Kyle's Cassettes: Brotherhood of Lizards

This is the first in an occasional, possibly limited, or not, series of reviews by my pal, Kyle, from Trustzine. He only listens to & writes about cassettes. It works for him...I can dig it.

Brotherhood of Lizards
S/T
1988 BRUV 1

So like I will be the first to admit that I can get a little snobby at times. It's not like I'm cruising around in a chauffeured Rolls asking my homies if I can borrow some fucking mustard, it's just that, generally speaking, I can usually scope out a situation with relative ease and an economy of time. I'll put it like this: I've crawled down into some pretty damp holes looking for Shalamar 12"s, but I aint trying to waste my time at your Aunt Nancy's garage sale going through her Amy Grant LPs. Nothing against Amy Grant, I'm just saying.

Anyhoos, about a year ago some fools opened up a pretty accurate approximation of your Aunt Deborah's yard sale at the end of my block, the only catch is that it's indoors. They sell a bunch of used up tired shit that they've cobbled together from god fucking knows where (my guess is New Jersey). It's basically an assortment of used books, VHS tapes, DVDs, records and what apparently is their raison d'etre: Garbage Pail Kids. If you don't know what those are I won't waste your time, just look that shit up or actually don't even bother because its just some weak ass shit, end of point. But I digress. When I first came upon this 'store' I was pretty juiced to say the least because it looked like it had real dollar bin types of potential. So it was to my major chagrin when I stepped into the joint and a) the records were all priced at a flat five bucks b) the records turned out to be a mix of Babbs Striesand and Broadway show tunes and then c) I had to listen to the unwashed scrub behind the counter blather on about how women don't understand him and that's why he doesn't even bother trying to date women so his sister can go fuck herself and about the overall underestimated importance/lack of understanding/appreciation when it comes to the greatness of garbage pail kids. I mean I was all like, "could this pathetic cliché be anymore depressing?" and before I could even answer myself I thought, "I should bail before I catch the nerds from this guy." Literally this guy was harshing my mellow with such an unnerving ease that I fucking high tailed it out of there and after wards I will confess to feeling straight up shook.

In the world of record collecting these types of dudes serve the purpose of acting as a warning not to let your already super nerdy obsessions get too out of hand or else you might find yourself carrying out an ultra depressing existence. It's a fucking fine line sometimes. Anyways, long story short I put the fucking kibosh on this dude and his booger-ass store like real quick. I kept this up for about a year until one day I was walking by with my girl and I just happened to notice that they had tapes in the back of the store, like a lot of them. I swear to god I'm part fucking hound dog when it comes to this shit. Whatever though, I told my girl to go ahead and just meet me back at the store in like 30 minutes. I was still pretty wary of going back into this dork lair, but I was just like "fuck it."

So like 30 minutes rolled by and my girl came back to scoop me up and I pathetically asked her to give me just a few more minutes during which time I started blatantly making fun of the sealed Temple of the Dog tapes. My girl was laughing, but she was really kind of saying, "can we just get the fuck out of here. Please." Like she wasn't really asking a question, you know what I mean? It was at this point that I stopped making fun of the Julianna Hatfield tapes and shut the fuck up because I came across what appeared to be an original Brotherhood of Lizards tape. I seriously almost dooked my jock when I saw this tape, but it was actually way funnier than that because even though there was no one even in the store I started whispering because I was afraid that someone might see what I had found and try and snatch it away from me. Super huge chance of that happening right? And just when I thought I couldn't get any more pathetic I realized I didn't have any cash on me to actually purchase the tape at which point I had to ask my girl if I could borrow the two bucks from her.

As rare as this tape is and as good as it sounds none of it is shit compared to the super rare chance that I was given to see myself exactly as I am or at least as I was in that moment. I mean this tape did a lot more than level out my weak ass ego, it brought perspective and insight into my life. I don't think that I ever actually consciously thought that I was better than the dude who ran this store, but I was operating on more than a few assumptions. I'm not saying that that was cool or anything, but me finding this tape in these particular circumstances brought to light the fact that we are all just animals searching for any little shiny objects that might bring us joy and happiness. In short we are all pretty much the same no matter how different or special we think we are, that we are all in this thing together and that we have to find happiness wherever it might exist. This might all sound super goofy, but I was way into it. Being happy is easier than you think if you just let it happen.

Grab it here.