Before The Gris-Gris, before the Mirrors, in the late 1990s Greg Ashley was a high school dopehead and fuzz guitar pyromaniac wailing away in the suburban Houston , TX based Strate Coats.
Originally recorded and submitted to Phantom Surfer Mike Lucas through another League City, TX band called the Illnesses (Greg: "which is who Lowery ripped off for the name of the Infections and their album title. The Illnesses theme song was "Kill the Illnesses", they played the Rip Off rumble in 97 i believe") for his Repent Records label (the Strate Coats later met up with Lucas on the first Donnas US tour) these recording are available now for the first time as a document of Greg Ashley's wild first band.
Having long praised the recording techniques and Budget Rock sensibilities of the Mummies and related mid-late 90s garage bands in interviews and late night drunken diatribes, this is the first widely available indication of Ashley's adolescent flirtation with the related way-beyond-anti-PC sentiments his recent fans may not recognize as entirely intrinsic to his garage punk roots. With 8 songs clocking in under 15 minutes on one 7”, it is an entirely authentic era-specific Rip-Off/Estrus/Radio-X type sound made by drunk teenagers in 1997. As Greg would say “This ain't no Hippie shit!”
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Fun Facts:
* Liner notes by the Mayor of San Francisco, Mike Lucas.
* Includes a cover of Freestone's Killed By Death classic "Bummer Bitch” (also recorded around the same time by other backward/forward looking youngsters in the Reatards and Timmy Vulgar's pre-Clone Defects band Epileptix).
* For fans of: The Mummies, The Dwarves, Reatards, Supercharger, Makers etc.
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The Strate Coats: "The Savage Young Greg Ashley" Download "The Savage Young Greg Ashley" from iTunes |
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