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Wild Gift, 1984-1996
Artist:
Robert Christie
Format: Compact Disc
New: IN STOCK AT OUR STORE $8.99
Wish
Formats and Editions
1. Oswald Five-O: My Way (Robert Christie)
2. Robert Christie: The Wind (Robert Christie)
3. Merchants of the New Bizarre: Nemesis (Tom Doskow)
4. Johnson Unit: What Makes (Steven Nordby)
5. Young Death: No Energy (Matt Colgan)
6. Snakepit: Waiting for You (Robert Christie)
7. Some Velvet Sidewalk: Moment (Al Larsen)
8. Oswald Five-O: Heavy Shoes (Diane Beck)
9. Johnson Unit: Can't Afford It (John O’Neil)
10. Young Death: Walking Narcissism (Dan McClure)
11. Merchants of the New Bizarre: I'm the Alien (Tom Boscow)
12. Snakepit: Me and Mine (Al Larsen)
13. Some Velvet Sidewalk: Jean Waits (Al Larsen)
14. Oswald Five-O: Lost And Found (Diane Beck)
15. Young Death: Apathetic Media Slave (Dan McClure)
16. Robert Christie: Good Night, Sweet Prince (Robert Christie)
17. Johnson Unit: Before (John O’Neil)
18. Snakepit: Party (Robert Christie)
19. Oswald Five-O: No Name (Diane Beck)
20. Young Death: Workers Unite (Matt Colgan and Dan McClure)
21. Johnson Unit: Rally (John O’Neil)
22. Some Velvet Sidewalk: 20,000 Leagues (Al Larsen)
23. Robert Christie: Flowers of Danang (Robert Christie)
24. Snakepit: Sunrise (Mike Johnson)
25. Oswald Five-O: All Night Takeout (Robert Christie)
26. Johnson Unit: Shop for Style (John O’Neil)
27. Merchants of the New Bizarre: The Ballad of Denny McLain (Tom Boscow)
28. Some Velvet Sidewalk: Seasons (Al Larsen)
29. Young Death: Nothing to Me (T Farley)
30. Johnson Unit: Sonic Reducer (Dead Boys)
31. Oswald Five-O: Small Town (Diane Rios)
32. Robert Christie: Animal Box (Rich Jensen)
More Info:
Everyone I talked to about this project told me about how much Robert Christie taught them.
It’s fitting, and all the more tragic, that he ended up as a high school English teacher in
Clatskanie, Oregon, a few dozen miles east of Astoria, where we grew up. After a long tour of
duty in Eugene, he started that job just a few years before he died in a car accident in 2001,
together with his wife Denise and their two children. Robert taught me everything I knew about
punk rock before I was eighteen, and quite a bit about life as well, to the extent that those two
topics didn’t already overlap. He lent me his copies of “Road to Ruin” and “Wild Gift” and
“Young Loud and Snotty,” which I copied onto cassette tapes and listened to all the way through
college. What he taught me was both exhilarating and harrowing (“Sonic Reducer” fading into
“Ain’t It Fun”; “She’s The One” fading into “Bad Brain”). I survived high school, barely, largely
thanks to Robert.
Three of Robert’s previously-
unreleased solo recordings are included here; also “Animal Box” (an amazing Rich Jensen cover),
which appeared on “The Way of Things”—a cassette that documented a show in Eugene on a
cold night in November 1987, made warm by the amazing grace of music and friends. Its liner
notes describe Robert as I will always remember him: “He practices Christ-like innocence when
he’s not busy playing or studying.” He once compared my fanzine to a church bulletin, and I’d
like to think we shared an evangelical zeal when it came to preaching about the music we loved.
Although he had a hand in a few fanzines of his own, he practiced as well as preached. He set an
example. He set the beat.
I have a distinct memory of a dream I had in high school where I was listening to a Dead Boys
album with songs on it that never actually existed. They were awesome songs—they lingered, but
not long enough for me to write them down. This CD is about letting Robert’s old friends relive
some of the best things he was part of, and letting people who never had the pleasure to know
him hear for the first time what they missed. It's about Eugene, Oregon. And it’s about all those
incredible songs that linger, but that Robert didn’t live long enough to write down.
Excerpted from the liner notes.
-Tim Alborn November 2022
Harriet Records
