DEMO 1986 by TOO SOON TO FORGET

This is the long lost and only recording of the now infamous and legendary TOO SOON TO FORGET, a hardcore punk band that came from the Philly burbs and spent most of late 1986 into 1987 tearing up the tristate area. The band was best known for their highly energetic 20-minute long sets which typically included at least one cover and every member of the band diving into the audience. Those who were around then also recall the violence that typically followed them around, most notably altercations with local police, nazi skinheads, or drunk punks looking for a fight, which is what some say lead to their eventual break up on stage in December of '87. While there are many versions of bootleg cassettes that circulated during the tape trading days of the early to mid 90s, this is the first time a decent copy of their music is captured digitally for all to hear. I recently caught up with George THOUGHT who shared the following about the formation of the band...

"It was the summer of '86, we were shredding on our boards in the parking lot of Radio Shack listening to Minor Threat, Bl'ast, Agnostic Front, and Black Flag. We were talking about each other's plans for the rest of the summer as we were about to enter Junior High that following September. As destiny would have it, none of us had anything worthwhile going on other than being fed up with the bullshit that growing up in a lower-middle class, blue collar Philadelphia suburb would have to offer. No one locally that we knew was doing shit musically or talking about any of the problems or struggles that we faced on our level, and everyone else in our school was listening to Duran Duran, Madonna, or some other corporate bullshit, and we simply just had enough. We all bonded that summer pretty much over our hatred of all that crap and our love of fucking punk rock! One day a buddy of mine gave me a copy of Break Down The Walls, I don't think it was even out yet, but that shit blew our minds.The cassette we had sounded so bad, you could tell someone recorded it by putting a tape player next to another tape player and just hitting record. But that didn't matter, man. You could feel it. That's when we said fuck it, let's start our own band and fuck this town, fuck Reagan, fuck our parents, and fuck anyone who thought they could tell us what to do. I broke the window at A-Z Music and stole a guitar through the window, Cuff had an old drum set that his dad played on, Twisted started pocketing money from the Alvino's Restaurant where he was washing dishes so he could buy a guitar, and somehow Jeff HATE just showed up with a brand fucking new fender bass. We still don't know where it came from, and I don't think I wanna know! That motherfucker hated everyone, who knows who he had to kill to get it! He was older than us and already outta high school and he had a story for everything, he apparently used to get in a lot of fights with the long hairs that would come out to Love Hall over on Broad Street. So anyway, we bought these two cheap Gorilla amps off the dudes in this band called Pretty Poison and borrowed a broken Peavey bass amp that Image would plug a microphone into. He convinced this chic Janine from school to let him borrow that mic, which actually ended up belonging to the school I went to somehow. We all started practicing and occasionally crashing at this squat in West Philly, and that's when it happened. The fucking cops raided this party we were at and our buddy Marty, who was going to be our roadie, got stabbed. The cops said one of us did it, but that was total bullshit, that was a flat out lie. Everyone knew the cops did something to him, they shook him up real bad too. He got through that okay, but we never saw him again. When he got out of the hospital, his parents sent him away to somewhere, who the fuck knows where, they wouldn't tell us. Fuck those cops, man! And that shit, that shit didn't scare us, it just made us angrier. We kept playing and started getting good, real good. That September rolled around and we went back to school, but a month or two later fucking I Against I came out and that's what really inspired us to start looking to play our first show. Finally got this gig in Scranton at some dive, but we didn't care. The flyer said we were called Rad Rats, now I have no idea who fucking came up with that dumb name, but I knew it wouldn't last. We got to the show and as we set up to play and I told Image, I was like dude, don't forget, do NOT forget to dedicate our set to Marty, and he looked me dead in the eye and screamed into the mic, "TOO SOON TO FORGET, MOTHERFUCKER!" and we just started playing. The rest is history, man. We played every basement, VFW, and squat from DC on up to Albany, NY. We had friends drive us, we borrowed gear, slept outside on park benches, sometimes begged for food and money, whatever we had to do to get to and from the next show. It was the time of our lives, man! I still can't believe the shit we went through to make that band happen, but we did it. This is our story, we ran shit that year and it was a blast. And if you didnt like us, we didn't give a shit! That's it! That's the story of TSTF. Enjoy the demo and play that shit loud enough to piss off your neighbors. Stand up for what you believe in and never allow yourself to be silenced by the fascists and wealthy fuck faces who run this country."

Philadelphia Hardcore Punk from 1986 - 1987, RIP.