ENEMIES OF PROMISE - Heroes and Villains - (*A REVIEW*)

Following quickly on from their debut six track mini album, Please Enjoy Your Punk Rock Responsibility, Enemies of Promise unleash the follow up; Heroes and Villains.  Ten tracks of tuneful, thoughtful catchy polemic. This is blood red stuff, the machine gun drum beats, crunching and chugging guitars get your feet taping. Songs about labour exploitation, war, the abuse of power, right wing politics and the media get yer fist raised and yer heart pumping.

One day all things will change so long as there are decent folk like Enemies of Promise picking up guitars, writing pure and passionate political songs and singing them from the roof tops. Heroes and Villains is a perfectly timed musical head shot straight between the eyes soundtrack to the present political post election climate in this (dis)United Kingdom.

I haven't heard anything as politically charged as this since the Red Wedge, Anarcho Punk times of Thatcher's Eighties. Thirty five later and nothing much has changed, if anything at both a local and global level things have got worse.  

Enemies of Promise are a voice of sanity amongst the shouting of our political leaders and the silence of mainstream musicians in a time when there's a lot to be said and needs to be said about the state our society.   Check out Enemies of Promise here and hear what they've got to say with their Post Punk Rock Sixties Stained Pop'n'Roll music.

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH....BLURGH, BLURGH, BLURGH....ELECTION FEVER IS MAKING ME SICK!

Two weeks before the Great British Vote Off, and I thought it was about time I spewed a few snippets of thoughts your way, stuff that's been floating around my head over the last few weeks. Some of them are Election related some of them are more general.

Don't spend your life thinking, comparing or judging it against what others have or have not got. Dissatisfaction guaranteed!

Bad news and dodgy deals buried under under the wreckage of a plane crash, as the media bleed tears from the readers and viewers eyes as they watch another hyper real spectacle.

Migrants drown escaping from conflicts that Europe and America caused, then walked away from. Changes in EU policies to the way The Mediterranean Sea has been policed have made these human tragedies more commonplace, and I wouldn't put it past the powers that we let be to be complicit in the whole people smuggling business, what better way to control the numbers, sink a few boats because the dead and drowned don't need asylum.

Politicians will fight for votes with propaganda and lies....We'll do this, we've done that, we'll continue to do this, they'll do that. For the many or for the few. For the old or for the new. For the rich or for the poor. Here they come knocking on the door with their promises and lies.

What is it in our society about sex and children? If they've not been abused by Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris or Cyril Smith. Their parents have dressed them like mini drug dealers and prostitutes, now twelve year olds are freely able to access porn on the internet. A younger generation to sexed up to fuck the system, they're only heading in one direction.

Only in a dying Democracy could some politicians talk about making it compulsory for Young People between 18-24 to vote. Perhaps in the future we'll see people fighting and campaigning for the right not to vote. Then it's possible that the balance of power in this dis-united kingdom could be in the hands of the Scottish Nationalist Party, who no one can vote for unless they live in Scotland, and the SNP want to break away from English rule, or as the media are saying want to“Destroy the United Kingdom.”

If there is another coalition once again it will be an unelected government, showing once again that we are living in a dying democracy, where the buggering of boys is covered up by an establishment intent on protecting other prominent paedos; our justice system is just as corrupt as our political and economic ones, where the desires of the haves are all met and satisfied, while the have nots are brainwashed into desiring things they don't really need but, have to have. One law for one, one for the other.

Casting aside our Democratic Deficit for a moment, on May the 8^th the citizens of Britain will wake to a new government, that if political pundits and their polls are to be believed will be neither red nor blue, but a rainbow colour. Old style left'n'right politics are dead; people are slowly starting to wake from their slumber and are seeing that 'traditional politics' have failed them on every level. Voters are turning to the smaller single issue parties, unfortunately this has seen a rise in support for the likes of UKIP, but in a 'Democracy' we have to tolerate their divisive, derisive and populist opinions about immigration. Nigel Farages bullshit, his so called honesty is just lies that people who are still half asleep believe to be true, but these people could awaken a Right Wing Beast if the Conservatives needed the support of UKIP in order to govern the country for another five years. Welcome to ConUK plc, so long as you are English.

Democrazy rules! If the SNP want to destroy the UK, which is what people fear about a Labour SNP coalition then fuck knows what a Tory UKIP coalition are gonna do; with their promises of referendums on Britain’s EU membership, because in order to trade with other nations you need to have something to sell them, and there is nothing Made In Britain anymore. Britain wouldn't survive in isolation we need Europe, yeah maybe some of the Brussels Dictates need to be looked at, but fundamentally just as people need to work together so do nations, but it needs to be about co-operation not competition if we cant see that then we are mad in Britain.

GANG WAR! - A MPFree Download!

Johnny Thunders and Wayne Kramers short lived Gang War fell apart on the New York streets a few months after these four tracks were recorded in May 1980 at Max's Kansas City. They find the Thunders and Kramer partnership in fine form, sometimes this wasn't always the case. On paper it was an inspired connection (New York Dolls + MC5) the reality however proved different and the struggle between Thunders the entertainer and Kramer the musician on top of disputes over the dollar became too much and it all ended too soon leaving very little behind in the way of a musical legacy bar several live recordings, (the best of which is Jungle Records GANG WAR!) much of the studio stuff remains officially unreleased. (Now there's a project for Easy Action or Jungle Records.... The complete Gang War collection.) which is criminal, because the stuff I've heard is the real Rock'n'Roll deal, as are the four tracks here. Thanx to the original uploader.

FS1E - The Drones (*A REVIEW*)

Should politics and music mix? Yes most definitely, Music Is Revolution!

In a right and just world The Drones would be a summer number one single.... mind you in a right and just world this righteous soundscape of a song might never have been written.

FS1E's new single is an address to a nation in distress and a response/reaction to the English we are better than them, with our rose tinted nostalgia glasses mentality It is a soothing and scathing public service announcement with... scratchy guitars a looping bass line and rattling drums. It hums, buzzes and floats around your head, and the chorus is a killer: “Send in the drones So the boys can stay home You think your living in Rome you should act like a Roman. Send in the drones go blow up some homes Then you think they'll leave us alone You must be joking.” There is something special going on here, and you really should jump aboard the FS1E ride....It's pop music but not as you know it....Yet!

NIKKI SUDDEN - The Last Bandit in The World.

Here's another chance to get hold of a copy of a scare vinyl only, and no longer available on the free market Nikki Sudden album, The Last Bandits in The World (Side One) + (Side Two) Enjoy! Nikki may have been gone for nine years now, but his music lives on and so does his memory, especially when you've got the Easy Action Records stall selling new previously unreleased stuff. Check out last years Fred Beethoven album, it rocks like only Nikki rocks, and the two solo acoustic ones The Copenhagen Affair and Christmas Day Blues both find him in fine melancholy minstrel mood and mode. Great stuff.... Nikki Lives!