Amazingly, the Avengers never even recorded a proper album - just two self-titled EP's totaling a mere seven songs. The first EP, a 7-inch on Los Angeles-based Dangerhouse Records, featured the breakneck anthem "We Are The One." It helped generate a buzz sufficient to garner the band a slot on a bill with the Sex Pistols. The now-infamous show (at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on January 14, 1978) proved be the Pistols' last, but the Avengers struck up a friendship with Pistol's guitarist Steve Jones that led his production of the band's second EP (highlighted by the snarling political rant, "The American In Me"). Recorded in 1978, the record was released on White Noise Records after the Avengers broke up in 1979.

Even on the live tracks and demos that populate Died For Your Sins, the Avengers play as one big, collective, raw bundle of nerves destined for hardcore valhalla, if not fame or riches. Songs like "Friends Of Mine" and "White Nigger" are as richly musical and palpably angry as any punk rock I've ever heard. Perhaps it was simply the Avengers' genius and volatility, clearly audible in their music, that caused them to implode. Nihilism in punk was more than a slogan back then, and the Avengers put up and shut up - like all good punks should. Penelope Houston, somewhat surprisingly, went on to a notable career as a forward-thinking folkie.

The Avengers' thin catalog was purchased and compiled by SF indie label CD Presents in 1983. The Avengers (14 songs on LP, 16 on CD) is, in a word, essential. It containing all seven of the band's EP tracks, plus unreleased studio recordings and a scabrous live rendition of the Avenger's minimalist manifesto, "Fuck You." Despite the low-rent production, The Avengers easily ranks among punk classics like Never Mind The Bollocks, The Clash, and Germ Free Adolescents. Even relatively ephemeral tracks (like the group's slamming cover of Barrett Strong's "Money") portray a band brimming with creativity, bursting with outrage, and consumed by a lust for life.

However, CD Presents has long since gone out-of-business, and The Avengers has become scarce beyond reason. Lookout's Died For Your Sins (lovingly compiled by Houston herself) is a decent substitute as it includes great alternate and live versions of many of the band's best songs. But, it is no replacement for the original album. For now, though, grab a CD-R directly from Penelope Houston's official website, www.penelope.net, or shell out for a pricey original copy from Amazon. I did, and I do not regret it.

In 2004, yet another disc of previously unreleased Avengers material surfaced. The American In Me features four studio tracks, plus eight songs recorded live at San Francisco's Old Waldorf in June 1979 just days before the band went kaput. The concert material (previously released on a European LP, Zero Hour) can be taxing - poorly recorded and dispirited compared to the incendiary performances captured on Died For Your Sins. Still, the live set includes four otherwise unavailable titles - none too remarkable - and the studio tracks are excellent, clean versions of previously released songs, performed with more precision (if less bluster) than the official versions. Most revealing are "Uh-Oh" and "White Nigger," which are alternate takes from the Steve Jones sessions - minus Jones' heavy dose of reverb. The American In Me is nicely packaged, too, with liner notes from writer Greil Marcus and a brief reminiscence from Houston, plus lots of vivid photos. All the same, the album is strictly for completists and, unlike Died For Your Sins, is a poor substitute for the hard-to-find Avengers album.

To fete the release of Died For Your Sins, Houston and some of her former bandmates performed some punk-oriented gigs billing themselves as "The Scavengers." Years later, Houston is still performing punk rock, but The Avengers remains a storied rarity. One can only hope that, eventually, rights to the band's catalog will revert to Houston - and that our hypothetical punk will wise up and realize punk rock wasn't invented in 1994. Probably won't, though - they never do. [top of page]