New release from Louisville punk icons The Endtables

A press release from the good folks at Drag City Records today confirmed a rumor that underground punk fans had been crossing their fingers over for months: the release of a CD containing a collection of songs by '70s Louisville punk band The Endtables, including six studio recordings and six unreleased live tracks.

From Drag City:

"The Endtables were the crazed brainchild of guitarist Alex Durig, brooding chess-master of the amplified freak-out, and singer Steve Rigot, a flamboyant transgender giant from the shores of southern Indiana who reinvented himself as a Warhol Factory superstar. Like Scarlett O’Hara wrapped in a green velvet curtain, Rigot crafted his own glamorous reality from what was available in the blasted cultural landscape of 1970’s Kentucky. Gold spray paint, duct tape, Ace bandages ... a spectacularly other trailblazer who caused folks to toss their received ideas of beauty twenty years before Gossip’s Beth Ditto.

The band first took the stage in late 1978 and was finished by the summer of 1980. In the fall of 1979 they recorded six tracks at a Louisville studio, four of which came out on a 7” EP on their own Tuesday Records. The two remaining tracks (“White Glove Test” and “Trick or Treat”) were issued as a single on Self Destruct records in 1991. Both records are among the most sought-after of any American punk releases—treasures more talked about than seen, passed like secret gospels on disintegrating cassette tapes.

Now the secret is revealed and a star restored. The present CD collects for the first time The Endtables’ six studio recordings, six unreleased live tracks, and never-before-seen video footage of the band in performance. This new release is mastered from the original tapes—long believed lost, but recently discovered in a basement in Louisville’s South End. (The three Endtables songs that appeared on the compilation Bold Beginnings: An Incomplete Collection of Louisville Punk, 1978-1983 were transferred from vinyl.) The package also includes many previously unpublished photos, extensive liner notes, and Steve Rigot’s un-freaking-believable lyrics.

It’s all just in time for the original EP’s thirty-year anniversary, but this is no period piece. It’s pure American weirdness, as jaw-dropping today as the day it was recorded. In other words, timeless. Nothing could be more modern than Steve Rigot’s remote, sly singing style set against Alex Durig’s frenzied guitar outbursts, while drummer Steve Jan Humphrey and bassist Albert Durig (age fifteen!) bring the monster bam-bam jams. The band rocks its fevered vision to such a ferocious degree we’re sure you’ll agree they stand giant shoulder to giant shoulder with the greats. It’s the missing stone-cold jewel in your crown and a sound that will burn its way into your brain."

Check your local record store for the album circa April 20; in the meantime, check 'em out on MySpace.