Dying Scene

Taking cues from Epitaph’s “Punk-O-Rama”, Fat Wreck Chords’ “Fat Music For Fat People”, and Hopeless’ “Hopelessly Devoted To You” series, Bright & Barrow Records recently released a compilation of NYC/NJ-area punk bands, titled “Cause A Scene Volume 1″.

The label enlisted bands hailing from the five boroughs, Long Island, and New Jersey for this compilation to highlight the punk scene that has taken a backseat over the past decade to the indie and pop movements.  You can stream the entire comp right here.

This isn’t exactly music related but some guy named Jeremy Stacks wrote a book called “Poisoned Fate” about a fictional punk band fighting zombies in a post-apocalyptic world.  Or something like that.  In any case, it’s got a bunch of references to punk bands like Bad Religion, Tiger Army, Bouncing Souls, Street Dogs, etc. so for those of you who actually still read books out there it might be an entertaining read.

Here’s a brief synopsis from the author:

What do you do when you find you’re now one of only a handful of inhabitants left on earth? Welcome to Remy’s world. He and a small band of friends and neighbors wake up one evening to find buildings, homes, and streets littered with corpses. Their town appears dead and they don’t understand why. As investigations begin and they struggle to find some meaning and purpose to their new lives, tensions erupt and new challenges and dangers present themselves. While searching for fuel and supplies, they realize they are not quite as alone as they thought. Remy discovers who his true friends are and what they are all capable of doing to survive. Is it the end of civilization or a new beginning?

Poisoned Fate is a fast paced and ultra-violent story of survival set to a punk rock soundtrack. Chock full of references and nods to 1980’s horror and disaster movies, comic books and of course, punk rock music.

The book is available on Amazon.

Montreal punk-ska outfit Subb have released a new song that you can stream and download right here.  The song is titled “Walk Of Fame” and it will appear on the band’s upcoming album, “Zero To Hero,” which will be released soon on Stomp Records.

In not so happy news, after 18 years of bandship, the fellas are apparently calling it quits and will be playing a few final shows this month in Canada.

Subb released their last album, “To This Beat” on Stomp in 2009.

After just 1 year of operation we are proud to say that DyingScene.com has surpassed all our expectations in terms of growth and popularity.  Today our prolific rise to punk rock famedom was made all the more clear by the fact that we reached 5,000 friends on Facebook!  Man, we are popular.  To commemorate the event we decided it was time to bust out our financial spreadsheets, fire up our TI-85 calculators and tally up just how lucrative this little venture of ours has gotten.

Just thinking about the piles of money we must surely be bringing in as the web’s premiere punk news resource had us rubbing our greasy palms together and drooling at the mouth in greedy anticipation.  But then we had an epiphany.  Where would we be without our readers?  The answer was, “nowhere,” or more accurately, “at home, sitting in front of our computers in our underwear, surrounded by great music but not a single person to share it with.”  We realized just then that we’re sharers, not greedy horders; so we made a decision.  A monumental decision.  Before crunching the numbers and calculating our massive profits we made a promise to ourselves and to those first readers that helped catapult us into to the upper echelons of punk rock greatness.  That promise was to give 100% of all profits made by DyingScene.com since its inception and up to this very day, to our 5,000 original Facebook friends as a little “thank you” for their support.

So, with clear consciences and noble intentions, we got back to those spreadsheets, tallied up our massive advertising revenue and began subtracting our meager expenses.  And that’s when it hit us like a ton of bricks.  It would seem that we actually don’t make any profits running Dying Scene.  In fact, insisting that our teams of accountants run the numbers again, it turns out we actually lose money running this damn site!  Who knew?!

Our accountants say that our “profits” so far are technically somewhere in the neighborhood of negative $20,000.  But fair is fair.  We made a promise to our readers and by God, we would keep that promise!  Once again we had our accountants return to their calculators, this time to divide up those profits amongst our 5,000 friends.  And now, in honor of our very first and very loyal readers, we would like to offer you first 5k FB friends your due reward.  If you are friends with us on facebook, simply email us your address and we will promptly send you a bill for $4.

Thank you,

Johnny X