New Anniversary Album

You don't understand how much I loved The Anniversary.

You know that scene in 8 Mile where Eminem is on stage doing his throwdown-with-bobby-flay contest thing, or whatever it's called? That's the stage of The Shelter, which is near and dear to my heart solely because I saw The Anniversary play there. Justin Roelofs, high on God-knows-what, kept proclaiming "THIS ROOM IS SONICALLY PERFECT!" throughout the show. I saw Adrienne, their vocalist and keyboard player, smoking a cigarette and cried a little inside when I imagined her angelic voice someday getting scratchy. And Josh Berwanger played his guitar with a bottle of Jack Daniels. It was glorious.

Fast forward to 2003 when the band, which was working on a third album, suddenly imploded. It had something to do with a love triangle between Adrienne, her Get Up Kid husband, and another band member. In the end of it, the band was left without a label to release their new stuff. I'm sure I cried.

(Since then, Justin was rumored to have had a bad mushroom incident and ran away to Guatemala. I'm not making this up. I read it in Fader. One of these days, I'm going to write a whole week's worth of "Where Are They Now?" posts on this band. But, as Alton Brown says, "that's another show".)

Three of the demos for the never released record got out on the internet back then: "Death of the Seasons", "Che", and "Lover". Thankfully, the last two are included in studio quality on The Devil On Our Side: B-Sides and Rarities, which came out on Vagrant Records this week.

Most of the songs on this double disc have been previously released in some form or another with just a handful of unheard tracks. Of these, "Kali" has really grown on me, and it's this song that I have waiting for you on The Let's Trade Muxtape. Enjoy.

You can order this shizz from theanniversary.net. Two CDs for 10 bucks - do it!!

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