The Honor System

There once was a mighty band called Slapstick. I am fairly certain that they are in some way responsible for 90% of the great bands from the Chicago-land area. Wikipedia has a really good family tree for slapstick.

I have written about The Broadways before, I think I transferred that posting to this. Following the slapstick split, The Broadways made some amazing music. Once they called it a day, we were lucky enough to have The Lawrence Arms and The Honor System. The Honor System followed the same political-punk lean that was started with The Broadways. The instrumentation was tighter and more complex, the vocals and lyrics were more mature. Heck, most of these guys went to my high school. I remember being a middle school kid hearing guys that were then seniors play in jazz band. I had heard they were in a band called slapstick then I heard about the Broadways. When they graduated and we moved up, we had some pretty big shoes to fill.

The Honor System had 3 "official" releases. Single File, 100% Synthetic (which I was only able to find on vinyl for a long time" and Rise and Run. I loved the first 2 albums. "Rise and Run" never really did anything for me as a whole. Bits and pieces of Rise were fun, but overall, I felt it seemed too heavy-handed. It was almost too blatant of an album. This however does not diminish the straight up badass earlier records.

When I heard that The Honor System were going to be putting out their "Demo Tape" album, I was pretty excited. This would be the first time the recorded output of the initial incarnation of the band could be heard "officially." This initial lineup featured Dan Hanaway, Rob DePaola, Nolan McGuire, who all appeared on the first 2 albums, but the last member of the band was Tim McIlrath, who later formed Rise Against. That's right, TIM MCILRATH.

The demo tape has 3 songs on it. "Fool's Gold" and "Facelift" have Dan singing and both songs appear on the album "Single File." There is one marked difference and that is that Tim does the backing vocals which bring an entirely different sound to the overall mix. The second song on "Demo Tape" is the missing title track from "single file" called, surprisingly, "Single File." Tim takes over lead vocals on this track. This single track really has something special to it. No, it is not just a Rise Against song, it is something more. There is just some kind of melodic difference to the song that makes these 3 tracks completely rock. Like, the keystone at the top of the arch, it is a piece that makes this demo tape worth owning. The alternate versions of the other songs are rockin' but alone, they are only for diehards. However, you add this unreleased track into the mix and you really have a 3 song album that is completely worth owning.

I ordered mine from interpunk and got a free button and patch with the vinyl. If you are a music nerd like me, that rocks.