Leftover Crack and Citizen Fish - Deadline

  by Helen Tipping

published: 21 / 4 / 2007

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This split CD features seven tracks by Citizen Fish, a UK Ska punk offshoot of the Subhumans, and seven by Leftover Crack, another ska band from the US. This CD, therefore, provides a good opportunity to compare and contrast the two styles of music. As well as doing their own tracks the bands cover one another’s with Citizen Fish covering Leftover Crack’s 'Clear Channel (Fuck Off!)' and 'Choking Victim’s Money'. Leftover Crack cover Citizen Fish’s 'The Super-market Song' and Subhumans’ 'Reason for Existence'. Citizen Fish’s style is danceable ska punk with a message, as they put it on their website. Front man Dick Lucas doesn’t sing so much as talk loudly (he doesn’t shout so I can’t say that) over the music, but that’s okay. You can hear what he’s saying and that’s important to Citizen Fish. Their lyrics make strong political statements that are as relevant in today’s apathetic, 'Heat' Magazine, celebrity obsessed culture as they were in the early 90s when the band first started. The second part of the CD features Leftover Crack. The core band members are Stza (vocals), Ezra Kire (guitar, vocals), Brad Logan (guitar), Alec Baillie (bass guitar), and Ara Babajian (drums), but they often work with other bands and change members regularly. They formed after Choking Victim, the previous band several of them were in, broke up. They are not just a ska punk band. They are also known to play gangsta rap, hardcore and death metal. Their lyrics are also political. The band are anti-rascist, anti-homophobic, atheist, anti-capitalist and are known to squat and hop trains – that’s getting on freight trains to avoid paying and to travel around. This doesn’t go down too well with the US authorities with the band being banned from playing various venues in the states, and often having police presence at their gigs, which sometimes results in accusations of police brutality against fans. I prefer Citizen Fish to Leftover Crack, but that’s because I’m biased towards UK punk. If you like US punk / ska / rap / hardcore then you’ll probably like Leftover Crack. If you don’t like your music political then you probably won’t like either.

Track Listing:-

1 Working on the Inside
2 Money
3 Meltdown
4 Getting Used to It
5 Back to Square One
6 Join the Dots
7 Clear Channel (F*ck Off!)
8 L.O.C Intro (B.D.C)
9 Baby-Punchers
10 Genocidal Tendencies
11 ...And out Come the N-Bomb
12 Life Causes Cancer
13 World War 4
14 Supermarket Song
15 Reason for Existence

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