Bouncing Souls:The Bouncing Souls

 

The Bouncing Souls:The Bouncing Souls

1997

Epitaph Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Cracked  2. Say Anything  3. Kate Is Great  4. Lowlife  5. Chunksong  6. East Side Mags  7. The Toilet Song  8. Single Successful Guy  9. Whatever I Want (Whatever That Is)  10. Serenity  11. Party At 174  12. Holiday Cocktail Lounge  13. The Screamer  14. East Coast Fuck You!  15. I Like Your Eyes  16.. Shark Attack

The third (or second if you don't count their debut long-player which was a compilation of e.p's) by New Jersey punk band the Bouncing Souls...Their sound leans heavily towards party-time pop-punk with quite a bit of melodic hardcore tossed in to give it an edge...

This particular album is often viewed as one of their weaker albums, released hot on the heels of "Maniacal Laughter" (which is one of their best albums, but alas I no longer own it...however I've been feeling pretty nostalgic for it, so if I run across a used copy i may pick it up and do a later post on it...).



I kinda like this self-titled album, though...It was my introduction to the band...Written and recorded quickly, the group claims most of the songs were only half-written, but I think it's that tossed-off quality that drew me into the album in the first place...

The album kind of shoots back and forth between immaculate pop-punk songs  ("Say Anything," "Kate is Great," "Holiday Cocktail Lounge") and jokey filler ("I Like Your Eyes," "The Toilet Song," "Party at 174," and most egregiously "Shark Attack).  But the filler makes the top-shelf stuff sound great and the inconsequential tracks give a lot of insight into the band's personality...It feels like a real snapshot of a time and place...You really get a lot of back-story...They like to eat, ride bikes, and watch 80's movies...

(Brad Hamilton even gets his own song!)

There's even a recipe for a drink to go along with the garage-rock, frat-house  instrumental "The Screamer"...If you're talking a killer set of songs, yea, it needs work....but if you're talking about an album with a strong identity and feel, I think it's successful...

This came out right around the same time I started college and my first year there would have felt mighty empty without it...

I used to live in the College Park Apartments...Apartment 6...  Pictured below...

The only reason I remember I lived in Apartment 6 was because of this:

"The Apartment 6 Gazette." This was a mock newspaper me and my friend Josh would write about the day-to-day happenings in our apartment...We both wrote and did illustrations for the college paper, which, for the life of me, I can't remember what the paper was called...Anyway, we always talked how funny it would be to write newspaper stories about stuff no one cared about...Problems with your room-mates, missing keys, etc, so we would always keep a piece of paper in the typewriter and we would update it every once in awhile...There was no such thing as a blog back then, so...

I know it's hard to read, so I transcribed some of the articles below...Warning: Some of these stories are pretty childish and insensitive...but I guess that's not too shocking coming from a bunch of college assholes...

10/06/97:
 Apartment 6 resident, Jamin Trevarrow, unearthed a shocking discovery in Bruce Egresics bottom-drawer...A SECRET STASH OF PEZ. Also found was a DINO dispenser. In a related story Bruce was also found to be hoarding a whole case of Pepsi under his bed (it was found by Apartment 6 patron, Josh, who helped Jamin confiscate and drink two cans of it.). 

FLASH....Jason Trevarrow of Apt. 6 found his keys. After an extensive search of Apartment 6 (conducted by Trevarrow and 3 volunteers) turned out fruitless, Mr. Trevarrow looked for them at school. The school search provided no new leads. The search was called off at 3:30, and started up again at 7:30 am. When all other efforts were exhausted, Jason turned to Mr. Winter for solace and comfort, but Mr. Winter had more to offer than that...Mr. Winter also had Trevarrow's keys. "I found my keys," says Jason. I attempted to contact Mr. Winter, but he had no comment. 

10/7/97:
Jamin, Jason, and Josh were on their way to the comic book store, when they observed a super fat lady that fell and could not get up. The woman was surrounded by a crowd of people trying to pick her up, but the woman was too immense...It was very sad...yet funny. 

10/5/97:
Jason, Josh and Jamin were on their way to Little Caesars when they spotted 6 police cars, a bunch of ambulances and a meat wagon. It was a horrid automobile accident at Taco Bell. The Taco Bell is about 25 feet away from the Pizza Hut, so we decided to just eat there.  Inside we ran into Loaf McOaf who witnessed the whole event. He claimed that it was the truck's fault...Then he said it was cool when people died and gave us two dollars off our pizzas. We watched the meat wagon clean up the glass and brains. Pinhead said, "This is gross."

10/8/97:
Josh ate a taco and some rice. He couldn't finish the rice.


 There you have it...I suspect there's  more pages of this somewhere, since there is  the start of another sentence after the rice article, but I don't know where it is...I just realized the date in the upper right hand corner..."Ninety Ninety and Seven..." LOL.

I have a very vivid memory of my friend Joe coming to visit us in Alpena and bringing the album along with him...I can still remember how impressed I was by "Kate is Great." So on that note, let's check it out....Enjoy...