The two best bands ever: Rancid v. H2O

A little high school nostalgia...

Back when I was a lad, there was a period of about a year where, as far as I was concerned, every band except two could have stopped making music and I would have been a-OK.

This post exists as a tribute to those two bands, the two bands that made punk relevant to people born after the mid-'70, two bands that I've seen a combined 13 times, and the two bands that were represented on the right and left sleeves of my army surplus parka in grade 11 and 12.

That's right, I'm talking about H2O and Rancid, the two best bands EVAR!

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Albany, California, a band that really, really wishes they could be The Clash... RANCID!

Rancid were formed in 1991 from the ashes of another really important American punk band called Operation Ivy. Op Ivy ran from 1987 to 1989 and featured Rancid bassist Matt Freeman and guitarist/vocalist Tim Armstrong. The band broke up just as they were starting to flirt with mainstream success. Tim responded to the death of the band by taking the borderline alcoholism he'd had since his teens and making it a full time occupation, drinking like a maniac until he wound up homeless.

In '91, Matt suggested to his wreck of a former bandmate that they give music another try. Matt's since said that he only started Rancid to keep Tim from drinking himself to death. They recruited a drummer (Brett Reed) and later added a second guitarist (Lars Frederiksen, who had just finished a brief stint filling in with the UK Subs) and the rest was basically history.

In their 18-year career, Rancid have experimented with pretty much every punk sub-genre. They've released a couple of streetpunk-type albums (their self-titled debut and breakout hit Let's Go), a ska album (...And Out Come the Wolves, my personal favourite), a pop-punky sort of album (Indestructible), a hardcore album (their other self-titled album) and a weird sort of experimental new wave-meets-dub reggae sort of album that I'm fairly convinced no one liked but me (Life Won't Wait).

They also broke-up, got back together, spawned a couple fairly awesome side projects (Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards and The Transplants), and Tim Armstrong engaged in the time-honoured rock n' roll tradition of age inappropriate marriage when he married Brody Dalle of The Distillers, who was like 12 at the time.

(She later left him for one of the douches from Queens of the Stone age, like the worthless little Aussie whore she is.)

Here's the video for "Time Bomb."


The Competition

In the blue corner, from New York's Lower East Side, the most successful band ever started by another band's roadie, H2O!

H20 was founded in 1994 by Sick of it All roadie Toby Morse. In the early '90s, Toby had started getting on stage with the band during encores, and was so well received that he started a band of his own. He recruited a bunch of his buddies with band experience to back him up and started playing shows in New York, New Jersey and New England.

As with pretty much every '90s punk band, they released a couple albums on Epitaph, had one (middling) major label album, broke up and re-formed as mature men. Their story is pretty interchangeable with the stories of several of their NYHC contemporaries, particularly Madball, who they've toured with about seven hundred zillion times.

What's important about H2O is how they fit into my personal narrative. No band helped ease the transitions from hip-hop kid who dabbled in punk to punker who dabbled in hip-hop and back again more than H2O. Guitars aside, there's very little that separates H2O from, say, the Wu-Tang Clan. They both sing about the same topics: loyalty to your friends, standing up for your 'hood, holding it down, and kicking asses. H2O even covered an Ice Cube song and had a hip-hop style beef with another artist. (That would be Ray "Of Today" Cappo, of 1980s Straight Edge outfit Youth of Today and '90s Krishnacore bands Shelter and Better Than a Thousand.)

Like Rancid, H2O's hiatus at the dawn of the millennium allowed them to be in a bunch of side projects. Toby formed Hazen St. with members of Madball and, inexplicably, the non-Blink member of Boxcar Racer. His brother Todd joined Juliette Lewis and the Licks, and Rusty Pistachio (rhythm guitar) was in a band called And a Pizza Place.

Here's the video for "What Happened," off their 2008 comeback album Nothing to Prove. It has Michael Rapaport in it, who's sort of a hero of mine.



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Yes Rude Boys! The Specials Take the Three Points

The Specials win this one 6 - 1.

Here's "Gangsters" as a victory video.

No Real Good Reason: The Specials vs. The Dead Milkmen

What's up gang?

Sorry I've been out of commission for the last little while. Shit has, once again, been rather insane in the world of sports media. Add that to a two-and-a-half day jaunt to the 519 and you come up with very little time for the Interweb.

There's no real theme this week, just a battle between two bands I fucking love.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Coventry, England, the band that single-handedly brought back ska, pork pie hats and tonic suits, THE SPECIALS!

The Specials were formed in Coventry in 1977 by Lynval Golding, Horace "Sir Horace Gentleman" Panter and Jerry Golding. Between 1977 and their 1979 debut on wax, they went through five different names. (The Automatic, The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA and eventually, The Specials.) They also toured with The Clash before founding their own record label, 2-Tone Records, and hiring Elvis Costello to produce their debut full-length.

The band released two full-length albums, their self-title debut and 1981's More Specials, and eight hit singles, before co-frontmen Terry Hall and Neville Staple left to form Fun Boy Three with guitarist Golding. The rest of the band continued on under the old Special AKA moniker, releasing one more album, In the Studio, and two more hit singles. The Special AKA broke up in 1984.

They've reformed twice, in 1996 and again earlier this year.

This is the video for "A Message to You Rudy."



The Competition

From Philadelphia, PA, a band that walks the thinnest line, THE DEAD MILKMEN!

The Dead Milkmen were founded in 1983 by Joe "Joe Jack Talcum" Genaro. He was later joined by buddies Dean "Clean" Sabatino, Dave "Blood" Schulthise and Rodney "Anonymous" Linderman.

The band release eight studio albums, plus a gang of EPs, self-released tapes and a live album.

The Milkmen became semi-famous in 1987 thanks to a Detroit Tigers rookie names Jim Walewander, who was a huge fan. When Walewander invited the band to Tiger Stadium to watch a game and meet the team, they had the following conversation with Tigers' manager Sparky Anderson.

Sparky: "Well, hello, boys."

Rodney: "WE LOVE SATAN!"

Sparky: "Well, gotta go, boys."

The band had a brief, unsuccessful stay on Disney owned Hollywood Records in the early '90s before releasing one final independent album and breaking up in 1995.

Since the break-up of the band, Genaro has released solo material as Joe Jack Talcum and as part of Joe Butterfly with Sabatino. Sabatino also drummed with Big Mess Orchestra.

Linderman recorded several solo projects.

Dave "Blood" Schulthise left music following the break-up of the band. He briefly attended Indiana University, moved to Serbia in the middle of that country's civil war, returned to Philadelphia and started working as a janitor. He killed himself in 2004. When I found out, I was sad. For me, the death of Dave Blood was a way bigger musical tragedy than that of Kurt Cobain, but it's gross to compare things like that. Let's just say that people should have made a bigger deal out of his death than they did.

The remaining three Milkmen have reunited twice. Once in 2004 as part of a benefit in memory of Blood, and again in 2008 as part of a festival.

This is the video for their biggest, and only, hit,"Punk Rock Girl."


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