D.R.I. "The Dirty Rotten CD" CD
[Beer City]
Damn, this massive collection is long overdue. This enormous 44-track CD contains the entire "Dirty Rotten LP", the "Violent Pacification" 7", various demo and compilation tracks, a few live cuts, and two radio interviews from very early on in the band's lengthy history. What needs to be said about this material that everyone doesn't already know? These are the definitive recordings from this legendary act: Fast, thrashing, socially aware hardcore/punk with a sense of humor... where few songs top two minutes and most run around 45 seconds or less. Seriously, is there anyone that doesn't have at least some inclination as to what this stuff sounds like? I fucking hope not, because that LP and 7" fucking rip, and are a benchmark to this day. The first radio "interview" is pretty hilarious because the DJ's seem to be completely clueless and it's really not so much an interview as it is the band fucking around and getting a few demo tracks played on the air at around midnight. The second interview is definitely better as the DJ seems to have an idea of what he's doing, so he actually talks with the band about how they went about recording their demo in their practice space and shit like that, then proceeds to play a couple of live tracks. Both interviews took place when the band had only been together for four months, so it's a pretty cool document of the roots of D.R.I. In addition to everything else there's a CD-Rom portion with six live tracks (in five video clips) from the only show D.R.I. ever played at CBGB's way back in 1984. I didn't really find the videos to be all that interesting just because the picture's pretty dark and the clips are pretty compressed so the quality isn't the greatest, but it was 1984 after all, so... The recordings are all raw and dated at this point in time, but for stuff that was done in the early-80's it sounds good enough for me. The sound is inconsistent, but I'm not bothered by that at all in this case. The live tracks are of course the roughest of the bunch, but I can even tolerate that stuff, and I like the demo version of "I Don't Need Society" even better than the version that was on the LP. The layout is simple but effective. It contains the original cover artwork from the "Dirty Rotten LP" and the "Violent Pacification" 7" (inside and outside of the booklet), as well as the lyrics to damn near every song on the CD: Including the comp tracks, the demo tracks, etc. That's a rare occurrence these days, but one that I certainly appreciate. That's basically it. There's one tiny band photo at the end of the booklet, but it's mostly straight text. Of course we all know D.R.I.'s lyrical content, do we not? There's some humor, some politics, a mix of the two... and with classics like "Reaganomics" and "I Don't Need Society" this is definitely D.R.I. at their pissed-off-and-to-the-point best. If you don't already have the vinyl, or if you just want the vinyl on one handy CD with some added bonuses, this is definitely worth checking out. (8/10)
Running time - 50:17, Tracks: 44
[Notable tracks: Money Stinks, Reaganomics, Capitalists Suck, Explorer, Violent Pacification, I Don't Need Society (demo), Nursing Home Blues (live)]
Beer City Records - http://www.beercityrecords.com

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