This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s the kind of stuff that makes me happy. I love historical documents. I like to know the origins of ideas and attitudes, and I like getting a glimpse of a scene and the people in it that’s personal and makes you feel like you were there.

This is a compilation tape that was put together by Aaron Cometbus in 1993. It doesn’t have any Green Day songs on it (there’s a Pinhead Gunpowder song that’s also on Jump Salty), but it’s like a sketch of the scene that spawned Green Day: silly and chaotic, but also serious, and made up of people who were dedicated to creating a musical style and building a community.

Not that the music on here is all great, but there are some killer songs, including two by a band I’ve never heard of called Joybus, (as far as I can tell they only ever released one seven inch record). The songs are funny, or sweet, or both. There’s also a lot of extra silliness thrown in, like weird answering machine messages that are completely stupid and great. One is about being afraid of toast…

Download the compilation and the cassette insert here: 12 Bands from Benicia. (There’s also a link there to another, earlier compilation.)

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