Tag: La Peste band

New La Peste compilation of rare tracks from 1976 – 1979 due out April 17, 2026.

Credit: Jerome Higgins

La Peste were Boston’s first true punk band. The band were born as a group of art students who had never played instruments and over a few short years became a foundational influence for a Boston music scene that would go on to produce some of the most important and boundary-pushing American bands of the ’80s. They played with the Ramones, worked with The Cars’ Ric Ocasek and earned the attention of the legendary BBC DJ John Peel all while releasing only one single (1978’s “Better Off Dead”), which gradually accumulated a reputation as a punk classic, as did the various live and other unofficial recordings that circulated as bootlegs over the years. 

In 1996, Matador released a single-disc La Peste collection, primarily of live recordings and with a few studio cuts mixed in, which introduced the band to a new generation of fans but has now been out of print for decades. At the end of 2025, Wharf Cat Records announced the release of a new compilation entitled I Don’t Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 Vol. 1 that aims to tell the full story of La Peste.

This box set focuses on the band’s prodigious unreleased studio work, collecting tracks from the “Better off Dead” sessions, demos produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars, a 1979 session at Electro Acoustic Studios, and 4-track recordings made at the band’s loft. The first disc imagines the mythical full-length the band never made, and the second, equally worth hearing, is more diffusely assorted. Finally, I Don’t Know Right From Wrong gives La Peste the sort of presentation they deserve: not just as Boston’s first punk group, but a band that remains singularly thrilling today.

While bootlegs of many of the tracks on the compilation have circulated in various forms, today the band are sharing a never before released track called “Acid Test” that comes from the sessions with Ocasek. The track is accompanied by a video that pairs live footage shot by Jan Crocker and the MIT film crew with the studio track.

La Peste’s Mark Karl says of the single:

Acid Test is two chord magic. Two meanings. A relentless bass line, angry guitar and pounding drums. Perfect arrangement for a trio. Peter’s lyrics were right on – most of us can relate to a relationship gone sour. Begins simply and then quickly builds in intensity. The live performance of this song always carried the crowd into a controlled frenzy.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Boston punks La Peste to release big compilation album of rare 1970s tracks.

The story of La Peste can be traced back to a flier Peter Dayton saw in Central Park. The future frontman was visiting New York for a concert that had just been canceled. While wandering in search of something else to do, he came across an advertisement for a show at someplace called CBGB, featuring a band of mischievous looking guys in leather jackets, The Ramones. It was October 26th, 1975. He hadn’t heard of them, or of punk itself. Figuring what the hell, why not, he headed down to the Bowery to check out the show.

Dayton returned to Boston a changed man. “I stood there for 22 minutes, and when it was done,  I was like, well, fuck, man, I want to do that,” he says. “And within two and a half years, I was opening for them.” 

So begins the story of Boston’s first true punk band. Born as a group of art students who had never played instruments and over a few short years becoming a foundational influence for a Boston music scene that would go on to produce some of the most important and boundary-pushing American bands of the ’80s. They played with the Ramones, worked with The Cars’ Ric Ocasek and earned the attention of the legendary BBC DJ John Peel all with only one single (1978’s “Better Off Dead” to their name). 

Today, Wharf Cat Records are announcing the release of a new compilation entitled I Don’t Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 Vol. 1 that will air the band’s unreleased recordings. Due out on April 17th of 2026, the collection tells the full story of La Peste with a presentation of the band’s unreleased studio and loft recordings along with the two tracks that were officially released during the band’s run. The material in this compilation comes from the Better Off Dead 7” sessions, their 1978 studio session with Ric Ocasek, a 1978 session at Electro Acoustic Studios, 4-track loft recordings made by Boston punks Billy Dafodil and Dave Cola in 1977 and the band’s first ever studio sessions in early 1977.

On the A and B sides of this collection Peter Dayton and Mark Andreasson give their first shot at sequencing the La Peste LP that they never got a chance to make. The C side features the tracks from the loft recordings that were not used on the A and B sides. Side D is a window into a nascent La Peste and features studio and 4-track recordings with Curt Naihersey (Pastiche, The Kids, Mr. Curt). The D side also includes a rare curiosity from the La Peste catalogue, their collaboration with Lord Manuel, “Computer Love,” from a sought-after split 7” on Joe “The Count” Viglione’s Verulven label with The Neighborhoods & Lord Manual on the b-side.

To mark the announce Wharf Cat are sharing the Ocasek-produced track “I Don’t Know Right From Wrong” with a brand new video created from archival footage of the band. 

“I Don’t Know Right From Wrong” survives as one of a handful of tracks produced by Ocasek, who acted for a time as a sort of unlikely patron and mentor for the band, and gave them a slot opening for the Cars at Boston’s Paradise Theater. He believed he could get La Peste onto the radio with just a little primping, but had the good sense not to give them a full-on pop makeover. With its ghostly synth line hovering above the band’s earthbound churn, “I Don’t Know Right From Wrong” comes across less like the Cars’ slick new wave than it does like Joy Division—who recorded their landmark debut across the pond at around the same time —albeit with a vocal presence that sounds more inclined to nervous mania than catatonic depression.

Peter Dayton says of the track:

“We didn’t really know right from wrong when we formed La Peste. But the song was always great live and everyone believed me when I sang it. It had 2 chords which made it an amazing song for it’s utter simplicity.  When I went back to these lyrics to write them all out I couldn’t believe how repetitive I was. The verses were usually very similar and the choruses were almost like I was shouting a political slogan. Our fans had a real connection with each song and often sang along, even though they might not have understood them.”

Keep your mind open.

[Subscribing is right, not wrong.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]