New Guitars In Town, released in January 1980 by Beggars
Banquet, is a curiosity. An enigma wrapped inside a conundrum, but a curiosity
nonetheless. The Boys had just released their third Safari album, the
career-highlight To Hell With…, when drummer Jack Black and guitarist “Honest”
John Plain hooked up with Lurkers guitarist Pete Stride and vocalist(s) Howard
Wall and “Plug” Edwards, and brought in Merton Parka/Dexy’s Midnight Runners keyboard
player Mick Talbot (soon to join Paul Weller in his sheet-shitting Style
Council – “he broke up The Jam for this?”), and they recorded an album released
under Stride and Plain’s names as New Guitars In Town. It’s a rousing, drunken
collection of originals, enjoyable, punked-up covers (Sonny Bono’s ‘Laugh At
Me’, Jim Reeves’ ‘He’ll Have To Go’, and Arthur Alexander’s ‘You Better Move
On’), and tunes Plain co-wrote with his old band mates. The fact that two
singles were released under the former band names (the title track EP,
featuring the drunken singalong ‘Pick Me Up’ and non-LP ‘Little Ole Wine
Drinker Me’ by The Lurkers and ‘You Better Move On’ c/w ‘Schoolgirls’ by The
Boys) suggests that the album may actually have been cobbled together from extra
tracks lying around by the respective bands, but as I said, it’s a curiosity!
So, on to the album, which can hold its head up high as
among the best either band has recorded. By now, any vestiges of their “punk”
sound, such as it was, have yielded to a rollicking lads’ night out atmosphere.
A straightforward power punk reading of Bono’s chestnut is followed by The
Boys’ single, highlighting their slightly more melodic, poppier sound,
illustrating that short transitional musical period when punk was morphing into
power pop and New Wave. Talbot’s barrelhouse piano tinkling rattles around
‘Cold Old Night’, with Stride and Plain’s dual guitar soloing recalling Thin
Lizzy and Wishbone Ash’s similar sonic assault. Their arrangement of ‘He’ll
Have To Go’ retains Reeves’ pitiless sorrow, but adds a garagey crunch that’s
closer to The Boys albums and probably should have been the single. The tender (!)
ballad (!) ‘Half The Time’ is atypical in both bands’ oeuvre, a tears in your
beer weeper as “Time, gentlemen” echoes around the nearly empty pub at closing
time.
The Lurkers’ credited title track (on the aforementioned
single) is a career highlight, a stomping, storming power punk classic sporting
stinging guitars and a shout-a-long chorus, and ‘Restless Kind’ harkens back to
their punk pedigree, the hardest rocker in the set. The album ends with two of
my favourites: singalong lads rock renditions of ‘You Better Move On’ and the
drunken party anthem (Talbot’s barrelhouse piano is in fine form here), ‘Pick
Me Up’. Two of the best things they’ve ever done (the latter particularly
points the way to The Boys inebriated Christmas album the following year,
released as The Yobs)
Jeff Penczak
