Avengers is an eponymous two-CD set collecting the long-unavailable "Pink Album" -- the official long-playing studio release by this seminal San Francisco punk band -- along with outtakes, rehearsal tapes, and live recordings, with liner notes from eminent author and music journalist Greil Marcus. Avengers is being released by Water Records May 15.
"'The American In Me' was a torn flag flown by the Avengers... the best punk band in San Francisco, in moments the best in the country -- and what they were claiming was the country itself: the country that the Avengers’ songs said didn’t want them, didn’t recognize them, didn’t hear them, wouldn’t listen."
-Greil Marcus
The Avengers were one of the first and most influential female-fronted punk bands in the US. In two short years, June of 1977 to June of 1979, singer Penelope Houston led The Avengers in just over 100 performances, from the Mabuhay and the Masque to supporting the Sex Pistols at Winterland (that group's legendary final show). They headlined shows with X, the Go-Go's, and the Dead Kennedys. During their brief existence, The Avengers released the We Are The One 7" on Dangerhouse Records and the four-song 12" EP on White Noise. In 1983, drummer Danny Furious and bassist Jimmy Wilsey gathered together these and other studio recordings for the full length self-titled LP -- the infamous "Pink Album" -- which would soon become the band’s essential release. Out of print for decades, Avengers has been the lost artifact of the first wave of American punk.
New generations of music fans continue to discover The Avengers, and this never-ending demand has spawned countless bootlegs and two official collections of alternate material. As long-time fans wear out their original LP’s and new fans scour the Internet for dubious downloads, the question arises again and again; "When will the ‘Pink Album’ be officially
re-released?" After literally years of effort the band has succeeded in making this release possible.
Disc 1 contains the original tracks and track order from the 1983 LP.
Disc 2 has the two bonus cuts that first appeared on cassette and CD versions of the "Pink Album" along with live recordings, rehearsal tapes, and studio demos. This set presents twenty-seven different songs and unique versions of four songs -- including alternate vocal mixes of "Uh-Oh" and "The American In Me" from the long out-of-print White Noise EP.
Avengers
Disc One:
1 "We Are The One"
2. "Car Crash"
3. "I Believe In Me"
4. "Open Your Eyes"
5. "No Martyr"
6. "Desperation"
7. "Thin White Line"
8. "Paint It Black"
9. "The American In Me"
10. "White Nigger"
11. "Uh-Oh"
12. "Second To None"
13. "Corpus Christi"
14. "Fuck You"
Disc Two:
1. "Teenage Rebel"
2. "Friends of Mine"
3. "White Nigger"
4. "Cheap Tragedies"
5. "The Good, the Bad, and the Kowalskis"
6. "Crazy Homicide"
7. "Summer of Hate"
8. "I Believe in Me"
9. "Your Parents Sins"
10. "Something's Wrong"
11. "Money Money"
12. "Misery"
13. "Time To Die"
14. "Release Me"
15. "Zero Hour"
16. "American in Me"
17. "Uh-Oh"