Eternally Yours

Had given up hope of ever getting this album on CD. My vinyl version is tattered, torn, scratched but much loved. (It was second hand in the first place and someone had removed the cut-out heart!) Where do you start with this record? Every track is brilliantly different. From the big brassy Know Your Product to the delicate acoustic Untitled. Listening to this again it's unbelievable The Saints didn't get more credit. Lyrically they're in a different league to most punk bands of the era and they penned fab tunes to boot. If by some remote possibility any of the band read this, any chance of a reunion tour guys?

It does sound not unlike Flamin Groovies with the horns. Some classic moments such as 'i'm misunderstood', 'know your product', 'orstralia' and 'this perfect day'. Abrasive music, great melodies and political yet witty lyrics, its not too far fetched too say they were the australian version of the clash. Certainly as awe inspiring.

The Saints were fighting the rear guard action on this album fighting for a snarling masculinity that had seer like qualities whilst offering a rejection of the clutter of the swirling consumer revolution emerging in 1979.

It is a brash loud caustic album replete with heavy douses of cynicism aimed at the type of society about to emerge. The pasty faced world of passive aggression couched within the middle class professions and brutal whack in the face beatings of the working class. Upper classes were completely out to lunch encaspulated in Henry Rawlinson.

Instead they, the Saints posited another world, less based on things and more anchored on emotions. Those displayed on here range from the punk anger, the explosing of the libido, pure ecstatic fun and also a dose of love.

They introduced some brass into the electric frenzy to provide another dimension to the melee. Punk was becoming one dimensional atrophied thorugh relentless copcycatting.

This Perfect Day is the exquisite accompaniment to the other version by Lou Reed. Whereas his is wistful melancholia, this is kicking over the trash can, jumping up and down, screaming in ironic appreciation or just ecstatic joy.

"Know your product" and "no your product" are the two pronged attack on consumed lives, with "I'm Misunderstood" detailing the rage of being smothered within a system stamping personalities within a pre prepared mould. This asks for a reassertion of identity rather than blind acceptance.

"Do the Robot" is the response to the attacks they received for their temerity to play punk rock without wearing bondage trousers. Punks were deemed the same as the consumer fools who bought their identities from the pages of the magazines. True in some cases, but hardly likely to endear them to the bleached rebels who were already under siege from all other aspects of social pressures. As it happened the song became prescient as people flocked according to the dictates of the music/style magazines, portraying their inner hollow vacuity, unable to sustain an identity apart from inhabiting whatever the media offered. These became the true sound merchants of the 80's making their shallow pop.

"Lost and found" "Ostralia" "Run down" are all attempts to revive and retrive a personality under attack. Commandments issued like torrents in the 70's as the era was still caught within the military shadow of sacrifice. It was perfectly ordinary to bully children and youth with short sharp shocks. Military service would sort everyone out. These issues are deemed no longer relevant in the modern world where notions of personal authenticity is disposable. Moulding a personality within a corporate identity is perceived as actually as desirable. "What is your brand?" This is no longer a toe curling question.

Originality and authenicity are not as personal aims. This makes the person stand above the herd and become ostracised.

Strange world created post Saints?