(from 1998)
A few years ago a small label called Really Fast from Sweden released a single with two Avengers songs taken from a tape that Danny Furious had. I remembered the day we recorded it at Iguana rehearsal hall with a stereo mic (which we thought was pretty advanced!) I recognized Teenage Rebel but the other song Friends Of Mine was totally new to me, even though it was clear that I was singing it and had written the lyrics. And it sounded pretty good. How many songs never made it to tape? How many lost to memory? I started collecting live shows to see what was out there.

My hopes in releasing this album were to bring to light some of the lost Avengers songs and give give a feeling of the wildness of the live shows.

What you're holding in your hands is mostly an archival set of field recordings. and we have the tapers and traders to thank for it's existence. Without them many performances and even whole songs would have disappeared without a trace. I had no idea that these recordings were out there floating around in the world and that with the internet and hours of word-of-mouth research they could be tracked down. Teenage Rebel, Friends Of Mine and The Good The Bad And The Kowalskis were from the Iguana rehearsal. The early version of White Nigger was demoed at Wally Heider Studios and is quite different from the one Steve Jones produced on the Avengers EP from 1979. It reminds me of how late I would wait to finish writing the lyrics before a recording session (once on the bus on the way there). Crazy Homicide, I Want In and The End Of The World were songs I did have lyrics for and really were finished, but only could be found on muddy live sets. Greg was excited about the idea of recording them and since Danny was in Sweden and Jimmy was incommunicado we put together the Scavengers with Joel Reader and Danny Panic (of The Plus Ones). Probably my favorite moment on this album is Greg's lead on The End Of The World which he remembered note for note for 20 years ago! We hope the purists will forgive us (or fuck 'em). The 2nd half of the recording is cut together from 5 of about 15 different live shows that I collected from the collectors. I don't remember a whole lot about them as I had a formula of three gin and tonics before hitting the stage, but I'm pretty sure the performer that played before us which I critiqued in Fools Or Hippies was a scruffy bearded hippie banging pots and pans. He later became the artist known as Zev. From listening to the live tapes I have to admit that harranging the audience was part and parcel of a Avengers show. People seemed to like it. If these songs sound blurry, ferocious, impassioned and slightly out of control, then they'll give you a little taste of what it was like at the Mabuhay Gardens in 1978. Wish you'd been there.