Righteous Jams: 15 (Biased and Subjective) Thoughts

Pic from Start Today #5

Righteous Jams was the only band with 2 full lengths on Lockin Out. Does that matter? I don't know. Given today's crop of Tumblr Loc-Jock bands, I miss RJ's more and more. Those riffs.

1. The events at Posi Numbers 2005 were messageboard fodder for a minute.

2.  I saw them in Richmond once, and my clearest memory was that at one point, Joey C said something like "We're definitely a straight edge band, but we think some of you should smoke some weed and chill the fuck out." It may or may not have been in reference to a fight that broke out during an Iron Boots set. (Pic of said show below.)

Those who were: that's my knockoff X-Swatch

3. There's really nothing redeeming about the Boston Beatdown DVD, except for the fact that you can see Joey C with a lot of gel in his hair, a little bit of live RJ's footage and Colin of Arabia saying "Death metal is fake. The core is real."  

4. The best RJ's song is "Iron Mind." It just is. All iterations of the song are great, but the Sweet Vision one is definitely the hardest. Per a reliable source, the sample at the beginning is from a Dorian Yates workout VHS in which he's doing leg presses and grunting really hard.

SMOG

5. Despite the stigma of Lockin Out merch and ebay and all that, RJ's really only ever had one aesthetically appealing design, and that was the Def Jam rip (IMHO). Most of their other merch was pretty wack. Look at the cover of Business as Usual for the general idea. That being said, I do own the shirt below because I'm a sucker for clever wordplay. Yeesh though.

Euro Barge

6. Business as Usual is weird. I definitely don't hate it, but I don't think I'd call it "good." There's a lot of great riffs on there, and I enjoy "Thought Vacation." The vocals just sound "off" and the songs just...whatever. Cool riffs though. 

7. The weirdest place I ever know of them playing was at the Elizabethtown Kentucky board of tourism. This is indeed the same Elizabethtown that had a dopey Cameron Crowe film made about it. If you don't know anything about E-town you won't understand the absurdity of it all but...it was definitely a mindblower for a band that "cool" to be playing in a city that wasn't. It's my hometown. 

Come back y'all

8. I saw them in '06 at one of those Gorilla Biscuits reunions (Cue: "Start Today is Age of Quarrel for girls. LOL I know!). I remember very little from their set, but after the show I found an online review of some herb complaining that he didn't like them because they were wearing Nikes and Abercrombie. (Edit: Found the review here). 

9. I've seen them covering DYS "Wolfpack" online, but in the multiple times I saw them, I never witnessed it live. :(

10. In Town of Hardcore Joey talked about the name Rage of Discipline and how it was inspired by Rollins Band and a house that one of them lived in where everyone slept in one bedroom and filled the other bedroom with weights. P cool. 

11. You may not know/care, but if you watched the FSU episode of History Channel's "Gangland" then you heard the song "Scream n' Shout" on cable TV. That means a Lockin Out band/song was on cable. WHAT NEXT?

12. I bought the Boston Straight Edge EP (basically just a vinyl pressing of their demo tape) from Very distribution using a money order, and it seems very archaic to me now. It was the last thing I bought before leaving home for college in 2005. 

13. "Punch your roommate in the face, and get ready to get righteous" is really the best intro to a WERS set.

14. My real introduction to them was from the Mental WERS set in which Greg dedicates a song to them with the couplet "if you haven't heard this band, I feel sorry for you."

15. There's very few HC LP's that are good all the way through, but Rage of Discipline is one I enjoy through and through.