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This weekend marks the 21st anniversary of the creation of Pseudo Punk!
To commemorate the 21st birthday of Pseudo Punk, a 5 song EP was created to celebrate its endurance.
Although many social networking sites for musicians were reluctant to acknowledge the genre, some super cool sites do provide a "sub" genre option for writing it in, even though Pseudo Punk is a category of its own.
Pseudo Punk and Acoustic Pseudo Punk were created in Detroit in 1992 by Vincent-Nick Ciofani III. While a few musicians and artists dabbled in it, Vini was the primary standing artist who kept churning out the Pseudo cuts in spite of the adversities, like a loss of players/band members, homelessness, betrayal, and a loss of family to a feud, he suddenly faced once he dubbed his new creation.
A pioneer of the mix tape, Vini created a mix tape from the various acts he was working with at the time. By 1993-94, Acoustic Pseudo Punk appeared on the "Sons Of Thunder" and "Boanerges" mixtapes Vini was selling in the Detroit area. Only released on cassette, the tape included 3 acts: "Sons of Thunder", "Brother John" (they were unaware of the real Brother John at the time), and "Mr Bigstuff" (which created 1 powerhouse God rap/church rhyme titled "the Walk").
Although more than a thousand tapes were sold, all word-of-mouth, with no internet involvement, you'd be hard-pressed to find one still in existence due to the fact that those who bought them listened to them until they were wore out. Long after Vini had sold-out and stopped selling the tapes, he was bombarded with requests for replacements to the ones his fans had worn-out and was asked by some to replace them with CDs "so they'd last longer". Had Vini responded to the market demand for his songs back then, perhaps there'd be a CD in existence now that's not a lossy dub from an old tape.
Vini's powerhouse cut, "Estranged", was written in 1998-99 while he was fronting a Gaylord act going by "Nebula" (they were unaware of the other guys already using the name). After a confusing false start with the band and 2 shows they bombed, Vini left for awhile and then returned to them with his Pseudo Punk as a peace offering and a "secret weapon". Two other songs were also written from this temporary reunion, "Prick" and "Super Freek". Both were very good and accomplished, even though they needed to be rerecorded; but "Estranged" was the cut that refused to go away.
So, with the Bela Culo Pseudo Punk release comes the 21st birthday of Vincent Ciofani's still unrecognized (underdog) genres, Pseudo Punk and Acoustic Pseudo Punk.
A gift for the die-hard Pseudo fans is this widget that they can share with others online.