Visit Brenda Stardom’s Blog; The BS Report, to read this with the links intac, and some pics. She’s got a cool site, so spend some time reading about other stuff too.
12-5-2006 – California Redemption Revisited
I wrote about the Thousand Oaks band California Redemption or CARE last July and it covered the band’s history, talked about the members, particularly Alon Goren, the brains behind the outfit. At that time Alon shunned the punk label, saying he didn’t know exactly what genre they fit. I’m looking at their MySpace profile where it says “Punk/Rock/Hardcore”.
Alon sent me a CD, a split with CARE and Start The Panic last week and I’m having a blast listening, my brain operating on all cylinders, pistons pumping, I’m in the pit, fist is punctuating the air. I dig CARE.
As was written in the last report, lyrics are Alon’s passion and I wasn’t let down by this latest effort, which was released on his own label, LTE or Let Them Eat Records. LTE has been quite successful. After reading the lyrics to “Live Free Or Die” and “Religion For Dummies Part II: The Resurrection” I had a feeling that Alon may be, like so many punks, an ex-Catholic, hence the songs, so I wrote and asked him. His response wasn’t what I expected:
Doug, our drummer wrote most of the words to “Live free or die.” I think I only wrote the first stanza or so…It was one of the only songs he has ever written for us. It turned out great. I love that song. Mikkei and Keegan help with words sometimes as well, but on the split I think I wrote all the words except for Live Free or Die.
As for growing up catholic…thats not me..! hahah.
I grew up in a Jewish household. My parents aren’t too religious, but they would always send me to hebrew school. At these schools they usually spent about 80% of the time teaching us prayers and feeding us bullshit. To say the least, we didn’t usually get along. (even when I was a little kid)
I was always taught to respect everyone, and I always try to…but it’s hard when they treat you like you are not even human because you don’t agree with them. I guess thats where I get all my anti-religous feelings from. It’s really something I struggle with sometimes because I really try to think of everyone as a good person until they give me reason not to. Nicole, my girlfriend, always gives me a hard time for jumping to conclusions about religous people and judging them before I know them personally. I kinda act like them huh…!
As for the catholic references in RFD part 2, I learned them from different experiences, and random research i’ve done in the past. I think I got the ideas from a catholic wedding I attended…but anyways most western religions are VERY similar…so it was easy comming up with something everyone could relate to.
Goren smashes the stereotype of what most people think punks are. He’s in his last semester of college, majoring in business management and with his cool, kind, yet ambitious demeanor, I believe he’s going achieve his dream and make this label fly. His reply about future plans:
California Redemption-wise we are releasing a 7-inch this summer as well as a CDep. We should be recording in the next few weeks and we’re super excited about it. A few more details are up on our blog, and my not so oftenly updated blog (alonymous.blogspot.com)
. What a cool name! Anyway off to the blog where I discovered some things not covered on MySpace.
The first release is going to be a 7″ record tentatively called “kick in the chest.” It will be put out by AWOL records in Texas. It’ll have at least 4 songs on it, and it will be released this summer.
Not too long after that comes out, a label in Ireland called Deadlamb records will be releasing a CD-EP we’re recording. It’ll have about 6 songs on it…and all we really know right now is that it’ll be on a fancy looking “fandisk” which just means that part of the CD will be see-through…if you have NOFX’s “The Decline” on CD you’ll know what I mean.
In addition to all that, the Agression Tribute album should be comming out fairly soon, and there should be a Minor Threat tribute album comming out as well.
I asked Alon why they were on different labels when he had his own:
Well, I thought it would be really awesome to have other labels put out California Redemption stuff. We will be promoting the releases either way, so if we have another label as part of the team, it can only get us heard by more people…and that is definitely our ..1 goal.
Alon and the band are looking forward to tomorrow, May 13 when they play a benefit for the Santa Clarita School Districts Special Education “YES I CAN” program with Fishbone headlining. More information, click this link.
This is a very special, socially conscious band of college students, who have the talent to take California Redemption as far as they want. Free downloads are available on the homepage under “A V Room”.
You can’t make me better
We don’t see eye to eye
Don’t want your chains and fetters
LIVE FREE OR DIE
–Doug Freed with a little help from Alon
Brenda Stardom
Portugal 6h19 GMT
