VA - All Your Ears Can Hear: Underground Music in Victoria, BC 1978-1984 (2007)

If you're a big fan of early 80's punk/hardcore then this book/cd compilation is definitely for you. It explores the underground music that sprang up, then festered, in Victoria in those days. The booklet is full of old flyers and pictures and manages to shed some light on all the bands featured on the 2 cd set. The 79 tracks on here range from a few poppy New Wave bands to crude English-style punk to low-fi jambox recordings of adolescent hardcore bands like The Beaten Retards, Jerk Ward, and The Commodes. You can find some great early stuff by the Dayglo Abortions on here too. Some of the best tracks, if only for the title are: Millions of Dead BMXers, Fuckin' Jerk, Whiter Than Hitler, My Son is a Kuwahara, Too Much Drugs, etc… I love this stuff! If you're into the obscure stuff like I am…you can't go wrong with this! –Diehard Skatezine #6

All Your Ears Can Hear is a very impressive DIY book and CD set that is as visually attractive as it is well written. The book is only 80 pages long and most bands get just one page each, but a lot of information is packed into the colorful, well-designed package. From the unsung and nearly forgotten to present-day icons such as NoMeansNo and the Dayglo Abortions, no stone is left unturned. Obviously the book is a labor of love and much effort has been made to track down every underground band of the era, no matter how obscure. In fact the editors seem delighted to unleash the quirkiest or wild bands they could find on our unsuspecting ears and the raunchier the better. Like other early scenes at the time, bands were forced to co-exist, unlike now where the groups are divided into little cliques according to genre. On All Your Ears Can Hear, you have a wide variety of bands, from hardcore punk to experimental prog and new wave, all gigging side by side, part of the same wildly dysfunctional family.
Some of the 79 tracks on the two discs were recorded on a ghetto blaster at a sweaty hall show more than 20 years ago, so if sound quality is what you're after, then I suggest you look elsewhere. The diversity and range of not just the tracks but the bands themselves gives the reader a window into what it must have been like in those exciting days when dinosaurs still walked the earth, and a large number of the tracks are recorded and produced surprisingly well. From such stalwarts as The Dishrags, Red Tide, and The Neos, to great bands you've never heard of such as the Infamous Scientists, there is something here for everyone. Like the Vancouver Complication but much wider in its scope, All Your Ears Can Hear is a time capsule that you can explore at your own leisure. I'm not sure how much interest the mainstream will show for this, but this is a must-have for anyone with a taste for punk or punk history. Five tattooed thumbs way up. - Chris Walter –the Nerve Magazine, September 2007

Tracklist
Disc 1
1. Infamous Scientists – Canada's Pissed
2. Pink Steel – Here We Go Again
3. The Clix – Sidewalk Trot
4. Automatic Shock – Mushrooms
5. Sickfucks – Long Blink
6. Jerk Ward – Millions Of Dead BMXers
7. Velox Strepitus – No Mind
8. Beaten Retards – Mutated
9. Nomeansno – Almost Like Home
10. Red Tide – Nato Actionaut
11. The Keys – Ups & Downs
12. Neos – Ripped Off
13. Neos – Sexual Revolution
14. Censored Chaos – Dinner At McDonalds
15. The Resistance – Amerika
16. The Ascensions – She's Weird
17. Easy Money – No Stranger To Danger
18. Dioxyn – Free From Vice
19. Malcolm Dew-Jones – Secret Agent 000
20. Infamous Scientists – CKDA
21. The Dishrags – High Society Snob
22. Twisted Minds – Vancouver
23. Distortion – Leave Us Alone
24. The Do-Wops – Kill Mash Die
25. The Do-Wops – Butchart Gardens
26. Fake Dogs – Fuckin' Jerk
27. Purple City – Untitled
28. Squirrels In Bondage – Who Cares
29. The Trouble Boys – Not So Bad
30. House Of Commons – Low
31. Noise Generation – Breakdown
32. Nematodes – Down With The KKK
33. Nevar – Iran
34. Commodes – Bunyon
35. Dayglo Abortions – Whiter Than Hitler
36. Ryvals – Floating
37. Suburban Menace – What's So Wrong
38. Jerk Ward – UFO
39. Harvest Of Seaweed – The End
40. Mass Appeal – SS Social Service

Disc 2
1. House Of Commons – 1999
2. Red Tide – My Son Is A Kuwahara
3. Neos – Destruct
4. Neos – Russian Folk Song
5. Infamous Scientists – Someone Else's Shoes
6. Sickfucks – P.O.W.
7. The Ascensions – The Stud
8. The Dishrags – Bullshit
9. The Keys – Lied To
10. Nomeansno – Too Much Dope
11. Twisted Minds – BC Tel
12. Malcolm Dew-Jones – Modern World
13. Easy Money – On The Edge
14. Da Jeep – Save Me
15. Velox Strepitus – Mutt
16. Fake Dogs – Bombs Away
17. Nematodes – Hatred
18. Nevar – Chorus
19. Sludge Confrontations – Slug Death
20. Sludge Confrontations – Astronomy
21. The Tumours – It Hurts When I Think
22. Jerk Ward – Flesh & Bones
23. Nuclear Errors – We're Rebels
24. Red Tide – It's More A Feeling
25. Ray Luxemburg – Following
26. Dayglo Abortions – Nuclear Supremacy
27. Harvest Of Seaweed – Accidental Exile
28. Suburban Menace – Outta My Way
29. Beaten Retards – School
30. Nu-Lib – New Liberation
31. Censored Chaos – Violence In The Streets
32. Divine Right – Outta The Grave
33. Nomeansno – Nomeansno
34. The Slivers – Black Hole
35. Disrupt – These Are The 80s
36. The Salty Seamen – CUFA
37. Sickfucks – Mother Was A Man
38. Infamous Scientists – Baldwang Must Die
39. Purple City – Invisibility