1.0

Even I Have Seizures Records

By now I really have given up on seeing 1.0 play a real (good) show live, and we're talking over a 3-4 year time span. Years ago, Worm released one of the most crucial seven inch documents in Texas Punk history (or at least the renaissance that occurred from 1993-1999), a perfect equation of noise=pain on the Things You Know 7". The shows were intense, short. Six songs, maybe seven on a special occasion, or if we begged, and there were only nine of us, or just for the fuck-all of it. Hell, they only had about ten songs total, having been around 3-4 years by then. Unfortunately, Worm disintegrated into a vat of noise (and the heinous Chapstik) after that, only to spring back whole (never wholesome) under the new moniker of 1.0.

But since this new inception, I have been unfortunate enough to miss them ever operating at a full capacity. Whether it is rhythm guitarist problems (I know of at least three they've shot through), or Phil hawking his guitar and amp so that they might record at Willie Nelson's ranch and just standing there on the Tacoland stage, hands in his pockets, screaming, or general drugged apathy (like having a numb-nut stand on stage with his pants down just holding a guitar up to the amp instead of actually touching the thing), I have seen shit show after shit show (no, not counting the Shit City Dreamgirls, another incarnation of the Seizures collective), the old classics buried under careless murk, newer songs unformed or incomplete, with holes in the PA sound, and a violent frustration at the audiences' matching entropy.

And so after years of waiting (supposedly this session with Willie really did come along, although no one seemed to know anything about it when I shook and pleaded), I HAVE HEARD THIS MUSIC, always so shaking and shambles amidst the pain of midnight's life, now crystalline and jagged against my ears as I sit in a cold comfort here. The force is there, pummeling at new angles scarcely glimpsed since the howls of Scratch Acid, at least. The throats still have scars, the feedback still haunts each note, as the ghosts really do have claws, ripping at words, rhythms, and fleshy bodies of these four songs. Each clocks in under 2:00, unable to grow any leaner or more wicked without crushing time altogether. As groups from a similar period of my past life have really been shaved and shined (Trail of Dead, At the Drive In) for your listening pleasure, it's a comfort to know that there is still some dirt in the blood, stains on the fingers, and broken glass in the hair of 1.0. Long may they suck.

CD released as part of Shit City Fanzine.

Contact: 419 McKay, San Antonio, TX 78204, USA.

Copyright © 2000 Andy Beta