Chainsaw Kittens, Crimpshrine, Fifteen, The Misfits, The Hard-Ons, Get up Kids, Token Entry, the Zombies, Wilco, Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach, 80s post punk hardcore like Minor Threat and Husker Du, early Replacements, etc
To download all songs click one of our releases below:
We hate listing things here, but it helps in getting us to appear in search results: Rancid, Crimpshrine, fifteen, Eve 6, NOFX, Replacements, Swingin Utters, Dillinger Four, Good Riddance, Chainsaw Kittens
History
The Putrid Flowers were founded in NYC with personal and musical connections to the New York City Hardcore and Punk Golden Age of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They quickly impressed critics with their energetic live performances and a social consciousness that they were able to couple with the spontaneity of old punk/hardcore acts.
Indeed, the band would often bring homemade baked goods and hand them out in the middle of their set. Later, they went through a period of playing 2-3 gangster rap covers in their set, often taking out chairs and acoustic guitars and playing them as close as possible to the originals, adding to the fun and absurdity. Their tireless efforts established a reputation among a loyal cache of fans who followed them around to scores of gigs in NYC and the surrounding areas. The energy of their live shows would be captured on a series of seven inches and singles recorded by Chris Fasulo, a student at 5 Towns College, in the school's studio on weekends and vacations. These early tracks were to surface on many prominent punk rock compilations of the mid-late 1990s.
Their first major release, "...and for the little children, sing.", was released DIY after some label issues caused the band to go independent. Although all the songs had a certain poppiness to them, they were interested in connecting with underground music fans who felt the same way they did about music. These were people who searched out obscure bands and shared them with friends, and whose identity was forged through a religious devotion to music. The underground did respond well. Fanzines reviewed the album to almost universal praise getting them high marks in reviews in sources like
Hybrid Magazine, World Wide Punk and Punk International and mention on top album lists by sources such as PunkRockReviews. At this point they were satisfied with the level of interest that they were able to generate through informal channels like underground radio, internet and friends they'd made while playing out. They weren't so concerned about competing with popular bands and declined label offers.
Soon the group slowed their touring schedules and began writing the ambitious follow-up "Young for the Last Time." The songs, which focused on innocence and the limitations placed upon it (in both the personal and political sense), seemed especially appropriate in the wake of 9/11. With their initial dire pessimism subsided, the group put together a masterful tapestry of punk songs united by age old literary themes updated and applied to the postmodern era. Recorded with the help of John Agnello (who has produced for such bands as The Chainsaw Kittens, Son Volt, Sonic Youth, the Breeders, Social Distortion, Dinosaur Jr and more), the lyrical maturity and social understanding rarely found on punk records earned the group a new generation of underground fans.
In 2007, as a commentary regarding the sad state of mainstream punk music, the band decided to release the "Dancing with a Stranger EP." The songs were hastily recorded in a basement in Queens and an attic in upstate New York. When the band listened back to the recordings, they realized the songs had an ugly and urgent honesty that provided an appropriate contrast to the glossy, highly polished way that modern "mainstream" punk (and all music) is packaged. Though the songs were raw and "ugly", the band knew the songs had to be released.
No worries. Life is terribly slow here, so I'm sure the next two months will snail along without much incident. I'll be back in Portland by the end of January to finish school, and I plan to spend the summer backpacking in the coastal rainforests of BC. I'm glad to hear that you're working of something new, and, as always, am happy to provide whatever you have in mind. Talk up some graphics ideas if you don't already have some, and I'll get right to it. There is seriously not much else to do here but sleep, skateboard, walk my boyfriend's Doberman on the beach, and work on art.
Hope all is well with you and everyone else! And I really hope you're having more fun than me.
Hey, Ed! How are ya man? One of my friends said the other day 'aw man, i'm totally into Putrid Flowers now'....about fuckin' time! How are things? Sorry for the lack of talk, hope all's well - Fraser
Hey guys, long time, no talk. I'm living in the Cayman Islands now, and put simply, it sucks.
Really looking forward to hearing new music, and please let me know if you require any artwork. I've got nothing better to do here but chase birds and burn things. It's a pathetic existance.
Hey guys, was wondering if yous are upto much?.. like new songs or anything comming out. Would love to see you's live but living in the uk would be a mission to get to the usa.
Hello again boys! I finally got Spiderguts back from the national art show, and should be uploading some of the work to my Flickr soon. I'll send you copies for your website lyrics pages if you want them.
Oh, and the music player on your website isn't working right. I have a friend who is brilliant with HTML code and building websites and all that jazz. He could fix it for you if you need the help.
Hope all is well. And as ever, keep up to great work!
No shit, I've totally been a fan for a year now. Heard about you from a friend of a friend, and never got around to adding, I don't myspace much. But fuckin a man you guys are amazing. And you adding me??? Hell yeah. Keep kicking ass. I way dig it.
Yesss! Thank you so much for putting So Alive up on the player. On of my all-time favorite songs.
But the real reason I'm here is to say that the book I made (the one with all the Putrid Flowers lyrics in it) won a Silver Key in the Scholastic Art Awards. I'll post some of photographs of the pages with lyrics for you to see later on; right now my art teacher is entering it into another art contest against a few other schools on the West Coast.
Thanks so much for the inspiration. Realy hoping to hear more from you in the future.