Rise of the Nashville Compilatons pt. 1: Our Scene Sucks

Various Artists - Our Scene Sucks 7" [House O' Pain, 1993]

From the annals of time and the archives of Music City history, I introduce to you now this four part series featuring those sure-fire golden nuggets of punk rock history -- the coveted compilation 7”.

The first is a tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating package titled Our Scene Sucks by House O’ Pain Records. While I like to inject a little personal insight to each of these reviews, I was 14 when this was released and lived about 100 miles south of Nashville, so most of these bands are unfamiliar to me. But luckily, the Nashville Scene is a little more on top of things. They wrote this about the comp in 1997:

Five years ago, House O’Pain Records issued a broadside of a compilation EP under the modest title Our Scene Sucks. The music was snotty, sloppy, and loud—a ragged artifact of underground Nashville in the early 1990s, when House O’Pain and the appearance of Lucy’s Record Shop triggered a burst of local activity. Back then, the EP’s title might as well have been the mantra of the city’s disenfranchised teenage punk audience.

“What it’s intended to say is that the Nashville scene doesn’t suck,” says Kendall, co-owner and cofounder of the pioneering local punk label... [Donnie] Kendall notes, House O’Pain had to work to scrape up decent tracks.

Of the four bands on this comp: Floor, Lethargic, Canibal Holiday and Teen Idols -- the only one I’m familiar with is Teen Idols, who I saw and enjoyed many times in their prime. But, there’ll be plenty more on them later once I gather up a little more of their catalog. In the meantime, enjoy this 7” time capsule and all its DIY glory and anticipate more of them to come.