Don’t Forget Your Roots,
that’s the name of the covers album that NY’s finest H2O released in 2011 upon the hardcore world.
The band formed out of a former Sick Of It All roadie; Toby Morse, his brother and some friends decided it was their quest to teach modern day hardcore kids what it’s all about by playing all those songs that influenced them and formed the base for their output of music. Fifteen tracks of classic covers of some of the greatest hardcore punk bands ever, including Descendents, Rancid, Madball, Sick Of It All,….
All this madness was released at the end of last year by Bridge Nine Records on five different versions:
A twelve inch record that was available in four different colours. Being black, red, purple and white, and all came with the same artwork featuring the band playing a show depicted in some comic book style.
But a few weeks prior to that release a series of ep’s saw the light, three different versions containing tracks of the upcoming full album. Each version containing three tracks of bands hailing from their respective titles. New York City, Washington D.C. and California.
13/09/2011 the first ep was released to the eager masses of collectors and music lovers. Featuring the sunny tunes of Californian bands such as Circle Jerks, Rancid and Social Distortion. Brought in a a radiant yellow with according artwork depicting some of Cali’s finest bands.
References to Rancid, Flipper, Descendents, Circle Jerks and many more can be discovered on the artwork while listening to these sweet punky tunes by the west coast godfathers. All three tracks are getting served with a special New York Hardcore layer added by the performers.
My personal favourite here is the Rancid cover of “Journey To The East Bay”. It ain’t Tim Armstrong’s cheese grater vocals, but that would be hard to beat, still Toby and crew take control of this song and make it their own.
On 18/10/2011 the next leg of the trilogy expanded as a tribute to New York Hardcore, the name of this release is New York City and demonstrating their style are Cro-Mags, Sick Of It All and Madball.
On the album cover it’s another nod to the great of the New York scene, Joey Ramone overlooking the whole CBGB building as the moon goes Madball, other New York Hardcore legends can be spotted in here. I’ve got the green version of this vinyl, but more on that later during the pressing info.
“Hard Times” by the Cro-Mags is the first east coast classic to get the H2O treatment on New York City. Next up is a track by Toby’s former bosses Sick Of It All named “Friends Like You”. H2O covering New York styled bands comes pretty easy to these guys so no big news on these covers so far. “Pride” by Madball fills the b-side of this ep.
To finish this warmup round of releases prior to the full album Bridge Nine Records released the last chapter on 28/102011. This time it was Washington D.C. and the corresponding scene that got paid respect.
I’m talking Dag Nasty, Embrace and Government Issue getting political in the U.S. political capitol.
Capitol Hill is the setting for the D.C. album cover, lightning strikes in resemblance to the mighty Bad Brains imagery, the Minor Threat out of step black sheep is present and accompanied by other D.C. based bands such as Scream and Swiz.
A very well done cover of the Dag Nasty’s classic “Safe” can be heard here, along with other great versions of “Said Gun” by Embrace and “Understand” by Government Issue.
So now let’s get into the numbers. As said earlier all these songs appeared on a full album named Don’t Forget Your Roots. This one comes in four variants and I haven’t found pressing info on this one. What I can share are the numbers to the ep releases.
- The California release has been released on 1000 clear opaque yellow, 600 on opaque pink, 300 on opaque baby blue and an exclusive tour release of 100 on clear.
- New York City holds the same numbers and variants but the colours here are a 1000 on solid orange, 600 on solid green, 300 on solid gray and another 100 tour releases only on clear.
- The D.C. version is once again 1000 on clear red, 600 on white, 300 clear blue and a tour edition on 100 on clear.
These three ep’s hold 9 of the 15 songs that appear on the full album Don’t Forget Your Roots. The idea of splitting them up into the hometowns of the residence of the different bands covered, proved a great idea. It gives the listener a preview to the great bands representing those legendary scenes.
All classic songs that are being brought to attention by contemporary Hardcore legends showing their respect to the generations before them. Displaying a map of american hardcore punk throughout his history, only this time beefed up with a H20 New York Hardcore touch. You can’t hide that New Yawk accent, Yankee.
Ezekiel02:24:81