Jackercrap

Howdy. I got back from New Hampshire Tuesday evening and have been catching up on my New York life for the past couple of days. As I had expected, we had no internet or phone at the cabin in NH. It was actually quite liberating. I don’t have the time or motivation to really describe the whole week just yet. Soon my precious.
So instead of the usual nonsense that I write about here I thought I’d do something a little different. I guess to “make up” for not posting for over a week. This is my first upload of downloadable crap. I’m planning on doing this from time to time but I certainly don’t want to be expected to upload junk regularly. Here are some more disclaimers for the future of downloads here:
1. I will only post on rapidshare. It’s really not a big deal.
2. I will post only things that are out of print (to the best of my knowledge).
3. If you want to post my links somewhere else please ask first and please give credit where credit is due…to me.
4. All downloads on jackercrap are for preview/evaluation purposes. If you like what you hear/see support the artists by buying their cds, dvds, shirts, thongs, tickets to a show or blood.

Now that that’s out of the way we can finally start. How many of you have heard of the band Haste? Probably not many of you unfortunately. Haste were one of those really great bands that wasn’t promoted much or properly and got kind of lost in the shuffle. It’s usually the bands who stylistically fall between the cracks that have a hard time finding their audience. They weren’t quite metal and they weren’t quite hardcore. It also didn’t help that they were on a label like Century Media at least in terms of genre.
So without getting into a whole history lesson on the band I wanted to share some of my thoughts and opinions about them. (History lesson here.) Sometimes you catch a band at just the right time if you’re lucky. Maybe if you had heard a certain band an album before or after you might have written them off. It’s frustrating to think about all of the great music that I might be missing because one album or song from a certain point in a band’s history didn’t appeal to me. With Haste I first heard the album When Reason Sleeps and was instantly on board. I’m not so sure this would have been the case if I had heard their debut album Pursuit In The Face Of Consequence first. While it’s still a good album, especially when you see the path that they were on, I don’t think I would have bothered to check out any of their albums after that. I would have missed out on their last and best album The Mercury Lift which included a lot more singing/melody and timeless songs. I played the hell out of that album and was even on their street team at the time. Haste always remind me of the hours I spent in the Learning Center at Berklee working on scores and listening to The Mercury Lift on my walkman. (Yeah. You remember life before iPods?) I was really bummed when one of the two singers was kicked out/quit, depending on who you ask, and then when they eventually called it a day.
I was lucky enough to catch them at Hellfest in Worchester, MA. They were definitely a live band and really ripped my scalp off. I’ll never forget when one the mics stopped working and both singers were sharing one mic. I sing. Hand off mic. You sing. We both sing. Pretty funny stuff. Speaking of live shows that’s exactly what I’m offering today. The now defunct record label Law Of Inertia was putting out a magazine briefly and included a cd of a Haste performance in an issue. The recording is from 2001 just before When Reason Sleeps came out. The show was at The Metro in Austin, TX as part of SXSW aka South By Southwest music festival. The quality is good and it includes a good mix of songs from the first two albums. Here you go:

http://rapidshare.com/files/296593049/Haste_-_Live_Law_Of_Inertia.zip

I'm too lazy to scan this stuff.

This recording is mainly for people who are already fans of Haste. If you’ve never heard them please listen to the music on their myspace page first. If you like what you hear you can purchase their albums here. If you want to read an interesting interview go here. If you want learn about kayaking go here.

If there’s enough interest I’ll post more hard to find stuff from Haste in the future. Did I mention that there’s not even a wikipedia entry on these dudes? And in the post that never ends here are some videos.

~ by jackercrap on October 23, 2009.

Posted in Music In My World, Music Rants
Tags: berklee, Century Media, hardcore, Haste, hellfest, ipod, log cabin, metal, New Hampshire, Pursuit In The Face Of Consequence, rapidshare, the mercury lift, When Reason Sleeps, wikipedia, worcester