AVAIL - Four Albums Strong

Everyone has a band or a few bands that at the time you do not realize how great that band is. How historical that band will become to musical fans once they are gone. How many people will be so jealous you had a chance to see that band live. You may even forget about them until one day a song of theirs that you do not even remember putting on there comes over your iPod's headphones bringing back all those great music memories.

For me, one of those bands would be Richmond, VA's Avail,

My first exposure to Avail was around 1994 while I was in my junior year of college. The album Dixie was scheduled to be released on Lookout! Records along with a reissue of their first album Satiate.

Just a few weeks before we left for Winter Break I was walking by the WCWP Radio Station window and heard the song "Sidewalk" blasting out of the outside monitors. I went inside and asked my friend Joe, who had been manning the FM control board, who it was coming out of the speakers.

Handing over two CDs Joe told me how the radio station had just received the promo copies the day before and he had been playing them non-stop since.

On the cover of Dixie under the "Promo" stamp there was the name AVAIL and a drawing of a stick figure holding a flag. This would become the symbol AVAIL would be known by. A symbol you would still find on stickers on the back of street signs and tattooed on the bodies of many people for years to come.

Later that day Joe came up to me in the cafeteria and handed me a 90-minute cassette. Side A was labeled "Dixie" with "Satiate" on side B. Over the next few weeks, I listened to them over and over, eventually wearing out the tape. Finally, on Superbowl Sunday 1994 I picked up true copies of both the CDS and still have them 17 years later.

AVAIL put out six studio albums. The first four: Satiate, Dixie, 4 A.M. Friday and Over the James are all unbelievable albums. Each of them shows the band's development. The last two albums are not as great. One Wrench has a few good songs but they really just sound like attempts to copy tracks from Over the James. The sixth and final album Front Porch Stories is the band just going through the motions. For me at least, it was no surprise when after Front Porch Stories the band decided to call it quits.

But over those for albums, AVAIL was something special to me. Here is why:

Satiate, was originally self-released and then on Old Glory Records before being reissued on Lookout! Record is a great introduction for a new band. When you press play one of the first things coming through the headphones is lead singer Tim Barry singing "Set Me Free". Then the drums kick in. Then the almost marching band drums of the first track "March". You can almost picture the band marching over a hill introducing themselves and showing what they've got. When track two comes on it gets a little harder. We are here and we can get angry! Over the next 11 tracks, Avail would show the beginnings of the styles they would known for. Styles that no other band could really pull off.

When Quicksand came out millions of bands attempted to recreate the sound that made that band so great. The same thing happened when Hot Water Music became popular. Kid Dynamite and Against Me! also had many imitators. I can't even think of one band that attempted to copy AVAIL. If there were any they were so far off the mark you can't even hear a resemblance.

Getting back to Satiate, one of these examples of these budding styles are the driving melody of track 4 "Bob's Crew". The melody to hard to back to the melodic of track 5 "Observations". Even the acoustic track 12 "Hope" is a great closing number with a title showing a band that will go on to do great things. The title of that song also signifies there will still be good and fresh bands in the hardcore punk world.

The Lookout! Records reissue, as well as the Jade Tree Records reissue a decade later both include the very early AVAIL 7" Ep Attempt to Regress with the tracks "Connection" and "Mr. Morgan" tacked on to the end. On the two songs of the 7" I hear a strong FUGAZI influence. An influence probably explained by Richmond's close proximity to DC. An influence that had all but disappeared by the time Satiate was recorded. "Connection" begins as an intense song but becomes even more and more intense the guitars get sharper and sharper and singer Tim Barry sings "Why" more and more intense until it sounds like his head is about to explode. So intense that if the band had not gone on to release more material I would have thought it had.

The b-side "Mr Morgan" ( I found out later) was named after a Senior resident of Richmond who was beaten to death for just a few dollars, is a little less intense. You can begin to hear the smooth melodic, hard, back-to-smooth melodic sound emerging from the FUGAZI influence.

Then came the Dixie. The album kicks of with the roaring "On The Nod". It arrives at your headphones like an old friend returning after not seeing them in some time. Tracks "Clone" and "Treading on Heels" show AVAIL has not lost the knack for switching from melodic to hard to melodic all in the same song. Five tracks in comes AVAIL's best song. "Sidewalk" is a solid driving, upbeat song with hooks and an awesome chorus. After "Sidewalk", "25 Years" slows it down a bit, letting you catch your breath the piercing guitars of "Virus" kick in upping the album temp all over again.

The album (almost) closes with "Southbound 95", which has a sample of the actual classic song "Dixie" before the song takes off. The song, about returning home to the South after a tour is fast and loud. Probably AVAIL's fastest and loudest song. 

Supposedly they would only play this song on the last night of a tour. I was lucky. The one time I did get to see AVAIL live was at the Capital Ballroom in D.C. the last show of the tour before they returned home. That night they played this song with a whole new level of urgency.

The album finally closes with a very good cover of Jon Cougar Mellencamp's "Pink Houses". The song is done with not a trace of cheesiness. The lyrics about living in a small town could easily fit into any AVAIL song. Even though AVAIL would go on to cover Elvis's "Suspicious Minds", Billy Joel's "You May Be Right" among others, I will always think of "Pink Houses" as AVAIL's signature cover.

To grasp an idea of the transition from Satiate to Dixie, check out the Live at The King's Head Inn 10" (also included on the Jade Tree reissue of Dixie). It has a few songs from each album as well as a pretty good cover of the VIOLENT FEMMES's "Kiss Off"

The next album 4 A.M. Friday still remains AVAIL's most underrated album. Perhaps because it's sandwiched between the strong breakthrough of Dixie and the maturity of Over The James but there are many great songs on the 4 A.M. Friday. The best is "Simple Song" which is just that: a simple song. Also a simple song with a driving groove and strong hooks. My favorite AVAIL song, "FCA" is also on this album. The song is not only another example of the hard to melodic to hard style that AVAIL does so well, its also a tribute to their friend Bob Baynor of the band MAXMILLIAN COLBY who had passed away. I'm not sure what exactly happened to him but the song does mention a "Spiderco" which is a very serious knife so I am sure it was not good. The album's title 4 A.M. Friday comes from the time and day the band found out about Bob's death.

"92" and "Armchair" are two more fantastic fast-moving songs, both complete with a great hook. Track 11 is a quick acoustic version of the classic " Swing Low". Not only is this a nice salute to the South AVAIL calls home but a sign of things to come when lead singer Tim Barry explores acoustic "roots" music almost ten years later.

A few years later the last of AVAIL's four great albums Over The James was released. Almost immediately there is no denying the production is seriously beefed up and more polished than  4 A, M, Friday. The songs are overall more melodic but by no means in a sell-out way. This album would allow AVAIL to bring in a larger fan base (before making the move to Fat Wreckords ) but also not oust the band's loyal fans of the past decade.

Song 3 "August" slows the tempo down but the roaring guitars are still present. Track 5 "Nickle Bridge" was given a sneak peek on the Live at the Bottom of The Hill CD. Here we get to hear it all it's studio-produced glory. Once again we get to catch our breath when "Nickle Bridge" winds down with a little jingle-jangle at the end before "Scuffle Town" (also on the Bottom of the Hill) revs it up again with its driving chorus which also brings us the album's title. "Still it's a beautiful day. The sun is still shining over the James"

It may have taken a bit of time but at track 7 "S.R., O," we once again get to hear the melodic to hard to melodic AVAIL sound that won us over years ago.

At track 12 "Cross Tie" you get your last chance to take a breath. Looking back it is almost as if AVAIL is taking a second to look back at their years on Lookout! Records and that awesome four-album run before they hammer it home with the powerful "Ask" and even more unbelievable (as well as one of my favorite AVAIL songs) "Fifth Wheel".

Like I said at the beginning of this entry, AVAIL did move on to the bigger Fat Wreckords and release two more albums but for me AVAIL's greatness ends when at the very end of Over The James a kid's voice says, "Thanks for buying this hardcore product". Basically with this blog entry, I am thanking AVAIL for putting them out for us.