Supernova - Calling Hong Kong
Supernova - Long Hair and Tattoos

Maybe I'm starting to understand all those folks who get so into St. Patrick's Day. I suppose I just never got into it 'cus I'm not Irish, but now that a part of my 'culture' is being threatened I can sort of relate to those folks who have one day a year of cultural celebration. Most folks will recognize Orange County punk as a claustrophobic version of melodic hardcore and rattle off names like Agent Orange or The Adolescents, but like all scenes there is a lot more to it. Of course there are certainly seminal bands to the 'scene,' but those weren't the bands I was going out to see or recording onto mixtapes for friends.

Supernova stood out as an anomaly among the bro-core from the Beach Cities, the retro-77 striped shirt crowd, and the black-clad anarchists. Wearing homemade outfits constructed of tinfoil, Art, Jo and Dave sang songs about Wookies (which you may remember from the Clerks soundtrack), space travel and haircuts. It's no wonder they were apt to write a tune called, "Costa Mesa Hates Me." More Godzuki than Godzilla, they were about as aggressive and hardcore as low budget Hanna-Barbara cartoon from the 1970s.

As I write this, Supernova is in the midst of a giant legal mess. Seems the folks producing the second season of Rock Star for CBS have opted to compile an 'all-star' band this time around rather than resurrect a singer-less blast from the past. With Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted, Gilby Clarke and Dave Navarro signed on to play "The Band," the vocalist could be anyone... Hey, it could even be you! But where this program goes from just bad TV to an unethical assault on the icons of my culture is in naming the band.

Despite Costa Mesa's Supernova releasing a few albums and doing a few national tours (including a much hoped for appearance at SXSW a few years back), CBS has decided to call this amalgamation of bad-hair-metal Supernova as well. And according to Newsted on his Camp Freddie show, “That’s all been worked out, and we are the one and only Supernova.”

Of course, Supernova is not going to simply take this in a hyperbolic compression chamber. No, they have returned to our spheroid-home from the deep recesses of space to fight the case and engage in as much "legal neener neenering" as is required.

So download these tracks and then go out and support the one true Supernova by purchasing one of their records or go see them play at the El Rey, this Friday, May 19. Or at least leave them a message on MySpace and let them know you care.

(Supernova's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/supernova_army)

(Buy Pop As A Weapon from Amazon.)

(This posts relied heavily on Ziegler's piece from this week's OC Weekly. And the photo is from a fan on Supernova's MySpace.)