My Dad's a Fuckin' Alcoholic

Denver, Colorado has never been celebrated as one of the meccas of American punk rock, but in the '80s, the city birthed at least one top-shelf band, Frantix, who earned a savage local reputation for their powerful, noisy gusts of guitar and inspired sloppiness overall. While Frantix could be loosely classified as hardcore, they didn't allow themselves to be shackled by the fast/loud template, occasionally veering into noisy jams with a metallic undertow (check out their cover of "Interstellar Overdrive") and generating a level of snotty bad karma that was genuinely impressive. While the band only lasted a bit more than three years, Frantix managed to release two 7" EPs and a cassette-only collection of demos, all of which are included on My Dad's a Fuckin' Alcoholic, along with a fistful of previously unreleased live material. Musically, Frantix weren't strikingly unique, but their attitude and ferocity really did set them apart (as did the paint-peeling tone of Rick Kulwicki's guitar), and the bitter honesty of the best tunes here -- particularly the title track, which later became a staple of Mudhoney's live sets, and the scene satire "Dancin' to Punk" -- make it clear these guys weren't messing around. Several members of Frantix would later go on to form one of Denver's best-ever rock bands, the Fluid, but if these guys gained a better command of the rudiments of rock & roll with the passage of time, they already had a healthy surplus of energy and attitude, and My Dad's a Fuckin' Alcoholic is a rough-hewn portrait of a great punk band in action. ~ Mark Deming