“You’re bad now but you were eating an ice cream cone and I saw you. That’s the shit you can’t hide! Ice cream eating motherfucker. That’s what you are.”

At my first real punk show in the summer of 1991, Fugazi leveled me. I’d never seen a band so intense; so fucking aggressive and massive sounding…but without being macho or even “heavy.” Their careening, dynamic songs blew my little punk rock mind as did the locked-on musicianship and frenetic movements that defined their live shows. And the fact that they’d just called about 50 tough-guy skinheads (who were punchmoshing away everyone’s good time) “ice cream eating motherfuckers” was one of the most audacious and hilarious things I’d ever seen a band do in a live setting. The next day I bought 13 Songs, Repeater +3 Songs, and Steady Diet Of Nothing. I loved (and still love) all of those records, but I felt like none of them quite captured what I’d witnessed.

I saw Fugazi play as much as possible, and growing up outside of Washington, DC meant that I was able to see them a lot. Their shows were always incendiary. I saw them a few more times before In On The Kill Taker came out, and I started recognizing songs that weren’t on the records I already owned. These songs expertly realized every element I loved (and still love) about great punk rock: Driving, punctuated rhythms; howling incandescent melodies, and vocals that immediately communicate the singer’s urgent need to GET THIS SHIT OUT – but executed in a way I just couldn’t fathom back then. I asked the owner of my local record store to find the release date for the next Fugazi record. He did and I was there as soon as I got off of work that day. I bought the record and listened to it non-stop for weeks.

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I managed to dredge up my memories of news, shows, and records that happened this past year. It wasn’t easy. I’ve fried a lot of brain cells with black coffee and fumes from the subway, so remembering what I had for dinner the night before is sometimes a chore.  Not to mention that a lot of albums have come across my desk, I spent a lot of time listening to music, almost to an obsessive level sometimes.

So to highlight my favorite stuff of the year, never mind remembering what exactly came out this year, is sorta fucking hard.  I mean the last CD I really loved that I got is a CD version of two Scream records, and that band broke up in 1990.  Most of the bands I really like are off the beaten path even in punk rock, and a bunch of them aren’t even active any more.

Yes, I really am that hip.

But I figured that if I instead thought of what I remembered about the year in more general terms, then that’ll work.  So here we are. And while the names that you see here might not be ones you recognized this past year, what’s here was still pretty significant to me and in the end, in some way to everyone.

Read more after the jump.

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I got this tasty piece of vinyl in the mail a few days ago; a thoroughly solid 7-inch split by two fantastic bands, Benard and Worn In Red. Both bands succeed at being pure unadulterated fury in musical form. It’s spastic, frantic, raw, and for lack of a better term, very “old school.” Revelation and Dischord Records comparisons come to mind, but that comparison doesn’t do this split justice. The two songs by Atlanta, Georgia’s Benard are just fast, hard and hella aggro, while Virginia’s Worn In Red’s one contribution is somewhat epic, but without sacrificing any sort of immediate energy. The split is available through Alaska Records and No Brakes Distro, and you can get it here.