Soul Jazz Records has been responsible for a great amount of amazing compilations over the years, but nothing before had me as much excited as the new Punk 45 series. This first volume comes with a bunch of subtitles, Kill The Hippies! Kill Yourself!, The American Nation Destroys Its Young and finally the descriptive Underground Punk In The United States Of America, Vol.1. The album features 21 tracks covering the years 1973-1980, including some rare punk obscurities, proto-punk, synth-punk and art underground art rock, none of it on major labels, all of it originally released on 45s. The most mainstream it gets here is Pere Ubu, The Flamin’ Groovies, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers and maybe Tuxedomoon. The lesser known ones, those you’re probably not very familiar with, are the ones requiring the listener’s attention and it’s more likely they will be the ones to impress the most.
The album is being released to coincide with the book, Punk 45: The Singles Cover Art Of Punk 1976-80, a massive 400 page monster, featuring full size cover art from hundreds of bands of that era.
So, until the already announced volume 2 comes out, subtitled There Is No Such Thing As Society: Get A Job, Get A Car, Get A Bed, Get Drunk! Underground Punk in the UK 1977-81, this can serve you as your primary source of angry, snotty, guitar scratching, I’m-not-sure-what-I’m-doing, furious music teenagers and other punks in general ever got to produce.
ZR