Really Red

Really Red are one of the great classic bands of American hardcore punk – formed in Houston, Texas in the late 70s and releasing their final album in 1985 – but I had never even heard of them until some time in the mid-90s.

At the time I was trading tapes of rare punk music with various people when on one compilation tape I received there was the New Strings For Old Puppets EP – needless to say I was blown away by it. I had thought I was fairly familiar with American punk by this time, including the bands from Texas since I had stuff by MDC, Big Boys, Dicks and Butthole Surfers.

Now, I wanted to discover more stuff by this group but it proved to be really elusive and apart from a reissue of Teaching You The Fear album a few years ago, nothing else was available in the UK. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to get anything else by them.

So here is most of their other studio stuff – the Crowd Control and Modern Needs singles, New Strings For Old Puppets EP and the Rest in Pain album (minus two tracks).

Really Red

Crowd Control 7″ – Crowd Control/A Corporate Setting

Modern Needs 7″ – Modern Needs/White Lies

Cottage Cheese from the Lips Of Death comp – Nobody Rules

New Strings For Old Puppets EP – I Refuse To Sing/No More Art/Suburban Disease/I Was A Teenage Fuck-Up/Ode to Kurt Kren

Rest In Pain LP – Youth Culture For Sale/Balance Of Terror/Personal Hell/Ritual/Let The Night Roar (With Us)/Hang ‘Em High/Star Mangled Banner/Nobody Rules/War Sucks/Just The Facts Ma’am

UK Decay – Gothic beginnings

UK Decay was a punk group from Luton in the early 80s. I assumed for a long time, on account of the name and because they had released a single on Corpus Christi, that they would be a typical anarcho-type band.

When I did finally hear them I was surprised to find that, instead, they had more of a post-punk, early Goth sort of sound – not too unlike some early Siouxsie & The Banshees stuff – and in fact one of their early gigs was with Bauhaus.

Obviously some of their Gothic influences came from reading the works of authors like Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft – a bit like some of Rudimentary Peni’s music, who are also quite often mistakenly lumped in with the anarcho-punk scene.

I was never a Goth myself but I had a lot of friends who were in the late 80s – the popular Goth groups at that time seemed to be Sisters of Mercy, Fields Of The Nephilim, The Misson, etc – and I always had a bit of a soft spot for some of these groups plus a lot of the stuff associated with that scene, such as gothic horror novels, Hammer Horror films etc.

The key members of UK Decay were Abbo (vocals), Spon (guitar) and Steve Harle (drums) with a selection of bass players – that even included Creetin Chaos from Social Unrest for a while.

When they split up Abbo and Steve Harle went on to form Furyo, while Spon formed In Excelsis – whose Carnival of Damocles EP I include here.

There doesn’t seem to be anything available on CD at the moment as any plans to re-release material were put on hold with the untimely death of Steve Harle, while backpacking in India.

UK Decay

01 Black Cat 02 Middle Of The Road Man 03 Message Distortion 04 Disco Romance 05 Duel 06 Battle Of The Elements 07 Shattered 08 Stage Struck 09 Last In The House Of Flames 10 Unexpected Guest 11 Sexual 12 Dorian 13 Decadence 14 Mayday Malady 15 For Madmen Only

In Excelsis

01 The Sword 02 Vows (Initiation) 03 One Man’s Heaven 04 Carnival Of The Gullible

Tex & The Horseheads

Tex & The Horseheads

01. Oh Mother  02. Lock Me Up  03. Short Train  04. Guitar Obsession  05. Chicken Bounty Hunters  06. Clean The Dirt  07. Border Town  09. Big Boss Man

Coming from Los Angeles, Tex & The Horseheads are another example of country/blues punk music. Fronted by the husky voiced and exotic looking Texacala Jones, they had a Jack Daniels drinking/ Marlboro smoking sort of image.

This is their first album that came out on Bemisbrain Records. They also had one other studio album – Life’s So Cool – and a live album that was recorded in the Netherlands.

I don’t know much else about the group, apart from that some of the members also played with Rik L Rik, Weirdoes and Funeral.

Although they have a more typical punk rock sound, here are the two Funeral EPs – Waiting For The Bomb Blast and Funeral.

 

Funeral x 2 EPs

01. Waiting For The Bomb Blast  02. Politicians Are Sick  03. Plastic God  04. Ant Trap  05. Will To Live  06. Outer Edge  07. Darkness On Your Doorstep  08. Bloody Hands

Suicidal surf punks

 

Here’s some super rare footage of Mike Muir of Suicidal Tendencies not wearing a bandana! Seriously though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of him when he hasn’t got the top half of his head obscured by that bandana – did he put it on one day in 1983 and tie it with a really tricky knot that he’s never been able to undo.

 

 

 

I quite liked that whole Suicidal Tendencies homeboy/bandana look but it’s kind of hard to get away with in the north of England, although I did have one of those Suicidal Tendencies shirts – like those on the cover of the first LP – which I thought was really cool, of course it let a lot of meatheads make smartarse comments about being willing to help me out.

 

 

 

 

The footage seems to be from a Dutch TV programme about American surf/beach punk so keeping with the theme here’s some more beach area/ surf punk, also with a suicide theme, from DI.

 

 

 

And, while I’m at it, here is Suicidal Tendencies classic skate punk anthem – single and video. I remember having an old VHS tape with this video on – taped from some late night heavy metal music show – which I played to death.

 

 

Possessed To Skate/Human Guinea Pig

 

When in Leeds…

The first time I travelled to see a group outside my immediate hometown area was in 1989 when I went to see The Vandals at The Duchess Of York in Leeds. This also happened to be the first show organised by the gig promoters Flame In Hand – the same people behind Crackle record label and mail order.

I knew of the Vandals from seeing them on the movie Suburbia and I had probably managed to get myself a copy of When In Rome… by this point, so I was expecting a pretty exciting punk show – what I wasn’t expecting was a load of Hell’s Angels to turn up and start beating the crap out of people and even set some guy’s hair on fire.

Despite this traumatic initiation, I soon became a regular attendee of shows at the Duchess (most of them organised by Flame In Hand) and Leeds in general, especially when I went to University there a few years later.

It was also shortly after this show that I bought the new Vandals album Slippery When Ill – once again I was expecting some exciting punk rock and once again I was in for a shock, it was cow punk!

I’d never heard anything like this before. Despite my initial disappointment this album quickly grew on me, partly because of the humour running through all the songs, but also because I found I really liked the mixing of punk and country as it really seemed to work. I’d always had a bit of a soft spot for my Dad’s Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, etc records and the added element of punk really appealed.

In retrospect, of course, I can see there were lots of groups throughout the eighties that had been taking punk and mixing it with more traditional types of music – especially genres that maybe had a tradition of protest or support of the outsider/underdog, such as folk and blues as well as country. The Pogues were already a popular group at this time and then of course there were others like Gun Club, Blood On The Saddle, Tex & The Horseheads, Blyth Power – all groups which I went on to discover and love.

Slippery When Ill

01. Clowns Are Experts(At Making Us Laugh) 02. Susanville 03. Desert Woman 04. In America 05. Elvis Decanter 06. Goop All Over The Phone(Pleasant All Over The Bill) 07. Shi’ite Punk 08. Gator Hide 09. Long Hair Queer 10. (Illa Zilla) Lady Killa