Capitol Punishment

 


The following article appears on the website www.punkrecords.org and is used with permission.

I posted a late Capitol Punishment track a while back but here’s what you really wanted. I think I might like their Jody 7″ or Putsch album a bit better (both reissued & available on one CD, along with their second album) but this is still pretty bad-ass. Plus it’s a 1982 demo, waddya want? This was released in 1993 on Texas’ Selfless label and some copies came signed with white wax (I remember seeing one with a cigarette butt taped to the cover.) The rest were black and came in red/black or green/black sleeves. Mine was signed after the fact so I guess it’s a “fake” signed copy, if you will :)

A friend recently asked me to document this band for a message board he frequents so I might as well just re-post it here instead of trying to re-do it (it’s a private board so I won’t bother linking it.) Another regular there actually covered the first few years before I got to it so I’ll quote him first (hope he doesn’t mind.)

Ken Sanderson posted this on Mar 31st, 2006 at 12:58:01 pm

CapitOl punishment have some great records, up to “super glutton” where the singer and then the drummer changes and the music gets more experimental….”Putsch comes to shove” is one of my favorite US Hardcore records. It’s basic 1-2 thrash that the band occassionally and inventively peers around the confines of, but the original on Stagedive, with the HUGE mastering from Fantasy takes it to another level…just brilliant.

The first 7″ was released on Stage Dive as well as repressed on We Bite IN Germany. “jodie is my bloody love” is a classic!

Their demos came out on Selfless as a signed limited to 1,000 white vinyl 7″. There must be more of these as I’ve found “unsigned’ copies.

The ” Putsch comes to shove” 12″ was on Stagedive, then redone in Germany.
“slum with a View” LP is uneven, but probably can be picked up really cheap. In fact it appears the guitarrist still sells them for $10 New! There’s also a german version with extra tracks and a different cover.

After that, the really gnarly vocalled singwer Ralph leaves to play pro golf or something and it gets spotty ( “bullwarks against Oppression”, “Super glutton”). There’s also a live in Germany LP with Ralph singing.

Yapple posted this on Mar 31st, 2006 at 06:31:15 pm
Hey, little jon here… Yapple asked me to share what I knew but it looks like the first several years were pretty well covered by Ken. This is cool, there’s probably more CP info on this page than there is the rest of the Web (which I always thought was sorta weird.)

Ralph was actually doing golf tournaments even in the early CP days, which sometimes took precedent over existing CP tours. In fact, he had to leave a couple early and those would be finished out by then roadie, now Strychnine hero Jimi Haze.

As Ken mentioned, Dale’s HC84 comp is definitely worth picking up. There’s one CapPun tune that wasn’t released elsewhere in studio form (at least not with Ralph singing) and then two different studio versions of songs that later appeared on the Putsch Lp (I actually like these versions a little better, I think.) Tons of other great Fresno shit on this one too, do yourself a favor and buy it, steal it, download it or wtfe!

So to pick up where Ken left off, the Glutton For punishment 7″ was released in 1988 and featured local coffee shop hipster (and genuinely cool guy) Joe Leggit Jr. on vocals and Cartoon Network superstar Tim Biskup on drums (Tim also drew the crude Stagedive Records logo in the early days, if I recall correctly.)

Glutton was released as a 12″ with bonus tracks the following year, on Tim’s Duck Butter label. This record had some really good songs in my opinion but just didn’t quite make me wanna break shit like the earlier stuff. This same year (1989, I believe,) they did another record (on We Bite) with the same line-up, called Bulwarks Against Oppression. Same deal; some good songs, no real fireworks though.

Something happened right after the Bulwarks record, to where Joe had to leave the band. Enter, Harvey Moody, tall ass motherfucker and super cool dude. Harvey was a little better than Joe on vocals but definitely no Ralph (I think he may have felt a little bad about that too.) This line-up did a fair number of live gigs and a song on some over-seas comp that I can’t recall the name of now (it was some kind of “native american” benefit or something.)

Somewhere around this time, Tim left and Willy Greer started drumming. Willy smoked, wonder what he’s doing these days. This line-up actually went into Mr. Brett’s West Beach studio in 1993 and recorded a full length but the final release didn’t quite come out as originally planned. Stuff happened and feelings were hurt and it eventually came out (Messiah Complex) with half the songs having new vox laid down by Jimi. I liked both versions, to be honest.

It was the Harvey/Willy line-up that was featured on the cover of MRR in the early 90’s (woulda been between 91 and 93 I guess.) xgoatcorex: I think you must be getting this mixed up with something else. It was actually The Willies that Devon interviewed at Great America and it did indeed run in MRR. The Willies were formed right after the Messiah Complex fiasco and featured Harvey and Willy, along with Meghan and Aaron, now of Naked Aggression (Aaron used to drum for one or two of Yapple’s bands too, good kid and a great drummer.) I actually did a PunkRecords.Org post a little while back, that has one of the rough Messiah Complex mixes, along with the Willies version of the same. Check that out here.

I think it was right around that time that Todd did the 1982 demos 7″ on Selfless. I think those recordings featured their original drummer (prior to Mike,) Keith Johnson. I don’t recall if there was any studio stuff with Eric Tsuda, the original singer (prior to Ralph.)

The live record is worth finding if you liked the Ralph line-up, it’s really good quality. It’s funny, that record came out on Germany’s Destiny Records and I was in Germany right after it was released. I always thought they had a pretty big following in Germany but when I asked my host about the record, well it didn’t seem to be the case.

I guess that’s about all I can think of off the top of my head and my fingers hurt now.

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