A fantastic review by Die or DIY’s Jonny Zchivago who
posted a copy of this a couple of months ago. I don’t necessarily agree with
every point Jonny makes, in fact I don’t agree with any of it, but it saves me
writing the exact opposite…
Not one of my favourite local compilations is this one,
especially listening to it now; it seems even more dated these days, logically,
than it did back in '79. Liverpool kinda missed the post-punk and punk rock
boats by some distance. Blighted by that weighty melodic curse of the Beatles'
long shadow and wilting under the heat radiating from the northern powerhouse
of Punk/post-punk capital, Manchester. It starts off with the truly terrible
'Big In Japan', jam-packed with attention seekers and 'future members' of more successful
dross......like a scouse 'London SS', but with members of the 'Bromley
Contingent' instead of Generation X*, Damned and the Clash. Musically they had
more in common with Generation X, no tunes but lots of posing. To paraphrase
John Peel from the sleeve notes, 'a quixotic cornerstone' of the Liverpool
scene. Points of interest are, a track by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark,
before they were called Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; in this case The ID.
There's also an Echo and the Bunnymen track from before they had a real drummer
and used a drumbox called 'Echo'; awful stuff. The rest sounds like demos of
minor chart hits from 1974 or some scally reggae numbers or melodic power pop
by people who can't write melodies, sung by people who can't sing trying their
level best to sing 'properly', ugh! The only saving grace is that there's No
'Teardrop Explodes' or 'Wah! Heat!' on here.
(*er...wasn't Billy Idol one of the Bromley mob?)