The punk scene in the Bay Area might've taken a backseat to what developed in New York City and Los Angeles, but the first wave wasn't bad for an undersized city buried beneath the epic stink of leftover hippie nonsense and crapola like Journey and Eddie Money and Stoneground that came next. Still, if it's punk music you're looking for, it's tough to stack up what was produced locally with what came out of NYC and L.A. during the same era – the lone exception being the Dead Kennedys (and even that's difficult, since the DKs were so singularly a local product). Take this test: if you were stuck in a high-rise elevator, who would you rather listen to: The Dils or X? The Offs or James Chance? The Mutants or Television? The Avengers or the Blasters, or Top Jimmy, or the Weirdos, or the Bags, or the Gears, or the Alley Cats, or Black Flag? What Bay Area punks were uniquely good at was being part of a fully committed scene.

If you weren't around to hear San Francisco's Avengers – the punk pioneers who featured venerable folkie Penelope Houston and Chris Isaak's surf guitar whiz-to-be, Jimmy Wilsey – then you're a prisoner of the faulty memories and lousy taste of those who were (although it should be noted that it's rock and roll we're talking about, not the search for world peace – if you're glued to the old days like they really matter, then you need to go get a life right after you finish reading my opinion). The American in Me has four studio cuts from June 1978 and seven more recorded live a year later at the Old Waldorf in S.F., about a week before the band called it quits. And if the fumbling quality of the studio work can be attributed to youth and inexperience, you've got to blame what you get a year later on the local vibe itself, which implicitly privileged the art of living over making art. L.A. bands like those mentioned above, particularly X and the Blasters, were a whole lot better than the Avengers. Of course, if you picked up this album looking for a nostalgia fix, missed moments, challenge, anger, female role models, great song playing – for anything, actually – you'll find it, because as half of a famous folk duo whose name cannot be dropped once sang, "Still a man hears what he wants to hear / And disregards the rest / La la la la la la la la la." Which is what true believers do, I'm sure, when they listen to the lyrics of "We Are the One" ("We are not Jesus Christ / We are not fascist pigs / We are not capitalists / We are not communists / We are the one") – despite the fact that they're so lame that those of the Dils' "Red Rockers Rule" ("A three dollar door, man / You know we wouldn't play / Red rockers ruuuuuule") sound slick by comparison.