The best punk from Leamington Spa!?

One of the things I kind of liked about a lot of the UK hardcore bands in the late 80s was how so many of them seemed to come from these small non-descript type of towns much like my own, this certainly wasn’t some scene based around some fashionable metropolis like London or Manchester, sure there were bands that came from those places but it wasn’t like they were these mecca’s that people looked to for direction as the centre of some happening musical scene.

I’ve already mentioned how Dan/Sofahead came from Darlington and HDQ/Leatherface were from Sunderland. There were also The Stupids and various associated bands – Sink, Perfect Daze, Bad Dress Sense etc – based around Ipswich and The Instigators/Civilised Society were from the Huddersfield/Dewsbury area.

One of the other places that was home to a little group of brilliant punk bands was Leamington Spa. When I was at university I had a friend who came from there and from what she said it sounded like a fairly typical small town sort of scene.

The Depraved, Joyce McKinney Experience and Visions of Change were all from there and had shared various members – The Varukers, a UK82 type of group, also happened to come from there – and were all great groups.

Here are the two Deparved albums – ‘Come On Down’ and ‘Stupidity Maketh The Man’ and the second of the two Visions of Change albums – ‘My Mind’s Eye’ (I always meant to buy the first one as it was in my local record shop for months but kept putting it off until of course I missed my chance and have never seen it since – if anyone could help me out getting a copy of it, it would be much appreciated).

No Joyce McKinney Experience though as a full discography is available from Boss Tuneage and well worth getting – similar to Dan/Sofahead type stuff.

 

 

 

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/117092071/depraved1.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/117103322/depraved2.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/118100138/visions_of_change.rar

Pop punk from the UK

Pop-punk seems a bit of a dirty word these days as it tends to conjure up the image of the blandest, most manufactured, commercial groups on major labels – that are only a step away from boy bands – who are merely churning out a generic, formulaic type of music in order to rake in the cash.

However, in the late 80s/ early 90s this wasn’t the case, the more melodic pop-influenced punk groups were a really credible force – especially when it seemed that many of the groups in the punk scene at the time leaned more towards a metal-influenced or crust/grindcore type of sound – the groups that were playing fast, catchy melodic tunes and singing about girls, etc tended to stand out.

Many of these bands were directly influenced by the earlier American group Descendents who were still then active in a slightly changed line-up called All.

Some of the other more prominent bands around at the time were the Hard-Ons from Australia, the Doughboys and Nils from Canada, Mr T Experience from the San Francisco area and Green Day were also just starting out at this time.

In the UK as well there was also quite a decent number of these groups such as The Sect, Mega City 4 and Senseless Things. The latter two went on to achieve a bit more fame and popularity among student and grebo/skateboarder types but their origins were firmly in the punk scene – the first few times I saw them they were playing on bills with the likes of Snuff, Sofa Head and Wat Tyler.

Senseless Things were also probably the first group who had a working relationship with the comic book artist Jamie Hewlett – who at the time was enjoying a cult hit with his Tank Girl strip in Deadline magazine and later on Hewligan’s Haircut in 2000AD – who did a lot of their album cover artwork and of course went on to create Gorillaz with Damon Albarn.

 

 

 

 

 

Senseless Things – Postcard CV + Up And Coming EP

01.Trevor 02.Come Together 03.Sneaking Kisses 04.Laura Lamorna 05.Shoplifting 06.Drunk And Soppy 07.Back To Nowhere 08.Teenage 09.Someone In You 10.Too Much Kissing 11.Where The Secret Lies 12.I Want To Go Back 13.I Don’t Want To Talk About It 14.You Don’t Want Me 15.Girlfriend 16.Standing In The Rain 17.When You Let Me Down

rapidshare.com/files/116148689/senseless_things.rar

The Sect – 3 x EPs – Playing With Fire, Summer Girl, This Side Of Summer

01.A Free England 02.Firebird 03.Far Away 04.Escape 05.Summer Girl 06.Too Scared To Try 07.Empty Sounds 08.Cyclone 09.This Side Of Summer 10.Smile 11.Clean Slate

rapidshare.com/files/116136633/sect.rar

Adrenalin O.D.

Got a special request for this one – the third Adrenalin O.D. album, Cruising With Elvis In Bigfoots UFO (plus I’ve added three tracks from the 5 Bands That Changed The World compilation). This is ‘87/’88 late-era AOD where their sound is more melodic than the fast hardcore thrash of their earlier recordings.

AOD were one of the bigger groups from New Jersey and active throughout the eighties, releasing albums in ‘84, ‘86 and ‘88 – their first two albums being The Wacky Hi-Jinks of.. and Humungousfungusamongus. As can be guessed from their album titles they liked to take a comic approach to their songwriting.

http://rapidshare.com/files/114710539/cruising_with_elvis.rar

UK HardCore

I think in the later half of the 80s there were actually quite a few people in the UK who wanted to move away from the increasingly cartoonish ‘mohican and bondage trousers’ street punk look and some of the more intense politics of the anarcho-punk scene and were instead becoming much more influenced by the American hardcore groups with their (sometimes) more melodic sound and less focus on fashion and political issues.

HDQ from Sunderland (who had several members who went on to be in Leatherface) can be taken as a classic example to highlight this. Their first release from 1985 is quite typical street punk but by 1987, with a new line up, their second LP, released on Meantime Records from Darlington, can be seen to be very USHC influenced even including a DOA cover.

The guy behind Meantime Records, Ian Armstrong, along with organising tours was also in the similarly influenced group ‘Dan’ – who put out several classic records of female-fronted melodic hardcore punk in the late 80s – and later went on to be in the similar sounding Sofa Head.

Coming from the North East of England, I got to see these groups several times playing at various gigs in the area – I must have seen Sofa Head supporting numerous touring acts during the early 90s.

Other groups from around the UK, which I associate with this shift in influence, include those such as Instigators, AYS and The Stupids (Britain’s first authentic skate punk group).

A lot of this stuff has been (or soon will be) re-issued on Boss Tuneage Records, a great label that has been reissuing a lot of stuff from the late 80s as well as putting out new stuff. HDQ’s third and fourth albums – Sinking and Soulfinder – are due for imminent release as is a comprehensive Stupids discography.

 

 

 

First two albums

http://rapidshare.com/files/113273742/hdq_first.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/113261355/hdq_you_suck.rar

 

 

 

First single and album

 http://rapidshare.com/files/113498773/dan.rar