There is a lot I could and should say about 88 Fingers Louie. First and foremost, they were one of the most important gateway bands that brought me into hardcore and, perhaps more importantly, hardcore shows. In retrospect, they were perhaps one of the last melodic hardcore bands that really allowed their rough edges to show. Hardcore, and melodic hardcore in particular, can be so precise, clean, and coordinated. It's fantastic in it's own respect, but there's something very, well, raw about bands like Gorilla Biscuits that a band like Comeback Kid cannot replicate.

I had a video of 88 Fingers Louie playing at the Fireside Bowl that I grabbed from The Clubhouse, a fantastic record store in Chicago that carried an amazing amount of punk and hardcore considering the size of their overall music selection. They regularly sold bootlegged VHS tapes of local shows and it was always a big find to buy one of a favorite group. I have no clue how many times I watched that show, but portions of the tape were becoming unwatchable from overuse by the time it was retired. The first song to go was "Outright Lies." It's a simple and painfully honest hardcore song and, for a genre that often gets bogged down in macho posturing, "Outright Lies" is like a breath of fresh air.

88 Fingers Louie - "Outright Lies"