Social Distortion
Mainliner

THE REVIEW

In 1983, Social Distortion released «Mommy’s Little Monster».

That album came out when their native Orange County was overwhelmed by the hardcore fury, and those were times when hardcore really took no prisoners, not even punk veterans.

In fact, hardcore thrived on the decline of punk philosophy, something like “your death for my life.”

To say that Ness, Danell, Liles, and O’Brien didn’t find fertile grounds to cultivate, so much so that the following «Prison Bound» took several years to arrive, although it’s true that the wait was largely due to Ness’s personal issues.

It’s also true that Social Distortion never gave much weight, then as now, to the ritual appointment with a new album to send to the shelves, and when things went well, they waited “only” two years between one release and the next, those passed between «Prison Bound» and the self-titled third, and then between that and «Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell».

But nothing will shake from my head that it is better that way, that Social Distortion reappeared on the scene when even in Orange County the hot hardcore passions had largely cooled down.

In those five years spent in silence, «Mommy’s Little Monster» had meanwhile circulated among a few but good ones, those who welcomed the follow-up story as the return of the Savior, because it’s one thing to have «Punks Not Dead» by the Exploited in hand, another to have «Mommy’s Little Monster» under your skin.

That album delivered them to punk history, Social Distortion, regardless of all the good they managed to do later.

However, there are those – few or many, I can’t say – willing to put both hands in the fire that they would have made it into history anyway, even if they had never written, sung, and played the songs of «Mommy’s Little Monster».

Because first came a handful of equally essential songs, collected in 1995 in «Mainliner», songs like heavy drugs injected intravenously, destined to end up under the skin and remain there forever.

Ten tracks in total.

«Moral Threat» and «All the Answers» were already known for being part of «Mommy’s Little Monster», but already knowing them did not in any way diminish the passion of listening to them again and again.

And then this “new” «Moral Threat», halved in length and much rawer, was truly a new sensation.

The same goes for «Justice for All», which later appeared on «Prison Bound» under the modified title «It’s the Law»; indeed, here it really is a different track, drawn out to the limit but with a melodic and even classic vein prominently displayed, something that from the very beginning was a distinctive characteristic of Social Distortion and then of much of the Californian punk scene.

Then, the rest were all tracks never heard before, at least around here, because imagine who knew about the semi-clandestine singles and b-sides that Social Distortion had recorded when «Mommy’s Little Monster» was still a mirage.

And here it came to the point that even the toughest temperament of the toughest punk was put to a very tough test, let alone me, who has never been punk, neither by temperament nor by attitude, at most by affinity.

Because «1945» and «Playpen», «Mass Hysteria», and that explosive «Under My Thumb» which shattered even the rolling stones into pebbles, gave no escape and, if they had received the deserved visibility at the time, the rising hardcore fanatics wouldn’t have been able to dominate Orange County with impunity.

Not to mention «Mainliner», by far the best among the tracks that Strummer and Jones would have wanted to write, without ever succeeding.

And so yes, I will put both hands in the fire that Social Distortion would have passed into history even if they had never recorded «Mommy’s Little Monster».

These barely twenty minutes would have been more than enough.