I've been covering Shiners Club on the site from Day One, even having the pleasure of announcing their formation back in 2017. Since then, the Southern Californian hardcore punk unit released its debut album in the form of 2018's Can't Have Nice Things. Shiners Club have also been keeping a steady show schedule, playing on bills with the likes of Fu Manchu, Ignite, and Dag Nasty.
Now, the Shiners are back with a new song and music video, but I'll let vocalist Dan O'Mahony tell you all about that below. —Carlos Ramirez
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In the 1980s print was king. The imagery attached to all the best albums, the photography in all the best zines, these were the foundations upon which legends were built. You’d wait months, sometimes years for records, your homemade tape collection was subject to what passed between you and your friends, but in print the scene became vast.
Case in point and perhaps the best example even now was Glenn E. Friedman’s 1982 My Rules photozine. This bad boy was my anchor and my inspiration every bit as much as any one record I might have ever owned. After picking it up one summer morning at Zed Records, my newly discovered punk rock world was suddenly a much larger place. Friedman’s eye for savagery made bands I’d previously known of only in name and often never bothered to search out the sudden stuff of legend. Gods of the wasteland were discovered in his pictures of the Necros, Reagan Youth and more. Stalwarts like Black Flag and Minor Threat were already godhead in my mind but Friedman’s photos of them established Valhalla.
If Friedman had the eye that put you in the room, Ed Colver’s work was nothing short of an iconography machine. One unsung lenseman churned out the cover of Damaged, the combined early works of Bad Religion 1980-1985, and perhaps the most famous punk rock photo of the early LA scene, an iconic stagedive captured mid-flight and forever married to the name Wasted Youth. Without his work that place in time looks different, is remembered different, and thus occupies a slightly different place in musical history.
Video killed the radio star?
The internet massacred underground print.
Flash forward well into the 21st century. The world is a smaller place. Every phone worth its salt has relatively high def camera, a built-in flash, pre-programmed editing capabilities far beyond those of the old dark room. Couple that with the social networks and their capacity to share the cellphone shutterbugs digital genius with the world at the drop of a hat, and there’s just no denying the worm has turned.
In this setting, in this training wheels and quick fix setting it takes something special to stand out. To carve a special space in this era a photographer needs an amazing sense of timing and space, texture and vibe, color or the absolute absence of it. I give you Forrest Locke. I guide you towards the work of Jason Cook. I color your shades via Rob Wallace. May the jagged edge of all things Virgil Miller provide a much needed pebble in your shoe. Front and center Geoffrey Nicholson stands in front of the oncoming locomotive and takes you with him. If you’re gifted with the sense of scope and periphery that defines an Albert Licano photograph, my condolences to your neck.
For my money these men are the standouts, the cream of the crop and they’re all right here in Southern California doggedly braving hot rooms and harsh sound to give an unprecedented window into a world many might never see without them. In this area we are spoiled by their presence and at least in Shiners Club’s case we wanted to do a little something beyond photo credits to say thank you. We present you 6 bad men doing what they do best in "These Four Walls." This is for you boys, ENJOY!
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"These Four Walls" is the first track from the upcoming Shiners Club EP, Wires in the Water, available this Fall from Savage Magic Records and Cazzo Duro Records.
Tagged: 411, done dying, no for an answer, outspoken, shiners club, slapshot
