It's A Girl

I may or may not have mentioned that there were some pretty important compilations in my younger years which helped introduce me to a lot of great bands. One of my favourite comps ever is 'Turn It Around', which was released by Maximum Rocknroll in 1987 and which featured some (now iconic) bay area punk bands. One of the lesser known bands on the comp for me was Sweet Baby Jesus, who had two very poppy songs featured on the comp. They also had a song on 'The Thing That Ate FLoyd' compilation, although on that song their name had been shortened to Sweet Babys. And that was all I had heard of them, until a few weeks ago when I picked up my friend's records to sell, and found a test press of their full length in the midst of the collection.

Well, it doesn't look like much, but I was intrigued. I hadn't even been aware that the band had actually released anything other than the 3 comp tracks that I had been familiar with for the past 29 years or so. So I immediately went to discogs to find that they had in fact released a full length titled 'It's A Girl' waaay back in 1989. And here I was holding a test press of it.

I was really interested to find out that this LP was released on Ruby Records, who also released Misfits records, and which was somehow related to Slash Records, which was somehow related to Warner Bros. So basically, this was probably a pretty big label for a little punk band from the Gilman Street scene to be signed by.

Well, after listening to this one online I decided to keep this record. I have to say, this is one of the catchiest records that I have ever heard in my life. It's also not the kind of thing that I would usually listen to. I played this in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago and Anna said that she thought it sounded like The Beatles... which I think is pretty spot on. Early Beatles to be exact. It features 13 songs that are all about girls, and everything is over in 26 minutes.

I'm now on a mission to pick up a regular copy with a proper cover in good condition at a fair price. Hopefully it won't take me too long.