FLEX! - Discography of North American Hardcore, Punk and Powerpop

Great news! FLEX Book 4 is now available. I received the limited preorder hardcover edition a few days ago and have been browsing through it whenever I have a few minutes to spare. You may be familiar with previous editions of the book. It has received excellent reviews in the past and this edition is even better.
It comes in 2 volumes and has:
- more than 10,000 records listed and reviewed, many for the first time
- extensive coverage of punk, hardcore, powerpop, synth, new wave records from 1975 - 1985
- details with song titles, pressing info, band location, reissues, etc
- 7,000 new reviews; many previous reviews updated and rewritten
- sleeve scans

So far I am quite impressed by the coverage of obscure and rather unknown releases. There are many Canadian records that I was surprised to see included. I'm not especially knowledgeable on US obscurities so I expect this book to be helpful in the future when it comes to getting more info on the latest eBay "previously unknown punk/powerpop/KBD/synth punk killer". One of the reviews I happened to read sums it up rather nicely: "It's OK and I'd pick this up from the 99 cent bin, but certainly not for the three-figure amounts that have been paid on eBay.". I could say that about a lot of US records from the 1975 - 85 period.

If you are at all interested in US records of this era this is a must have.

Masterbeats (Canada, c1981-1982)

From Kitchener, Ontario they were active for several years in the early 80s and played around town as well as in places like nearby London, as shown by the above flyers. I went to the University of Waterloo from 1978 - 1983 and vaguely remember hearing them on the campus radio station (CKMS). During those days we regularly attended shows around town ... places like the Kent Hotel, Level 21, The Back Door, etc and quite likely saw them. Memories from those days are somewhat fuzzy now but given the amount of various alcoholic beverages imbibed, "wacky tabacky" smoked (I didn't inhale though) and other substances ingested, I'm not surprised. I just wish I had been smart enough to record even a fraction of what I heard on the radio back then.

If anyone has any info about the band or recordings they would like to share feel free to get in touch and I'll add it here. What info I have is sketchy so any more would be welcome. Someone out there somewhere must have some tapes!

Lineup:
Vocals: Bink J.
Bass: Mona Morbid (replaced by Kenny M.)
Guitar: Robert B.
Drums: Bob H.
2(?) members were later in Black Betty around the mid-late 1980's.

New posts coming ... sometime.

I was planning to post a couple of things but when I try and upload files to Divshare, I get a very informative "upload error" and nothing happens. It would also seem all the embedded Divshare playlists are now dead. I tried with Chrome, Firefox and even IE and ... nothing. I will think about alternate solutions since Divshare seems to now be a POS. And I don't mean "point of sale". I feel sorry for anyone who paid money for their so-called "service".

Jacky Lagger and Baramine (Switzerland, 1983)

I posted the first Baramine 7" back in the very first Swiss Vinyl Feast post. Now, here is what appears to be their second, with Jacky Lagger on vocals. Much harder to find than the first one. As an added bonus you get can also listen to a 7" from "Jack", also from Switzerland and likely released sometime in the early 80s. It's somewhat of a mystery and even more raer than the Baramine record. I used the images from Discogs because I'm lazy.