WARD, THE - The New Dykes b/w Mike Mikey Michael 7"

UGLY POP RECORDS
One perk of running a record label: having the means to take really fantastic music that slipped unnoticed into history, and bring it to people who might just love it as you do. Hard to imagine a better example of that than this 'new' single from an impossibly obscure group that played a few gigs and recorded a CDR demo before dissolving more than a decade back. Now, while certain times and places loom large in our esteem-- 1977, 1982, NYC, DC, London, Manchester-- Toronto 2011 is not among them. Great music can come from anywhere, though, and The Ward certainly fit the bill. Rough, scrappy, soulful punk rock in the early Lookout vein, with massive hooks and stellar female vocals. This is at once classic yet sounds exactly like nobody else, but if you dig Crimpshrine, early Screeching Weasel, the first Jawbreaker album, Leatherface, or Dillinger Four, you're in the ballpark.
I have listened to these songs a few thousand times over the years, and really I just wanted a copy on vinyl for myself, so we pressed 200. They're in proper jackets with inserts, though, and there won't be a repress. It won't make any money, obviously, but my faith is that music this good will find the audience that it deserves, and an audience that deserves it, and I hope a couple hundred of you will agree. (UP073)