Poison Idea – Pick Your King Fatal Erection Records – NO. 1- 1983 – 7″

Collector-scums can be a bunch of tragic individuals. In the case of Poison Idea I used to own the re-issue from American Leather records (from the 90’s). However – I wanted the first press on clear vinyl (Fatal Erection Records), but as soon as I bought (Trash Palace in Stockholm) it I was told that the black vinyl (with blue sleeve) actually by mistake was pressed first, so the clear vinyl is not technically the first press. The clear vinyl was issued first however. As the scum I am I deserved that punch in my face. I apparently did not take the title of the 1984 12 inch EP Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes seriously. I guess I will not play safe and embarrass myself by getting the black “second” press then.

Anyhow – Pick Your King was the first EP by this Portand (USA) band. I try to stay away with words like fuckin’ on this web-site but I make an exception here. It’s a fuckin’ destroyer!!! .It’s one of those records take made me must jump around in my house – smashing holes in the dry wall. A cool thing with the Pick Your King EP is that you can choose between Jesus on the front cover and Elvis on the back cover. As it is old fat Elvis, I prefer that side.

There are 13 furious songs on this EP distributed over 10 minutes. Every single song kick’s ass. I like the fury and the speed but also the basic chord structure by guitarist Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts. The band started in 1980 and got initial inspiration from West cost bands like Black Flag and the Germs, the later honored by issuing the early demos under the title Darby Crash Rides Again .

After this EP the band put out the Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes in 1984 which also is a burner. Apparently the records on the sleeve are from Pig Champion’s collection. For this record Glen Estes returned on bass. It was followed by the LP King of Punk in 1986 which is damn good record but let’s say a little bit more controlled. On all these records Glen did the drumming. The band stop playing for a while and reformed over they year and members changed. I frankly don’t know much about the stuff they made after 1988. Some members had some issued both the police and drugs, but that stuff do not interest me. Sadly Pig Champion died in 2006 and at that time only the singer, Jerry Lang, was the orignal member.

Poison idea is one of those “first generation bands” that have influences a lot of other bands. These bands became far much more successful from a commercial point of view. It not too uncommon in the music industry, i.e. that the first generation plows the roads for the second generation make the big bucks. I myself stay loyal to Poison Idea however – and don’t care much about the bands that regularly name drop Poison Idea in interviews.

♬ 3 Song sample – It’s An Action / Self Abuse / Cult Band (MP3 320 kbps).

On this record the songs float together so there are some rough cuts here. However – I did not want to post the whole thing as I think you should by a record or a CD for your self, but here it is – quite compressed (128 kbps) – so you will get a feel for it. Now – go and buy it!!!..

For this aricle the main sources are Wikipedia, KFTH and BBC.

Click on the images to expand them to higher resolution. As usual all images and audio clips is from my record.

Front and rear sleeve

Labels

Lyric Insert, sticker and information note/