New Wave – My Favourite Compilation Album

Compilation albums – they had to come out soon enough for the sixteen or so tracks to have some remaining listening pleasure. They were value for money, and usually adorned with tasteful covers such as these.

(If you’ve got a lifetime to spare, take a trip over to here http://www.oz-compilation-albums.com/ )

Back then you only had control over one variable – which side you played first. The tracks (technically, a single track per side unless it was Monty Python’s Matching Tie and Handkerchief) needed to be played in the strict order decreed by the compiler. The keen listeners schlepped over to the player and lifted the needle to avoid a filler track, but even this task was more trouble than it was worth if you were listening on cassette. (I’ll cover the glories of the 8-track cartridge some other time.  Jonathan Livingston Seagull anybody ?)

This one, my favourite one, didn’t bear the imprint of K-Tel, Demtel or Majestic. While certainly of its time, it is timeless to me.

 

I picked it up around 1978, after borrowing the original vinyl release from the ever progressive Para Hills branch of the Salisbury Library Service. Why I ended up buying it on cassette is a mystery right up there with why The Knack never kicked on (‘But The Little Girls Understand’ – wtf ) or why the lead singer of Promises bothered with those braces.

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Track by Track, here goes

Side 1

Track 1 – Judy Is A Punk – The Ramones

I was already smitten by the Brudders, having purchased an import copy of Rocket To Russia on what seemed like a 2lb slab of vinyl. What an opener, like a Phil Carman headbutt, ninety seconds of verbal blitzing and thought-provoking lyrics such as : “Second-verse, same as the first” This insightful tale of the dangers facing female teenage runaways in the mid 70s predicted some of the other tracks to follow on this album.

Oddly, Jackie was the punk, Judy was only the runt.

Track 2 – Sonic Reducer – Dead Boys

A seamless segue into the next track. Who were these guys, I wondered? Cleveland’s Dead Boys kept the momentum going with this one, which would prove to be an all time favourite down the decades.

Phasers, killer riffs and breakneck speed married to couplets like: “I’ve got some news for you Don’t even need you too”

I was hooked.

Track 3 – Piss Factory – Patti Smith

Ooh, this is different. I wasn’t an angsty-fangsty artsy-fartsy kinda guy, but I liked where this one was going. I thought that all of her stuff was semi-spoken word, but her deranged take on “Gloria” set me straight. Ooh, this is so good.

A song about smells, monotony, choice, ambition, religion, James Brown.

Track 4 – Personality Crisis – New York Dolls

By the time they made it onto this comp, the Dolls were no more. Malcolm McLaren’s last-ditch attempt to turn them into red leather Nazis instead of boa feathered nasties, failed to find the mark. But a kid from Stretford, Manchester did his best to keep their UK fan club going well after their demise. For good reason. This rollicking glam rock stomper was dirtier than Mud, sweeter than Sweet and even slayed Slade. The Faces on speed.

Was it “New Wave”? Perhaps not, but it was my first aural taste of every parent’s nightmare.

Track 5 – Hollywood – Runaways

This chugging piece of filler was like the rerun of the Brady Bunch that you dutifully sat through at your new girlfriend’s house while she showed you off to her younger siblings. The main event was on the next side, if you could wait that long.

(If you know what I mean).

Track 6 – Don’t You Lie To Me – Flamin’ Groovies

Another filler. I’m beginning to doubt whether the compilers actually understood what their brief was. Why was a mob of superannuated Chuck Berry imitators on this? I recently heard a live version of this by The Sports from around the same period.

(Apologies, can’t find the original)
Cocked hat please.

Track 7 – Love Comes In Spurts – Richard Hell and the Voidoids

Back to New York, 1977. On a rollercoaster. That only does the downhill parts. This one plummets to its conclusion, Robert Quine’s scratchy breaks, Marc Bell thumping away, unable to stop Mr Hell from a certain conclusion. Essential listening. To think that this guy played with Tom Verlaine.

This was the bastard cousin of Marquee Moon.

Track 8 – All Or Nothing – Little Bob Story

Hmm? Never heard of before or since, this French mob do a fair job of The Small Faces number. But it’s really another chugger. And why here? The cassette liner had them down as Little Boy Story.

It figures.

Side 2

Track 1 – Lookin’ After No.1 – The Boomtown Rats

The Rats first album had some gems, as I found out later. Not this one, it was all over the place, the Bob Cunis of punk tunes. Try Eva Braun or the faux-Springsteen Rat Trap.

Better still, try The Undertones

Track 2 – Love Goes To Buildings On Fire – Talking Heads

Back on track. Just what compilations do. Serve up tunes that you may have missed (and Adelaide radio certainly would have missed this in 1977). This had a similar impact on me to the first Go-Betweens songs that I heard, “Lee Remick” and “Karen”. This is weird. My kinda weird. That bass, what, it’s a sheila? Hoo boy.

Like Split Enz or Sparks, by Fred Perry.

Track 3 – New Rose – The Damned

Ground zero. Sharing an intro nicked from The Shangrilas (and pinched by Geldof for Eva Braun), this was the single that started it all.

Another classic. Produced by Basher Lowe.

Track 4 – Suzy Is A Headbanger – The Ramones

Hyman, Cummings, Colvin and Erdelyi did their best with this one, to win over those that derided them as comic book popsters with the lyrical depth of, to quote Mr P Elbow, “spit on a rock”. They failed miserably on that score, but that misses the point.

Her mother is a geek.

Track 5 – All This and More – Dead Boys

Young, Loud & Snotty – not a pilot for an early Rik Mayall/Adrian Edmonson sitcom, but the title of the Dead Boys first album. Verging on filler, this punk ballad slunk along, a melange of menace and parody.

With just a hint of cowbell.

Track 6 – Shake Some Action – Flamin’ Groovies

Goosebumps.

This combo had been around since the 60s. I’d heard of them but didn’t know much about them (a bit like girls or Italians or bidets). Their side one track was actually replaced by Skyhooks’ Horror Movie on other versions of this comp (no, really) and it wasn’t hard to see why that one was the first to go. They were peerless imitators of The Stones (Slow Death), Chuck Berry (see above), The Beatles (Money), but this was unexpected.

It shimmered, harmonies not too perfect, jingle-jangle guitars, the song that launched a thousand college rock bands in the eighties (and you are right, I hadn’t heard much from the Byrds back then).

I once saw Irving and The U-Bombs perform this on the Barr Smith lawns on Friday lunch. Lacking subtlety, it was akin to letting a two year old loose with your angle grinder in a Tiffany store.

This album’s, and perhaps Western Civilisation’s, highlight.

Track 7 – Cherry Bomb – Runaways

Was it New Wave? Did I care?

Just like the Monkees, with suspenders, fishnet stockings, corsets, pouting lips, boobs.

OK, nothing like the Monkees.

The song that kept boys awake at night and led to an unexplained spike in bed-linen spoilage in 1976.

And they could play.

Track 8 – Who Are The Mystery Girls? – New York Dolls

Raunchy.

A happy ending.

Unlike the documentary “New York Doll”. If you’ve never seen it, track it down, you’ll be richly rewarded.

“A recovering alcoholic and recently converted Mormon, Arthur “Killer” Kane, of the rock band The New York Dolls, is given a chance at reuniting with his band after 30 years. – IMDB”

Thanks Morrissey

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So there you have it. A bunch of songs, loosely assembled around a theme, flawed in its execution, the New Wave compilation wasn’t meant to be definitive, merely representative. It would be pointless to nit-pick about the selections and omissions (but I have anyway).

Like a footy team, the compilation album was a grab bag of personalities, abilities and circumstance, marketed and managed by those with a tenuous affiliation with the players themselves. You had your on ball stars, your half back fillers, your ephemeral forwards and your journeymen utilities. Some had long since played their best game, living off past glories, others were using this as a stepping stone to world domination (that’s you Geldof).

Albums were the team sport of the music biz; everyone’s a golfer or tennis player now.

In the same way that Aaron Keating is known as a Crows Premiership player, Little Bob Story is forever associated with the New Wave compilation.

The label New Wave was coined to market the acceptable face of punk, and was variously attached to eventual mainstream acts like The Police, Blondie or The Cars as well as more left of the dial acts such as The Nerves, The Rezillos or Lene Lovich.

Several versions of this comp were marketed around the world, replicating Wiggles-like according to local tastes. The Saints made it onto one of them.

As a portal to a world of new (to me) music, this compilation was the pick of them.