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For All The Young Punks

Tracks 1 - 8 Micky Foote Demos January 5th - 13th, 1977. Tracks 9 - 18 Give 'Em Enough Rope demos, 1978.

Track listing

  1. I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.
  2. London's Burning
  3. White Riot [take 1]
  4. White Riot [take 2]
  5. Career Opportunities [take 1]
  6. 1977
  7. Janie Jones [take 1 - instrumental]
  8. Heartbreak Hotel
  9. Safe European Home
  10. Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad
  11. Stay Free
  12. Groovy Times
  13. Drug-Stabbing Time
  14. Last Gang In Town
  15. Ooh Baby Ooh
  16. One Emotion
  17. Clash City Rockers
  18. Tommy Gun

Review

The first thing you'll notice about this is the poor sound quality. It does get marginally better as you go along, or you get used to it at least. It's muffled and distorted and generally not very good. However, you can still enjoy the songs, which are reasonably rare demos and outtakes of first album, 'Rope, and Cost Of Living EP material. The Micky Foote demos are different to the Polydor ones (see Polydor Demos) and the Janie Jones instrumental is pretty good. There's also some background chatter at times, and someone says to someone else "Where you going?". Not sure who but it's probably the producer talking to Joe.

For the 'Rope and '79 demos, the quality does seem to be a slight improvement. It's also interesting with these songs how different they sound to the finished official versions. A lot rougher, and with guitars and more basic instruments taking the place of studio sound effects. This is most apparent in Groovy Times, where the intro sounds quite different. The drums that open Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad sound different also.

As stated, the quality of this material isn't up to much. I know for a fact better versions exist elsewhere. For example, the version of One Emotion is the same that appears on the Pier Pressure CD yet the quality is inferior to that one. In fact, it's also the same version that appears in perfect order on Clash On Broadway disc 2. Also, Ooh Baby Ooh (the early Gates Of The West song) appears in better form on Pier Pressure. A much higher quality version of Heartbreak Hotel is on the Golden Bullets LP.

A poor rating for this one. I was disappointed when I first played it, but at least it makes one appreciate superior quality material that comes along.

Rated: 5 / 10

Extra

Despite the bad sound quality I was impressed by the artwork which looks very professional. Also, 'All The Young Punks' isn't on this CD (strange when you consider the title of this bootleg), yet an outtake of it does exist and you can find it, along with much better quality versions of all of the tracks here, on the ultimate two disc set:- D.O.A.