Rancid starts out this document of the 1997 punk/ska scene with possibly their best song ever "The Brothels," giving me my first palatable taste of their classic sound. Until this point, I had been fairly stand-offish towards the East Bay quartet, prefering the sounds of the east coast. However, from the word go, I was taken with not only Rancid, but with all of the bands on this disc. Sure, some of them I was already familiar with (The Slackers, The Pietasters, The Skatalites, Skinnerbox) and some would disappear (The Silencers), but this CD stands as the obvious base of my music collection and taste to this day. With a mix of east and west coast ska and punk, Tim started off the Hellcat history with a gem. Its mix of sounds is complimented by an amazing sequencing of tracks, segueing street punk into throwback ska into oi! and so on.

To be honest, it's quite difficult to explain why it is that this CD is just so damned good. Maybe kids today wouldn't be down with it, but looking back, I can't see how anyone who heard it then couldn't have been. While the ska-punk, street-punk sound may have disappeared from the scene's consciousness in the years following, this CD will always serve to document a time when the Dropkick Murphys weren't a gimmick, Rancid was relevant, Django was the boss DJ, and kids everywhere wanted a porkpie hat more than a broken heart tattoo.