Capricorn One: Singles and Rarities

Background

According to singer Russ Rankin, the idea to compile an album of Good Riddance's rare tracks came from their label, Fat Wreck Chords: "they sort of thought that it would be a cool idea, and they knew that we had done all these other projects through the years and we sort of tossed it around—Chuck [Platt], Luke [Pabich] and myself—and eventually decided that it might be kind of cool for our fans and, since we've been done for a few years and some of these songs that were not widely released, or some that were never released at all—if they saw the light of day, we thought it might be kind of cool." Rankin noted that in choosing the material for Capricorn One, tracks that were still in print through other record labels were intentionally omitted:

That part wasn't so difficult, we basically just had to go through all the songs that were unreleased, or released in a limited scope, and pick the ones that we really liked and make sure that we didn't use ones that were still in print—like we did a split seven-inch and a split CD with Kill Your Idols which was released by Jade Tree Records and that's still in print so we didn't use any of those songs. The bulk of the songs are from [Gidget,] our very first seven-inch that was ever released, which was released on Little Deputy Records out of Austin, Texas in 1993, I think, and that recording was from our first demo tape. Little Deputy basically took four songs from that demo tape and pressed 'em and then when we were demoing for our second full-length with Fat—which ended up being A Comprehensive Guide to Moderne Rebellion—we had an over-abundance of songs...songs were just pouring out of us and so we basically decided to take six songs that weren't going to be on the record, but that we still really felt good about, and do split seven-inches with other bands that we knew on labels that were owned by friends of ours and Fat gave us the "okay" to do that...so those six songs are on there as well, and a couple of out-takes from recordings from the demos that eventually got us signed to Fat as well.

Rankin noted that the band had lost track of much of its unreleased material, stating that "we're fortunate to have tracked down what we did for this release...I'm surprised that we were able to find some of this stuff, because I had no idea where it was." He wrote the album's liner notes, providing lyrics and commentary for each track on the album in order to give the songs context, since they were "sort of appearing in a vacuum" three years after the band's breakup.

Reception

Gregory Heaney of Allmusic described Capricorn One as "a solid collection of skate punk jams", calling the lyrics sheet and notes by Rankin "a cherry on top". "While some of the songs may be too raw to make this a good entry point for the new fan," he commented, "longtime Good Riddance devotees will find a lot of forgotten gems to mine out of this collection."

Track listing

All lyrics written by Russ Rankin.

Band

Production