Blank Schatz ‎– The Grand Prize (1988)

I've long run out of shelf space for vinyl LPs, and instead have been placing rows of records vertically against book shelves and even furniture.  For several months at the front of one of these rows is the album I'm presenting now.  I've taken many a lengthy gaze at the album jacket to Blank Schatz's The Grand Prize, and while I'm often wont to dismiss that big ol' amorphous black blob as a nondescript mess, more and more it looks like a QR code on steroids.  Guess I shouldn't give this Findlay, OH trio too much credit for being prescient, but I digress.  The riff-laden, wet-behind-the-ears spunk of Grand Prize strikes me as more of a really tight practice session than a cohesive album/ep.  Roughly half of the eight tunes are instrumentals, and when (fill in the blank) approaches the mic, he slips into a mode akin to Black Flag-era Henry Rollins.  Kind of fitting when you consider these guys as an entity are tantamount to one of Greg Ginn's numerous half-baked offshoots.  Nonetheless, if power chords and grooves a la skate punks JFA are your bag, you'll have some fun here.

01. Ted's Devil Car
02. Devil's Hole Road
03. Rob's New One
04. This Town
05. Just Men
06. Balderdash
07. Plight Song
08. untitled

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