Mommy's Little Blogger

Social Distortion is one of those seminal bands that seem like they’ve always been around. Actually, by SoCal punk standards, they have been around forever. Next year will be 30 years, 18 different band members, and two untimely deaths since Mike Ness, Rikk and Frank Agnew, and Casey Royer originally came together in Orange County, Calif. as part of the nascent punk rock scene there.

I’m not going to get into the last 30 years of Social D history here. If you’re interested, check out the band’s Web site. Suffice to say they’ve made it through some hard times and can truly be called rock and roll survivors.

Greatest Hits, the band’s collection of, well, greatest hits, is due to hit the stores June 26. It includes their hit singles from 1983’s Mommy's Little Monster through 2004’s Sex, Love and Rock 'n' Roll. “ ‘Greatest hits' technically means what was good with radio,” Ness told Sign On San Diego in a May interview.

“I think,” he also said, “we may follow this up with something that is more essential Social D. – songs that are the band's favorites.”

In addition to the hits, there is also a new song on Greatest Hits: “Far Behind.” It sits very comfortably alongside the 10 other classic Social D songs – Ness’ gravelly voice and the rockabilly-influenced punk – the new song could have come from any of their recent disks.

Besides the new stuff, I’ve also got an acoustic version of “Ball and Chain” that I picked up somewhere. That’s one of my favorite Social D songs and I think this is a pretty cool version.

Far Behind.mp3
Ball and Chain (acoustic).mp3

Labels: rock

posted by aikin @ 10:15 PM