GG Allin's sleazy Freaks, Faggots, Frunks & Junkies oozed onto my turntable (thank you Princeton Record Exchange!) during my junior year in highschool, featuring not only some of the late Outlaw Scumfuc's greatest tracks but also his most coherent backup band to date - Boston hardcore pioneers Psycho performing as their Mentors-esque alter ego, Bulge. Surprisingly, unlike most of Allin's one-shot-barely-a-band outfits, Bulge was a legit threesome that had been making their own noise around the Boston area for a few years prior. Playing a sloppy, grimy snotcore complete with "err-ah" Kennedy accents to boot, Bulge dropped a few cassette-only albums in the 80's as well as a couple of vinyl platters once they saw GG's popularity began to take off (gotta ride the wave when ya can, no?) Their first release was 1986's Live, In The Raw!, a lo-fi testament to random cover tunes (Ramones, ZZ Top, Mötley Crüe and a few others) and a sadly unenthusiastic crowd. Recorded at the legendary Chet's Last Call in August 1986, the band stays pretty tight through six songs and ya gotta give 'em credit for incessantly trying to get the crowd going. I guess when you open with a 5-minute "We Are Bulge" theme song complete with porno clips in the medley you're trimming your audience base a tad. But who am I to judge, I'm probably one of a hundred people out there who willingly dropped $5 for this snapshot of local Boston hardcore twenty years ago. Who's laughing now?
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