The Saints - Prehistoric Sounds

With Prehistoric Sounds (the last record of the band's original line up), the Saints provide the textbook by which to make a great rock record where horns play as much of a role as guitar. Further extracting themselves from the limitations of punk, the band retains the attitude and turns it into a smart, bluesy, gutsy combination of controlled power. There's more dip in the hip and additional swagger. The days of "(I'm) Stranded" might have been long gone, but the varied tempos and sophisticated song writing don't sacrifice the band's intensity at all. The horns are the real treat, a central element to the record's solidity. They don't make the Saints sound like Chicago, and they don't make them sound like a faux '70s soul band; they don't make them sound like the Doors of "Touch Me" or the Bowie of Young Americans, either. Whether used for the basis or just punctuation of each song, the tasteful use of saxophones is a genuine masterstroke. The dynamic "Brisbane (Security City)" -- which is like an update of the Stooges' "1969" and "1970" in terms of subject matter -- is the high point. After two minutes of Chris Bailey's Iggy-like lament on his hometown, the medium tempo shifts into high gear, thanks to rhythmic overdrive, charged guitars, and (of course) the ubiquitous horns. Other bright spots include "Every Day's a Holiday, Every Night's a Party" and an energetic cover of Otis Redding's "Security," where Bailey sounds so much like a young Van Morrison that it's scary.

Now the review above from “All Music” explains exactly why I don’t really like this album at all. It’s not because I was a young uneducated youth with punk rock and girls (in that order) on my mind, but because it sucked the life out of me with the horns and Van (bloody) Morrison sound alike vocals. I just wasn’t (and I’m still not) ready for such a mind numbing dreadful album being released at such a pivotal moment in the timeline of post-punk and a teenaged lad, by a band who could have set the moment when punk rock became more than the sum of its parts. If you want to listen to this album, be my guest, this is the remastered and expanded edition from 2007.

Eternally Yours

While the into-the-wind blare of the title cut was what people remembered best, the Saints' first album, (I'm) Stranded, had a lot more musical variety than it was generally given credit for in 1977, and the band stayed much farther from the standard punk template (which had solidified with remarkable speed in the wake of the Sex Pistols) on their second LP, Eternally Yours. For their sophomore outing, the Saints threw actual tempo changes, horn charts, keyboards, and R&B accents into the mix, which didn't endear them to punk purists, who predictably didn't recognize that these changes had only strengthened the band's sound. Anyone looking for blazing 4/4 punk will find it in "Lost and Found" and "Private Affair," but the horn-fuelled "Know Your Product" and "Orstralia" proved that punk could also sound soulful (Rocket from the Crypt owe their entire career to these cuts); the moody "A Minor Aversion," "Untitled," and "Memories Are Made of This" proved the Saints could slow it down and still sound tough and impassioned; and "This Perfect Day" is quite possibly the greatest song this band would ever record; Chris Bailey's sneer of "It's so funny I can't laugh" is alone worth the price of admission. While Eternally Yours is a bit less consistent than (I'm) Stranded, the material is first-rate, the band sounds better than ever, and the approach suggests the pop-smart eclecticism of the band's mid-'80s period fused with the muscle and ferocity of their debut. Maybe Eternally Yours didn't sound like a standard-issue punk album in 1978, but it's stood the test of time much better than most of the work of punk's first graduating class.

I’m Stranded (Again)

Released in September 1976, (I'm) Stranded was the first independently produced rock record in Australia, beating all the British punks onto vinyl. Until very recently in Brisbane, it was still possible to visit the decrepit building on Petrie Terrace and stand in front of the fireplace on top of which the words "(I’m) Stranded" were once daubed in red letters.

It’s not quite where Australian punk rock was born; that, arguably, happened a little further down the road, in The Saints’ rehearsal room on the corner of Milton Road, not far from the Castlemaine XXXX brewery. Club 76, they called it. But The Saints had been going for a few years by then, since mid-1973, by guitarist Ed Kuepper’s reckoning.

Being first can be an overrated virtue but, in The Saints’ case, it needs to be stated over and over again. (I’m) Stranded, which appeared on the band’s own Fatal label in September 1976 (the same month the 100 Club in London held a festival featuring a colourful assortment of new bands including the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned) was the first independently produced rock single in Australia.

In doing so, it beat all of the English punk bands, as well as Sydney’s Radio Birdman, onto plastic. The one band they didn’t beat was the Ramones, a fact Kuepper was crushed by: when he first heard the debut album by the New York pinheads a few months earlier, he knew everyone would see The Saints – a bunch of teenagers from provincial Queensland, fronted by singer Chris Bailey – as the copyists.

At that point, the state was still under the tyrannical thumb of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and, in no small way, (I’m) Stranded helped kick off a social revolution, at least in Brisbane. At the time, though, The Saints had little choice but to leave. Copies of the single soon landed in England, where it was ecstatically received. Sounds magazine dubbed it “single of this and every week”.

It must have sounded like an emergency telegram from a lost land. Such is (I'm) Stranded’s urgency, there’s no time for a guitar solo (the B-side, which actually was called No Time, did have a solo – of one whole note). True to its lyrics, much of the song was written on a midnight train and, whether intended or not, the central idea of being marooned came to stand for something bigger.

It’s one of punk’s many ironies that the London offices of EMI, desperate to claw back lost credibility after sacking the Pistols in the wake of their infamous expletive-flecked confrontation with Bill Grundy, instructed their baffled representatives in Sydney to sign The Saints post-haste in the wake of (I'm) Stranded. The band immediately recorded their debut album, also titled (I’m) Stranded, over a weekend.

That album was later described by England’s Dreaming author Jon Savage as “up there in punk Valhalla with Ramones and Raw Power”. But The Saints never fitted the punk straitjacket. When they arrived in England in May 1977, they were aghast to find EMI were designing a “Saints suit” for them: lime-green shirts and spiky hair all around.

Bailey’s tousled mop remained in place, and the band went on to make two more brilliant albums, Eternally Yours and Prehistoric Sounds, before imploding. Both records featured extensive use of a brass section, a move that won them few friends in a scene that regarded Never Mind the Bollocks as a blueprint, but which dramatically expanded the band’s sound.

Having kicked the door open, The Saints soon found themselves back out on the footpath. Kuepper returned to Australia and formed the radical post-punk band Laughing Clowns, while Bailey stayed in Europe, kept the name and pursued a much more traditional path towards heartland rock and mainstream success: But (I’m) Stranded has remained a touchstone – perhaps a millstone – the perpetually sparring Kuepper and Bailey would always be identified with.

This Perfect Day

Not much fanfare for this quick post. A trio of singles from Australia’s The Saints circa their debut album (I’m) Stranded.