When people think of the San Diego punk scene in the 90's, the first bands that usually come up are generally the worst ones. I don't need to name names. But dig a little deeper, and you get Creedle, Drive Like Jehu. RFTC, No Knife, and all those other great Cargo/Headhunter not-very- traditional-if-at-all punk bands. Deeper still, and you get the Three One G/Gravity scene, which I'm still trying to understand. And at the bottom, you get those few people who remember great unsung bands like The Neighbors and Peaceful Meadows.
The Neighbors - I don't know why they never blew up. They played everywhere, were great, and seemed very well respected. Although they would go on to put a record out on Six Weeks, they just never seemed become a "popular underground" band, if that makes sense.
Peaceful Meadows, though, I get why more people don't know about them. I first heard them on an Allied Recordings comp. The song was "Shark", and I loved it, especially the drumming. But I don't remember Peaceful Meadows being very active. I never saw shows listed, and no one seemed to mention them when talking about San Diego. And the possibility remains that I'm wrong about all that. Maybe they were prolific, and our paths just never crossed. It's happened before. In any case, their lack of wider recognition is sad, because as you can tell from this record, they were pretty great.
No need to micromanage the genre, Peaceful Meadows play fast punk rock. As far as I know they had two official releases, this one, and an earlier one called "Maximum Party". Both were on Allied Recordings (tangent: why "Recordings" and not "records?" Discuss) which should be reason enough for you to click below.
Special thanks to But I'd Rather Be Sleeping for saving me the trouble of ripping this.
