Aug 16, 2009

Diggin' In The Crates "Gangsta Punk" Edition

Was looking through a crate of 45s and 7" EPs when I came across this little puppy...


Artist: H2O
Title: "It Was a Good Day"/"I Want More"
Label: Side One Dummy
Vinyl: Clear deep-blue vinyl

Another random purchase from years ago during my frequent peeks into the singles bin at Gallery of Sound... New York hardcore punk band H2O doing two cover versions. The B-side is a vaguely standard cover of Suicidal Tendencies' "I Want More" from their eponymous debut album (the same one that spawned the hit single "Institutionalized") - I say vaguely because the band's lead singer, Toby Morse, doesn't exactly have a melodic voice compared to Suicidal's Mike Muir, so that kind of ruins it for me.

The A-side, though... oy vey! The band takes Ice Cube's hit from The Predator and turns it into a punk song. The rhythms are more like Green Day pop-punk than Youth of Today-style old-school hardcore, but the funny part is the band changes around some of the lyrics in their version, most notably changing the racial self-references to "honkies", which makes this a little less hard to take seriously. I don't know what Cube thought of this when it came out, but I'm assuming that the photo on the A-side label was taken before the band committed their cover version to tape (or hard drive):

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