Descendents - Still Hungry: Enjoy Sessions 85-86 (Cleaned Up)

While I'm procrastinating on my Best Of 2013 list, I'll share this gem with you.

My favorite Descendents album is Enjoy! It may have the worst production and it has 2 songs dedicated to farts (not exactly a minus IMO), but it also has some of the best proto pop punk ever recorded. I also happen to prefer Ray Cooper's guitar playing and having future Dag Nasty bassist, Doug Carrion, onboard doesn't hurt either. It seems like they had so much fun on this album, between recording farts, blasting out songs like "Kids" and "Hurtin' Crue" and the funny vocal wails they'd do to mimic screaming guitars.

In the mid 90's, a bootleg 7" called "I Don't Want To Get Bootlegged" began turning up in shops. I remember buying it at Earwaves, playing it when I got home and thinking, "Holy shit! This is now my favorite Descendents record!" The 3 unreleased songs were amazing. They were harder than any previous Descendents songs, more in line with "Hurtin' Crue." And "Green" (titled "Red" on the 7") sounded beefier as well. For some reason, that song sounds a little quieter than the rest of the Enjoy! album. I started putting a song or 2 from that 7" on every mix tape I made from then on. Those 10 year old (at the time) rough demo songs still blew away most of the other current pop punk songs I was adding to those tapes. I've never understood why they haven't seen an official release, but I'm sure SST has something to do with it.

Eventually the full (or is there more?) Enjoy! session became available on this bootleg CD, including demos of 8 songs plus a live set from San Diego in 1985. I've omitted the live tracks since I really just care about the studio songs, and apparently there's a better sounding version floating around the internet. I've taken out the background hiss and remastered it a bit to boost the volume. There are a few places where the volume drops out, but this is still a great sounding bootleg and this is the best version you're likely to find. I've also corrected the unreleased song titles (named Song 1-3 on the 7" and incorrectly on the CD). According to Discogs, Milo provided the correct titles for a magazine at some point.

Enjoy!

01) Shattered Milo

02) Wendy

03) Promise

04) Kids On Coffee

05) Enjoy

06) Green

07) Sour Grapes

08) Vidi, Vici, Veni

Descendents - Still Hungry: Enjoy Sessions 85-86 (R) (vbr 0)