12/15/24.
I always have mixed feelings about end-of-the-year lists. I guess my biggest issue is just how many of them are out there. So, the early lists get the worm (in this metaphor, the worm is me).
Sims Hardin, the Bandcamp punk specialist, released his Best of Punk list and there is a lot of stuff I'd never heard last year. In fact, his list provided a label I'd never heard of - General Speech (Lexington, Kentucky). The label releases current and reissued punk.
Die Öwan were a Japanese teenage punk band formed in the late 1970s and active for the first part of the 1980s. Hardin mentions that this release would be right up The Coneheads' Mark Winters alley (not exactly the words Hardin used). I would also add Mark Wynn to that sentiment. And clearly Die Öwan loved Wire - they cover "Ex-Lion Tamer" (at the end of Side A-2). The band were contemporaries of Aunt Sally - I can't imagine they weren't influenced.
