Kill the Hippies

Admirable though the sentiment may be, Kill the Hippies is not a violently anti-hippie band. "I wanted the most cliché punk-rock band name possible," says singer-guitarist Matt "Morte" Treehorn, identified in the Kent trio's press release as its "founding mutant." "I thought to myself, if the kids on Eight Is Enough ever went to see a punk band, what would its name be?" The Eight Is Enough reference nails down exactly where this band is coming from. It's punk rock in the gritty, old-school sense of the term.

Though Kill the Hippies has been around for 12 years, the bandmates play like they're from Akron circa 1978 and they've been furiously studying Devo and the Rubber City Rebels. Spanning two CDs and 77 songs, Erectrospective collects all the songs from the band's 7" records (in a direct vinyl-to-digital transfer that admirably keeps the pops and hisses), all its compilation tracks, and dozens of unreleased cuts. Songs like "Jerked Off by Strangers" are cheesy and frantic -- and the kind of obscure, exciting tunes that warrant preservation.