Perhaps best known for Self Control, their full-length on BYO Records, Kosher hailed from Warrensburg, Missouri. In the early years of this decade, they were stalwarts in the Kansas City punk scene that swirled around the all-ages El Torreon. Along with bands like Tanka Ray, Annie On My Mind, the Revolvers, and Sister Mary Rotten Crotch, Kosher was one of those bands that gigged regularly around the KC area, blasting the roof off of venues everywhere they went, be it all ages clubs like El Torreon or beer soaked dens of inquity like Davey’s Uptown.
Back in late 1999, I was host of the local music program, and I had Kosher play live on the air. It was a Sunday night, raining like crazy, and these kids drove all the way from Warrensburg to play twenty minutes of poorly produced music to a very small listening audience. Honestly – the radio station has a wattage of 2600, and doesn’t have a radius much over 50 miles. Still, they played their hearts out, and brought my girlfriend at the time and I copies of this 7″, their Death to Drama EP and stickers. I still have that recording, and I still kick myself for not doing a better job.
Bored In America was released in late 1999 / early 2000 on the Skull-Duggery label out of Massachusetts. It was limited to something like 300 copies, and if you didn’t get one, you’re pretty much fucked for finding a copy now. I refound this in the stacks of the college radio station where I work, with my handwriting scrawled all over it. The band had a full-length recorded before this EP, and it was simply entitled The Record, in what can only be described as a touching rip off tribute to Fear. The band on that album is astonishingly young, with liner notes requesting no one call the contact numbers listed inside too late because the band members still live with their parents.
This is probably Kosher at their most raw. It’s before they polished their sound into the focused attack it’d be on Self Control, but past the kiddie punk of The Record. This and Death to Drama feature a lot of the songs that would eventually make up Self Control, but in a far more lo-fi form. If you’re curious as to how the band sounded live, you can track down the Streetpunk ’99 compilation on DSS Records. It features the band playing live the song “Punk Rock Pretty Boy,” which is only available on that comp.
Kosher – Bored In America 7″ EP