(2022, Cherry Red)

THE OVERVIEW

The final disc in this three-CD set feels a lot like someone spent a lot of time on the first two, then realised “oh crap, there’s a mountain of stuff I haven’t even gotten to yet!” and tried to cram as much of it in at the last minute — which reminds me of me and my suitcase packing. There is a marathon 27 tracks here (literally hitting the 80-minute CD limit), and as with the other two discs, the “hits” are in the minority and the also-rans are in the majority.

Much of the fun of this set is discovering some lost gold, but also this whole set paints a picture of both the fall (but lasting influence) of punk and the rise of post-punk, which dominated ’79 until fashion (and better/more affordable synthesizers) entered the picture, whereupon it evolved again into New Wave. Some acts were more forward-looking (XTC, Human League, The Monochrome Set, The Vapors, The Wall), some weren’t (Swell Maps, Disco Zombies, The Regents, Notsensibles) but most were just taking advantage of the spirit of the times to either play at being a rock star (The Zipps, The Monks, The Freshies), or seriously explore their own creative path (The Mekons, PiL, Scritti Politti).

What I like about these sorts of “specific year, period, or genre” comps, at least the way Cherry Red does them, is that they make you a true Whitman’s Sampler of the subject, rather than focusing on the most memorable hits like most labels would — thus grossly misusing the term “Best of.” Instead, we get a marbled slice of the whole cake — nothing truly terrible, but the gamut of acts that got to the record-cutting stage who ended up being run-of-the-mill at worst, and gloriously daring and original at best.

One thing I noticed about the third CD was that the famous/infamous “two minutes-ish” standard was really starting to slip – most of the songs here are over two minutes, many are over three minutes, and a handful sail right past a scandalous four minutes!

At a total of 76 tracks, “Revolt Into Style” is probably best suited as the soundtrack for a 1979-themed party, with prizes for those who can name the more obscure tracks, but … as a snapshot of a moment in music, it is far better and more representative of a time where the “next big thing” wasn’t yet clear, and popular music was open to more possibilities than had been there for a while.

THE MUSIC

Disc 3 starts off with a strong set of four songs — one from the quixotic XTC, who managed to become a minor but mainstream success with a number of charting hits; two from bands that are beloved by their fans (which include me), but all but unknown to everyone else (The Revillos aka Rezillos and The Monochrome Set); and a oddly attracting but utterly obscure song about driving habits (!) from a band that sank without a trace (Passage).

★“Making Plans for Nigel” is one of Colin Moulding’s unlikely hits, which must have confused the heck out of main songwriter Andy Partridge (who had to wait quite some time for one of his to climb the charts. It is, as is a theme throughout the entire boxset, not a love song — and showcased their angular soundscape and unconventional vocals, yet still managed to become their first Top Twenty single and bring more attention to the band. Happily, they kept following up with strong choices for single and album material for quite a while.

★“Where’s the Boy for Me?” is a brilliant mod-ish parody of teenbeat songs (like those of Lesley Gore, whom I adore) and those boy-crazy beach movies. It features the best damn fake Farisa sound around, plus the requisite twangy guitar solo, great garbage-can-lid drums, and starts frantic and builds up to a sudden hard stop. Not the first band to create a warped image of the 1950s, but one of the best.

★“The Monochrome Set” by The Monochrome Set is, surprisingly, not the only self-named single on this disc (!), but in this case it’s a manifesto of wit and whimsy from the point of view of the bored, cynical offspring of the rich — one of those things Noel Coward might have tossed off if he’d been a pop star. The single version included here was reworked a bit for the album version (found on Strange Boutique), but its the blueprint for Bid’s entire ouevre of smart, humourous songwriting.

★Passage were the first band on the disc that were utterly new to me, and the song “Taking My Time” is … odd … in its subject matter, but it has lodged itself firmly in my head for some reason. I mean, who writes a song about bad driving? It really makes me curious to explore whatever other music they put out. Perhaps the fact that it was produced by David Cunningham of the Flying Lizards gives it a touch of commerciality (with surprise cello at the end), coupled with a simplistic chorus and odd subject.

THE BEST OF THE REST …

★Other winners on this disc for me included “Empire State Human,” which is technically the very first Human League single (the one before, “I Don’t Depend On You,” was done under the name The Men). Of course Human League were one of the bands that took their very forward-looking sound and made commercial hay with it, but this one stands out even on this disc the way Gary Numan did on Disc 1. It’s a story-song, which I always like, plus its really funny.

It didn’t actually do well on initial release, what with being a song about a man who is deteremined to become the tallest person in the world (and succeeds), but was re-released later and became a hit. The segue out of the song features the lyrics “fetch more water, fetch more sand/biggest person in the land,” which somehow works with the whole bizarre thing. I love it.

★“Kiss the Mirror” by The Wall is an early dark-rock song that predates the big obsession with that genre as we suffer through the Thatcher reign of austerity in the UK, followed by the election of war-happy Ronnie Ray-Gun in the US. While this particular track suffers from some poor production or mastering, it can’t hide the band’s talent — and made me go look up some more of their scattered discography, all of which I sampled was in much the same solid vein.

Their first single, “New Way,” was another John Peel favourite (as you may have gathered, his opinion was very important to the compilers of this set, as it was to most young people in the UK at the time). “New Way” borrowed a chorus from the Sex Pistols, but they’re forgiven because the song was produced by former Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones. Beset by personnel changes, the band split up in 1982, but have had at least one reunion (in 2007), and their two studio albums have been augmented by a live album in 2009 and a compilation of the Ian Lowry material that came out in 2021.

★Public Image Ltd’s lesser-heard single “Memories” is an other example of a band that doesn’t sound like everyone else (often a problem for the also-ran bands, on this disc in particular). Long-forgotten but brought to my attention in this track is the repeated use of the phrase “I could be wrong” — which he used again to even greater affect on the band’s biggest hit, “Rise.” Feeling nostalgic after hearing this, I went to look up their latest album (End of World) and sampled the song “Car Chase” — yep, still Johnny, still unique, still great.

The very next track on the disc is the compilers sneaking in a musical joke. “Johnny B. Rotten” by The Monks, who have no aspirations of imitating either the Sex Pistols or the former Mr. Rotten; it’s just a fun pop song taking the piss — or maybe it’s meant as the flip side of “Johnny B. Goode.”

★Then we come to a breath of fresh air with The Vapors’ first single, “Prisoners.” In many ways, it’s the same old “three chords and a cloud of dust” approach so many of the other bands use, but smart backup vocals and the stylish interplay between David Fenton and Ed Bazelgette really shows off their talent. It can’t have hurt that Fenton borrowed a musical phrase from Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 hit “Born to Run,” but I love how he used it here.

★Finally, we get to a ska song (sort of), and it’s Madness’ “Bed and Breakfast Man,” a very mainstream hit from the Nutty Boys, again in the tradition of a Kinks-ian story-song but with that ska influence. This was the one that proved the band wouldn’t be a one-hit wonder, and that they could grow and embrace other styles as well.

★There’s also a single by the emerging Dexy’s Midnight Runners called “Dance Stance” (originally called “Burn It Down” when they were still a punk band, and that titled returned for the album version). Singer Kevin Rowland and guitarist Al Archer had soured on punk, rethought their goals, and came up with Dexy’s style of northern soul.

This was the first indicator of their new direction, and it’s thus rougher than what they would become, but it still captures that rebellious spirit the fuelled punk, addresses an anti-Irish sentiment that was prevalent during “The Troubles,” and takes it in a different direction (including a litany of Irish literature legends name-checked in the song). Thankfully we get the demo version here, rather than the official single (which stripped out the remaining punk element and just wasn’t as good).

★Another keeper was The Lurkers with “New Guitar in Town,” which does a lovely job with what would later be called “jangle pop.” It closely follows the style of drum-and-guitar driven fast pop that dominates the sound of ’79, but good vocals and agile play make it work.

★The last of the highlights for me was the inclusion of the perennial post-punk novelty number, “Where’s Captain Kirk?” by Spizzenergi. You gotta love a man (Kenneth Spiers) who has made an entire career (still going!) out of a single song (okay, that’s not quite true … have you heard his cover of “The Model” by Kraftwerk?), and ever-changing band names on the theme of “Spizz.” Fast, fun, whacky, excellent guitars and gratuitous vocal effects (plus a human farisa organ!) … what’s not to love?

… AND THE REST OF THE REST

Another wrinkle that occasionally gets into the music here (and throughout the collection) is the introduction of sax and occasionally other horns to add some soul and punch to the guitar-heavy sound. In the earlier discs, bands would often lead with the bass and drums, but by Disc 3 bass has been mostly pushed into the background in favour of more guitar. We’re also sloooowwwwlllyyy getting back to love songs, which isn’t a bad thing — but we were enjoying the break and the variety of other subjects that dominate this compilation.

As we’ve noted across these discs, there was (and still is) a tradition of the occasional single (that sometimes does rather well) of a bunch of lads on a musical lark (see also “Zip Nolan” by the Cult Figures on Disc 2). These days its mostly the realm of novelty Xmas singles or forcing the tournament football team to make a loutish charity record, but a … let’s call it “project” … called Swell Maps managed to make a career out of it for a while.

The example given here, “Real Shocks,” will remind listeners of the Cult Figures, but to be fair one can detect more musicianship than is immediately evident in this basement-studio type sound of young men having a good time, semi-melodically. Having sampled them a bit more (going back to 1972!), I acknowledge that they didn’t always sound like this — in their early days they were more acolytes of Can and Faust — but I doubt any of their output will ever make it into my collection except by means of a compilation like this.

That said, it is similarly paired well with the next track, “Friends” by The Zipps, who really were a group of students from Belfast who recorded exactly two songs and then went back to school and the rest of their lives. Even though there was only this one single from them, it actually ended up as a pretty good effort — but lead singer Mel Power just wasn’t lead-singer material (though I think it could be a hit if some more-talented group covered it).

Next up is “Disco Zombies” by the Disco Zombies. Now, I’m kind of a sucker for bands that write songs about themselves (see also “The Monochrome Set” and “Hey Hey We’re the Monkees”), but this one is a bit on the meh side, relying like many of the songs here on a limited set of guitar chords. As with The Zipps’s effort, the song isn’t actually bad, just poorly produced — and without the spark of much talent.

“Number 12” by The Pack is, as you’d expect from a Rough Trade release at this point in its history, pretty “yelly” and punky. It’s actually the b-side from the “King of Kings” single, but ultimately The Pack went nowhere. The lead vocalist Kirk Brandon and Simon and Jon Werner (guitar and bass, respectively) got together years later as Theatre of Hate, which was a more successful effort.

The Mekons, who are still active (but slowing down) to this day, are represented by “Work All Week,” a pre-album single not included on the album until a 1990 reissue. Given that they came from the same group of students that formed Gang of Four and Delta 5, and that the band used Gang of Four’s instruments to record it, as you can imagine it sounds a lot like them.

The musical style is still gelling on this one, but the lyrics make a good comment on the price of love under capitalism. This really should have been paired with “You Got to Pay” by The Only Ones from Disc 1.

Following this we have a deliberate attempt to be “commercial” by punk band 999 after various singles and a couple of albums failed to interest the public — they did better later — and this didn’t move the needle for the band. It’s pretty meh, to be honest, but astonishingly they are still together, playing and releasing albums as recently as 2020.

The Outcasts were an interesting story: a decent band, you might like them if you only listen to the music, but apparently the members were all hooligans who constantly got in fights and other such shenanigans. The song included here is called “Self Conscious Over You,” and it’s not bad at all, and it’s one of the few songs about love on this disc. It’s a pity they self-sabotaged themselves out of a potential career.

“Children of the World” by The Freshies changed up the mood as a middle-of-the-road pop band with a nice sound but un-followable lyrics. Chris Sievy had (and still has) a propensity for silly titles, and indeed in 1981 he had a hit with this band with a cute song called “I’m in Love with the Girl on the Virgin Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk,” which a glorious title for a single. These days, he’s better known as Frank Sidebottom, another odd but enjoyable cult thing.

Secret Affair, a “mod” revival band with punkish leanings, are also still around — having taken a long break after the third album — and this song, “Glory Boys” was indicative of the direction they would take for the rest of their recording career.

“7 Teen” by The Regents shows up on a lot of post-punk compilations, and is the only song on this disc explicitly about sex. Cleverly put together with a female backup crew that gave them a strong faux-50s vocal sound, the single version used here includes the lyric “a permanent reaction” rather than the original “a permanent erection.” It hit #11, but The Regents never had a successful follow-up.

The Boys (formerly the Choirboys) are up next with “Kamikaze” — a hard-rocker story-song that has a low opinion of Japanese-made motorbikes. It would be seen today as a bit racist, but I can testify that this was “a thing” back in those days, with Harley fans spitting on Honda and Kawasaki bikes for being small and fuel efficient.

“Easy Way Out” by the Carpettes is an enjoyable but kind of a fatalistic punk number. They eventually went full-on New Wave (with Mod influence) later on in their career and for me were more interesting in that period.

This brings us to an early Scritti Politti single “Messthetics,” of which the clever title is the best thing about it, apart from Green Gartside’s fine (and slightly lower register) vocal. The song itself is a bit of a mish-mash, but you know — refer back to the title!

This brings us to the very last track and that feeling you get where you’ve completed a very long, somewhat grueling yet pleasant journey. The Notsensibles (who might well be Swell Maps collaborating with Cult Figures, they’re that similar) bring us “I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher.” Have I mentioned the influence she had on most of this music? That said, I suppose we do have to “thank” her for a lot of the protest content that came out in these years.

She was a very hated woman in many quarters, and remains so to this day — as is only right and proper. Sadly, the Tories learned nothing from this, then or now. Even worse than that, it’s no longer too fashionable to craft protest songs about bad government policies on either side of the Atlantic, and that’s a damn shame. As Johnnie B. Rotten himself once said, “Anger is an energy.”

THE WRAP UP

Even though this set covers a tremendous pivoting year in music, it’s frankly not for everyone — or even most people. They’ll want “the hits” or at least more familiar songs from 1979 from bands they recognise, and that’s fine … but it’s not this box set’s purpose.

As I mentioned previously, it’s more like a candy box — there’s (almost) nothing here that isn’t sweet and nice, but if you’ve ever gotten a box that has no “map” of what’s inside the chocolates … there’s a few you’re sure you will like, but the others are a little bit of a gamble.

Thanks to the thoughtful curation, a wide gamut of power-pop tastes are catered to, and for those who like a bit of adventure and are open-minded, this is a fun journey. It’s augmented nicely by some brief but informative notes about each release that occasionally shine a new light on the music you’re hearing.

1978 through the early 80s was a period where record companies really had no idea what was going to “hit” with the public, and with the birth of the indie label, almost anyone with a interesting sound or look had a shot. Those days seem long gone now, and music is likely to be done by “AI” in the near future with minimal human involvement (or emotion), so enjoy some passionately hand-crafted <s>pottery</s> music that may or may not be very good, or is good but not to your taste, or is familiar and fun, or is utterly fantastic and right up my alley and why have I never heard this before?

If you’re up for a little musical spelunking, you’ll hit the highs and (relatively soft) lows with this set, and maybe open up your tastes a little bit more. Can’t ask for much better than that.