As time passes, the legitimacy of Sonny Vincent's repertoire just grows stronger and more impressive with each new unearthed segment of his seminal years. As you will undoubtedly recall, the issue of the debut 7" from FURY as the first release in the HoZac Archival series in late 2012 was just the starting point, as here we have uncovered an even lesser-known band during those uncategorizable early/mid 70s years when so many styles of "underground rock" were interweaving. Sonny's incredible recollection of these early years in his career are mind blowing, and the fact that he's been able to hold onto so many scraps of completely unknown and sorely unexposed NYC punk history in the luggage trunks he's moved back & forth across the Atlantic several times since the 1970s, is even more staggering. If you remember from the FURY release, Sonny Vincent's first band in NYC was 'Distance' in 1971, the band that played shows with Suicide's earliest incarnation, and during the era when that band coined the term "punk" in relation to a style of music for the first time anywhere, just ask Johan Kugelberg. So as were the ways of those times, Vincent formed band after band trying to find something that worked, and repeatedly took stabs at recording and performing live in the pre-CBGB/Ramones era, but sadly it seemed, no one was listening.
Flash forward to 1973 and Sonny's latest active band on the town is known as LIQUID DIAMONDS, an even rawer 3-piece than FURY, this band wasn't as active live but still laid the sickening foundation for what nastiness lay ahead in the primitive TESTORS, undoubtedly already forming in the back of his mind. What we have here waiting for your salivating ears, are the two only-known tracks from the LIQUID DIAMONDS era, a scalding version of the later TESTORS classic "Aw Maw," a full three years before that version, backed with the "Gimme Danger" -tinged "Long Ago," a heavy, low-key jam, sizzling with the burned out ambiance of the era just before punk had fully formed. Never before released on ANY FORMAT, these tracks will quickly slip into place alongside pre-punk icons of the era, so while the stream of books & scholars focusing on underground music from this era continuously leave out these missing links of NYC punk history, we offer up another 7" slice of NYC proto punk heaven for you here, so don't even try to relax, crank this up and feel the shell-shock take hold!
So check out a first taste of the 1973 RAWNESS brewing inside of Sonny Vincent, just before the days of the TESTORS, and out later this month on HoZac Archival, PRE-ORDER HERE, and keep an eye out for the new batch announcement from HoZac later this week for the discounted 6pack deal.
