Shorter-faster-louder wasn't always an accurate description of what punk sounded like, but it was easy to remember, which explains why it showed up in print all the time. Besides, as a working definition, the phrase didn't offend the small, noisy, quick-tempered Yankee militia who strapped on axes they could barely play and faced off with the hoary boomer behemoths who refused to give up the throne they'd captured in their prime. But when that DIY spirit was behind the wheel, punk's bandwagon had more hitchhikers than you could count – it offered a second chance to the Bowie knockoffs, glam failures, aging hippies, and Spector wannabes. Add a gob of spit, chant "Hey, ho, let's go," and like magic, punk contenders stepped into the ring. On a good Saturday night you could hear the enthusiastic butchering of three decades of rock 'n' roll.

That's how I'd describe the Thrills, a band from Boston that flourished during 1978 and '79. They played some gigs, met a few of their heroes, recorded a two-song 45, a demo tape, and then before you could wince, the Thrills were gone. Twenty-five years later, Thrills songwriter and guitarist Johnny Angel engineered the reissuing of that original single ("I'll Be the Heartbreaker"/"Hey!") and 13 additional cuts, most of them recorded live. Angel could play the guitar, which made his punk cred suspect, the band locked in better at arena-style tempos than the stuff of CBGB's, and when the voice of singer Barb "Wire" Kitson is compared to Ronnie Spector's in the liner notes, I suspected the whole project was some kind of parody. What makes N.A.F.I.T.C. punk is the way that even the presence of G.G. Allin's brother, Merle, on bass, and their attempts at gritty cynicism – check song titles like "Drano Enema," "David Berkowitz Blues," and "Burn Down the City" – percolate with an upbeat energy that was the hopeful stateside counterpart of the Sex Pistols' angry, blue-collar venom.

There's also a refreshing slapped-together quality to the band's performances – and I mean that in the best possible way – where attitude trumped chops and moves practiced during the week in front of a full-length mirror could be tried out Saturday night in front of a crowd. It all came into focus for me when I realized that the Thrills' Angel was the same guy who 10 years later would be reborn as a rock critic who often wrote for the Bay Guardian and whose shorter-faster-aggressive prose was shaped by the e-mail program he used to write his articles – an early version that lacked spell-check capabilities. I was happy to discover that the liner notes were riddled with misspelled words. His punk roots are still visible. (J.H. Tompkins)