83: VARIOUS – “CHEAP AND NASTY VOL 1” LP
‘Canned Maggot Records -Made In Hackney’?? ‘
Sleevenotes by ALF GARNET’??? Must be another megadose of the sort of mind-rotting PUNK ROCK muck that drives Mojo hacks to tears. In this case, ‘Alf Garnet’ was listed Londoner DAVE FERGUSON, king of the Postcard Punx – and somebody YOU almost certainly stepped over if you ever visited Rough Trade West in the ‘90s/’00s. Back then, ‘Fergie’ would squat outside the doorway with his box of punk tapes and crackly vinyl, or be sprawled on the pavement like a spider monkey in bondage trousers, gobbing at anyone bold enough to hand him an acid jazz club flyer (I once saw him hurl one back with such deft, deadly aim, the flyer actually twisted and looped mid-air and bonked the leafletter on the snout.)
Dreadful ‘ska-punk’ band Culture Shock once recorded a song called
Punks On Postcards, berating the LDN punx who made a few bob posing for tourist tat-shop postcards/American visitors, and accusing them of being sell-out phonies. Why, though? It’s not like they were posing for Raytheon. As a lifelong advocate of the fine art of skiving, I fully endorse making money through nothing more laborious than being snapped by Japanese tourists. Might suck a bit when it rains, but doorways (and spells) exist – and it beats working in a vegan café.
Culture Shock may have considered the Postcard Punx ‘fakes’, but I reckon it was pure jealousy. After all, people paid to take pics of London punks because they looked funny, colourful and cool – whereas
nobody wanted photos of Culture Shock, because they were a bunch of ugly hippy cunts.
Dave Ferguson (in the 'Shining' T-shirt) rallying his '50p a pic' swell mob
When he wasn’t pulling faces for Saudi housewives down the Dilly or Trafalgar Square, Dave F supplemented his giro by churning out punk bootlegs like this. Nice cover pic of Charlie and his girls, taken at the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussauds. I saw this tableau ‘for real’ in the early ‘80s, as well as Gary Gilmore getting ventilated (could’ve watched that one all day) and Robespierre’s noggin on a pole. And all for £5! God, life was so much fun back then. Death begins at 10. Why can’t Putin hurry up and drop the fucking bomb. Anyway, enough of this bollocks – what does the record sound like? Here are Dave F’s peerless sleeve notes and my ramblings – as he puts it: “
WE AIM TO PLEASE YOU WITH SEVEN RARE PUNK 7”S CAPTURED IN THEIR GLORY… YOU HAVE OUR WORD THAT THERE’LL BE NO MOD OR POWER POP SHIT IN THESE GROOVES!” Right on.
THE JERMZ –
Power Cut/Me And My Baby
The NYC blackout of July 1977 inspired one of the best disco stompers of all time: The Trammps’
(The Night The Lights Went Out In) New York City, where the band celebrate all the jiggery-fuckery that went on in the dark.
Politicians said it was a pity/But that was the night they called New York LOVE CITY! they croon. No offence, Trammps, but scoring in zero-vis conditions mightn’t be the brag you think it is…
On the other side of the pond, Yorkshire punks The Jermz were obviously more interested in the other antics that went on during the blackout - namely, MASS LOOTING. Top notch record.
Me And My Baby is a great S&M tune with lyrics written by someone who’s probably never done it: can imagine these oiks being thrown out of the Torture Garden for indiscriminately swinging dog chains around. You think I’m some vanilla hick, but I once dated a girl who tried to dominate me. Unfortunately, the lazy mare forgot to bring a blindfold, so she wrapped a Spurs scarf around my bonce instead. I then got Chas & Dave’s
Ossie’s Dream in my head while she was riding me like a kinky Frankie Dettori, and I burst out laughing - which didn’t go down well. Imagine having to console your own dominatrix and reassure her “It’s not you…honest”.
DISORDER –
Air Raid/Law & Disorder
Dave F: “
NO, NOT THAT BUNCH OF GLUE SNIFFING HIPPES FROM BRISTOL BUT TRUE PUNKS FROM THE OUTER REGIONS OF NEWCASTLE…ONE OF THE BAND’S GRAND FATHERS WAS A WW1 VETERAN & EXTREMELY PATRIOTIC WHO COLLECTED BOOKS AND MEMORABILIA, ETC FROM THE WAR. TO SAY HE WAS GUTTED WHEN HIS GRANDSON RIPPED OUT A PAGE TO MAKE THE RECORD SLEEVE FROM ONE OF HIS MOST TREASURED BOOKS IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT! WHILST THE BAND WERE PLAYING A GIG, THE DRUMMER WAS SHOT IN THE EYE WITH AN AIR-GUN AND THEY USED THE COMPENSATION TO FINANCE THE RECORD!”
Bushwick Bill missed a trick there. Fancy bringing an air-gun to a gig! Everyone’s a critic. And why couldn’t this have happened to Babyshambles? Well, what can I add to Dave’s summary except
Air Raid is better than anything on
No New York and has one of the most awesome minimalist ‘guitar solos’ out there. The flip,
Law & Disorder, contains the line
I WANNA STAB THE QUEEN, and the
DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY SOCIETY/DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY EVERYTHING! chorus is pretty glorious.
VICTIMIZE –
Baby Buyer/Hi-Rising Failure
From Cardiff. Wales gave us some good early punk singles –
N.C.B. by Llygod Ffyrnig is my favourite – and, later, bands like Yr Anhrefn and The Oppressed. Victimize’s bad-taste 7” front cover, cashing in on the late ‘70s/early ‘80s ‘child snatcher’ craze, seems calculated to wind up the likes of Mike Read, but maybe the radio promo copy got lost in the post? Good, early Damned-style chug-a-long, but I have to question some of
Hi-Rising Failure’s lyrical attempts at urban grit: “
Living up here on the 86th floor”? Where...Singapore??
FX –
South’s Gonna Rise Again/OBE/Slag
Dave F: “
500 WERE PRESSED BUT MOST OF THESE WOULD OF BEEN TRASHED BY OUTRAGED ‘TEDS’ WHO FOUND IT IN THE ROCKABILLY SECTION IN THEIR LOCAL RECORD SHOP, PUT THERE BY THE OWNER THINKING IT WAS A COVER VERSION OF THE OLD JESSE JAMES NUMBER! HOW WRONG CAN YOU GET !!!”
Very wrong – no way you’d guess this is actually an ode to Brighton & Hove Albion hooligans storming Selhurst Park – but the cover art’s such a mismatch, it’s kind of hilarious.
OBE is a great rant with one of the most recycled punk riffs ever, and lyrics like: “
You get medals from your country, you get ribbons from the queen / The VC cross of valour, ‘cos you’re an old has-been / Honoured for your services and duty to the crown / Give me half a chance and I’ll pull the whole lot down”. You can tell the shadow of WW2 still loomed over the culture at this point in time.
Slag is boring. Hope at least one outraged Ted didn’t trash his copy: it’s previously sold for £343 on Discogs. Thank God for Canned Maggots Records, saving me money since 1997!
THE RIVALS –
Future Rights/Flowers
Dave F:
“TO BE FRANK, WE KNOW FUCK ALL ABOUT THE GROUP”
Should’ve included this LP in the ‘Liner Notes’ thread.
Future Rights is a superb slow-burner, predicting the rise of an ultra-religious totalitarian state over a tense metallic riff, while
Flowers is a mindless 2-minute blast that sounds like a bunch of punks jumping all over each other in the back of a pub, minutes before the landlord calls the cops and permabans all ‘punk nights’ – you can almost smell the Evostik, Concrete hairgel and Dry Blackthorn. Sadly, the baby-faced skinhead drummer got ousted by a future member of Leftfield (seriously!): would love to know Dave F’s thoughts on that.
THE BLEACH BOYS –
Chloroform/You Got Nothing
Dave F:
“ALTHOUGH 1000 WERE PRESSED, A LARGE NUMBER WERE DESTROYED BY ONE OF THEIR MOTHERS WHO DECIDED THAT THE RECORDS WERE EXTREMELY DISTASTEFULL!”
Ah, it’s just a bit of fun, ma. Who hasn’t wanted to knock ‘emselves unconscious after a hard week at school? “
You can keep formaldehyde/Airfix glue makes me sick inside/Now I’m happy through to dawn/’Cos I’ve been sniffing chloroform”. Production as scuzzy as the Northern Line in 1980 and a singer who sounds like Billy Childish yelping through a Covid mask. The flip’s not as good, but it contains the relatively polite insult “
You got nothing ‘cos you’re so sick/You ain’t worth a ball of spit”. In a world where the Geto Boys, GG Allin and Whitehouse have subjected their long-suffering listeners to every obscenity under the sun, it’s nice to hear punk records that keep it civil (the tamest punk ‘insult’ I’ve heard is still “
imbecilic burk!” in a song by anarcho-crusties DIRT).
THE SCONEHEADS –
“Morton’s Always Trying To Be Hip/D’Ya Want Duffed/Bathtime Funtime”
Worst of the lot. I hate intentionally ‘wacky punk’, and would gladly have seen Thatcher live 200 years to avoid the campaign to get that Notsensibles song into the charts the week she snuffed it. If you’re determined to be an idiot on record at least do it properly, like The Bleach Boys or Skrewdriver. Shame, as The Sconeheads are pretty good musically.
The market for ‘rare punk’ bootleg comps has completely dried up since this came out – why bother pressing up vinyl when people can grab it all off Soulseek for free? Similarly, tourist demand for pics of punks has plummeted – though it seems one Brazilian ‘zombie punk’ in Camden is
still clocking in. But is the game still worth it? This guy's currently charging £1 for a pic – the equivalent of 32p in 1984. Dave F was charging 50p a pic back then…the equivalent of £2.01 today! And they tell us not to worry about inflation!
Speaking of lost Londoners, does anyone remember the old guy up Notting Hill with a dog in a pram?