I could bore you with the details of how or why I got there but a couple weeks ago I found myself in Salt Lake City looking to kill time with my wife before flying back to the dirty jerz. I grabbed up a local “Village Voice-esque” zine called SLUG (Salt Lake Under Ground) outside a restaurant we hit up for dinner because it had the mighty King Khan on the cover looking all whacked out and awesome. I flipped through it while drinking a local brew aptly called the fucking Devastator while waiting for our dinner. As a side note, Salt Lake isn’t as non-alcoholic as I was led to believe. They have a ton of great home brews that I tried while out there in addition to visiting a brewery. The Devastator (aside from being named after a bad ass Transformer) has a pic of a ram tearing up the Mormon Temple on the label. So yeah Salt Lake is awright. But I digress. So I’m flipping through this zine looking for something to do and I come across an ad that simply reads “Raunch – A Fucked Up Place To Get Some Shit”. Also on the ad is a bunch of sign language, which my wife explains spells out “Fuck You”. So you know the second we paid the check I drove us down to Raunch.
In many ways Punk Rockers have a punk version of gaydar whereby you can usually smell your own a mile away. Have you ever been in a crowd of strangers and picked out the punk? I do this all the time. And no I don’t look for Mohawks and studs. That shit is played out. You can also sense punk rock poser bullshit in a likewise manner. Raunch’s ad definitely set my punkdar off and I was sure it was gonna be a good spot to hit up before leaving for home.
Raunch was, as I expected, a pretty killer record store. It wasn’t the largest store. It didn’t have a huge surplus either. But everything they sold there was the real deal. There were more imports than you could shake a pogo stick at and most of them I didn’t even know existed. I rushed my way through their vinyl section as the place was about to close and chatted up the owner, an older dude with orange hair who introduced himself as Brad. We told him we were from Jersey and talked a bit about music and the FSS and he gave us the lowdown on Raunch. He’d been running the store since the early days of Hardcore (a little more than 20 years ago at this point) and the store had been in three different locations over the years. For a while it was situated near some fucked up park that was run by local bums and drunks (the kids loved the danger of visiting the store back then according to Brad). At some point the store was shut down entirely and Brad had to work a straight job. But he’s been back since the winter at the stores current location.
A good owner will always make for a good record shop and Brad didn’t disappoint. He repped the local scene every chance he got. From advertising local shows at the bottom of his receipts, to giving me a free local Oi! Demo, to giving my wife a free Raunch shirt designed by Pushead. (Incidentally the shirt glows in the dark and scared the shit out of me a couple weeks ago when I saw an odd glow coming from underneath the bed sheets only to pull them away and see a zombie staring me in the face.) Brad told us that the design on the front of this shirt was stolen from a rival Record Store that used it to lampoon Raunch’s early sign language shirts. How great is that!?! Someone straight mocks your shit and you steal it and slap it on shirts of your own. Punk rock. Before we left Brad asked us if it was worth it to check out The Bronx when they came through Salt Lake the following week. We gave him a hearty “yes” and I hope he made it out.
While I was there I bought, a Fear demos 12”, a live Jon Spencer Blues Explosion 12”, a 12” of early Adam and the Ants demos, and a copy of the Minutemen’s “Double Nickels On The Dime” on double 12”. I also bought a Raunch shirt with the FUCK YOU sign language that I’m wearing now as I write this.
So, yeah, the next time you’re in Salt Lake check out Raunch and feel free to chat up Brad, he’s got some great stories. And really the next time you are anywhere that isn’t home, search out the local scene and support it anyway you can before leaving. For example the next time you’re in Jersey you can take the FSS out for some beers and we’ll throw you a shirt and tell you about the time we kicked Iggy Pop down a flight of stairs at Irving Plaza before housing the entire DMS crew in a nearby alley.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Todd! Thanks for the killer review! The store is shit right now but is gonna get way better. If anybody is comin’ through town be sure to come on in and sell us some shit. Brad.
As a kid who loved to visit the dangerous Raunch location, I can tell you that nobody has done more for the local hardcore “scene” than Brad. We used to tape record his radio shows on KRCL to learn about punk rock. Visiting the store as a kid was like going to fucking Disneyland… Brad kept Salt Lake City in the know, curating a record store full of hardcore, imported fucked up punk shit, garage rock and everything else. The dude loves music and can talk about it with anyone. And he’s a stand-up guy. It’s great to have Raunch back.