Punk Rock
Ambulance / Three Piece Suit / Happyville USA
Drugs Party in 526
(Live) / I Need Energy (Live) / Give Me Fire (Live)
This EP should prove to be quite a nice collectors item, presuming you can
get hold of one from Japan ! GBH are set to tour Japan in January 2004 and this collection has
been put togther by superbly organised tour organiser Mitch @ Straight Edge Records based in Tokyo,
the excellent art-work comes courtesy of David Glass of Glass Art Productions.
The history of the frst three tracks 'No, 'I'm on heat' and 'Last of the
teenage idols' is well documented if you go to the web-page for the Punk As F#ck EP that they originally appeared on, the same goes
for 'Punk Rock Ambulance', '3-Piece Suit' & 'Happyville USA' which appeared on
the Punk Rock Ambulance EP spawned also by the bands'
1999 U.S.A tour. The latter EP is almost impossible to get hold of (there
havng only been 1,000 printed) and thereby lies another good reason to buy this
current record.
The three live tracks have a different history altogether. We get people
saying how interesting it is to read about the background of records etc, one
day I will succeed in getting the band to write some more stuff for the
discography but in the meantime, you'll just have to make do with the following
bit of information / trivia regarding this record.
If you have had a thorough trawl through my whole web-site then you'll probably
have noticed that I put on gigs myself, they're all listed on my top level index page.
I'd already done previous 'big' shows when it came to the turn of the third
Punk & Hardcore All-Dayer which
was held at 'The Cockpit', in Leeds, England on Saturday 9th November, 2002.
I realised that I was putting on and running these larger gigs and yet I was
barely catching 5 minutes of each band sometimes, hardly a great reward for the
effort put in.
To counter this, I therefore asked the sound engineer for the day, Phil
Curtis-Hall, if he would try and record the show somehow and in the end, he
captured about 95% of everything as it played through the sound-desk straight
onto superior quality DAT format. Phil proved to be a great asset on the day
and obviously really enjoyed the job, believe me when I say that I wish the
same could be said of every sound engineer I have worked with.
I hadn't expected miracles but was in fact pretty staggered with the quality of
some of the recordings. Sound-desk stuff tends to be bass (kick) - drum heavy
(we didn't have the privilege of recording evrything onto mult-track obviously)
and you only hear the audience if they're loud in the background, but hey,
who's complaining ? The sound of toms is a little lost,particularly for bands
who didn't sound-check (we spent 2 hours doing 4 bands prior to opening the
doors), so tracks like 'Falling down' sound distinctly odd playback but after
listening to everything, I initially put together a CD of tracks that sounded
'right'.
I gave quite a few of these CDs out and people really liked them, it's amazing
what you can do with a CD burner and a home computer these days ! The software
I used even has a graphic equalizer in it and I provided Mitch with the Apocalypse Babys 'mix', (I set
the whole CD that way to reduce the bass intensity).
As for the GBH tracks used, 'Drugs party ...' needs no introduction, Colin can
be heard announcing "You're from Spain, this one's for you" just prior to the
song starting, this referred to two of the gigs' furthest travelled attendees.
That track merges neatly into 'I need energy', a real favourite of my ex-
Jackie 'Miss' Hopkins. I still haven't got round to asking Jock whether the
guitar deliberately stops in the middle of the song or whether it actually cut
out during the performance, regardless of that, the timing of its re-entry into
the closing part of the track is perfect. The other track is one of my all
time favourites by the band, preceded by "Are we in England or have we been
mysteriously transported to Estonia ?" (why I have no idea ?!), 'Give me fire'
steamrollers its way home and Scott's use of double-bass drumming is by its
judicity, a huge enhancement to an already superb song. Well done to
all concerned in obtaining this recording.
