.

Today's offering is also an early sketch, in this case some early demos that are actually pretty ferocious and more than an adequate introduction to that voice.

1980 demos link is in the comments

Speaking of comments, give us your initial reaction to hearing Social D.

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