Punks On 45

Mike Scott of the Waterboys 'gets it.' He recently started sharing rarities over at Soundcloud of old demos, half-finished recordings, and previously unreleased material. He even sings in the shower. One of the gems found there is this great punk version send up of Stars On 45.

Punks On 45 by mickpuck

Here's what he has to say about this recording: "I recorded this with my mates in 1981 as a parody of the then-massive "Stars On 45" craze for grimly cheerful medleys of Beatles and other '60s classics sung over disco beats. We loathed those records, seeing them as a shallow nostalgic diminishment of what had once been great. So we made our punk version as a statement of how crass the genre was, complete with moronic intro music, dodgy DJ talkover (brilliantly done by real DJ and Ensign Records man Chris Hill), and a melee of the most obvious punk songs (some of them great faves of ours). At the end we morphed the rhythm into reggae and let the words of The Clash's immortal White Man In Hammersmith Palais make the point. We almost released it under the name The Rolling Grundies (in memory of Bill Grundy, the luckless TV presenter who encouraged the Sex Pistols to swear on TV and so unintentionally turned punk into a national phenomenon) but changed our minds because we we didn't want to have to deal with it if it took off. Especially if people had missed the angle and thought we were simply cashing in on the vile medley craze.

I sing lead on two of the songs - try and guess whicg. The chap in the picture is Crigg, who sang three of the others.

There was a 'b' side too - "Noise On 45" - on which we did 6 minutes of random musical bashings, dog growlings and chants of "noise noise noise" over the same disco beat. But I will spare you that."