REDSKINS

REDSKINS: Epilogue (Insurgence Records) 2010
It is sad when a once great band just keeps going and going, defiling the memory of their exciting early work. After all, it does tend to be the first few albums that capture a band at their prime (Pink Floyd being the exception that proves the rule). If only The Stones had broken up forty years ago, how differently would they be looked upon now?

It is always better to ‘leave them wanting more’. You can go too far though. The Redskins were undoubtedly one of the greatest bands of the 80s and the fact that they split after one just album is tantalizing and frustrating in the extreme. There has been very little in the way of ‘unreleased material’ or ‘B Sides and rarities’ emerging since their split in 1986, although we have had a posthumous live album, a CD release of the original album with a few bonus tracks and a tribute album with admirers doing covers.

This album changes that somewhat, collecting demos, alternate takes and some teasers from the pre-Redskin outfit No Swastika.

So, who were the Redskins? Put simply, for the sake of our younger readers, they were a razor sharp gang of left wing skins who pedalled their own brand of punked up soul layered with politically astute lyrics that make the Manic Street Preachers sound like high school drop outs. Singer Chris Dean and bassist Martin Hewes were proud of their membership of the Socialist Workers Party with gigs often involving paper sales for the party. They were dedicated anti-fascists and many of their songs referred to unions and strikes. Dean, also a journalist with the NME, under the penname X-Moore, famously stated that they wanted to ‘Walk like the Clash and sing like the Supremes”. They never did, but they gave it a good go and came out the other end with a street credibility the Clash would have envied.

We kick off with the singles from the CNT records days of 82/82. Peasant Army, Lean on Me, Unionise and Lev Bronstein (Trotsky’s birth name). Played at a higher tempo than the versions that will eventually make it onto the album, they show the band at their rawest frantic best, squeezing more beats per minute into the tunes than the yet to be invented (at the time) Roland drum machine. Unionise demonstrates an understanding that just signing about revolution is pointless, you have to follow it through. “We can talk of riots and petrol bombs, and revolutions all day long, but if we fail to organise, we'll waste our lives on protest songs, a life worth living is waiting to be won, sure the day the bosses fall, the day the dream has come”. This was more than just rhetoric and legend has it that the failure of the Miners Strike of 1984/5 played a significant part in the decision of the band to eventually split.

Demo versions of Keep On Keeping On, It Can Be Done, and A Plateful of Hateful (from the Decca years ) are next, with the brass section coming more to the fore. Keep On Keeping On, name checking the old Northern Soul catch phrase, gained them fans among the soul boys, although its subject matter was far from traditional soul fair. The song referred to the need to keep fighting for that illusive workers uprising, no matter how much you get put down by the boss or sold out by union leaders. “Keep on keepin' on yeah, 'till the fight is won. Alright! It is better to die on our feet, than to live on our knees, if we fight as one, then the fight is won”. Quite possibly the most perfect seven inches of pop the world has ever seen.

A live version of Don’t talk to me About Weather recorded in Germany in 1986 is swiftly followed up by three tracks from the pre-skin outfit No Swastikas. Recorded in a living room near York in 1981 on a Tascam 244 portastudio, they are inevitably lo-fi compared to the later output, but they show hints of the energy and brilliance to come (and go all too quickly) and stand up well against any of the DIY punk of the period.

Although many of these songs were to eventually find their way onto the album, the versions here are different enough and of high enough quality to make them worth checking out. Dodgy out-takes they are not.

Sadly, at the end of this we are left still wanting more. What we want is a box set containing the entire back catalogue, all the singles and b sides and the album. It would not take up a lot of shelf space but would make us old soul punks very happy.

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Slum World: Dare To Stand Up And Break Free (Active Distribution) 2002
If we had come across this in 1990 we might have thought it outdated, but somehow the Restarts have dragged shouty punk literally screaming into the 21 st century and make it sound fresh. As befitting a band that is on the Active Distribution roster, they are very angry and have no problem telling people about it. Spawned in Hackney their DIY anarcho punk attitude has ‘free squat party’ written all over it, and having caught them at a squat party in Deptford, we can assure you they know how to rattle the windows old school punk style. There is no let up, this is intense in ya face hi-octane punk from start to finish, they put so much energy into it is hard to imagine them having the time to think about chord changes and lyrics, yet somehow they manage to strangle riffs out of their axes that make this more than just a noise and the shouted lyrics demonstrate a street sensibility that come from being young angry and on the dole. The Oi Polloi of the south.

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RESTARTS: Outsiders (No Label records) 2007
Punk has been mutating and diverging for 30 years now and sometimes what passes for punk today would have been considered heavy metal ‘back in the day’. The Restarts stop, take a deep breath and take us back to the time of bands like Angelic Upstarts and the Exploited, but throw into the mix the sensibility of 21 st century anarcho black block rioters. As the album title implies they revel in their position outside of the mainstream and are proud to fly the DIY flag. Their image, it has to be said, would not be out of place on one of those postcards of London, but their attitude is progressive and positive, eager to confront the rot in society. Many anarcho punk bands come across as preaching at 90 miles an hour and can be depressing, the Restarts remind us what punk was all about in the first place and just make you wanna dance all over the system.

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The Revellions (Dirty Water Records) 2009
From the psychedelic packaging to the sixties garage surf punk sound, this lot are definitely a blast from the past, today. You can almost hear the surf crashing in on the beach at some west coast late night rave up as they mix the 13 th Floor Elevators with Dick Dale. If they have ever set foot in the US is unknown, they seem to have been quite capable of brewing this little potion up from the confines of their hometown of Dublin. Which is handy, it gives us more of a chance of catching them live, which we aim to do at the first opportunity.

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