..Frustration: At least it's free' —The Quads By Rob James and Jane Watt Back in the matinee with this shooter in its holster, makes me feel big like a bomb in the pocket Bowie knife, 'coonskin hat, Davey Crockett I like the way the echoes carry Chorus Blow off your head like Dirty Harry Up on the Falls, in an armoured car; in a blue vest, I'm a killer looking for a suspect, a copper looking for some respect. It's a joke; five shots or six, a joke death killing kids for kicks but on the big screen the hero's not I like the way the echoes carry Chorus Are you seeing me, fixed in your seats in the back row?
Turning aside with your 'I don't know'? Confusing, yes, it's safer that way to look at six counties in a Hollywood way, watching me dancing with my '45 swagger, THE Quads are band from Birmingham made up OT brothers and their neighbour/best friend.
And they don't like the way they've been treated.
'Unemployment is a curse and a misery,' says Josh Jones, vocalist and oldest of the brothers, to nods of agreement his two brothers, Jack (guitar), and Johnny (drums) and bassist Jim Doherty.
*so we wrote a song trying to describe our feelings of being in that situation, the same feelings shared by thousands of unemployed young people right across the country.
That song, Gotta Getta Job, Was written over a year ago when the band Was first in the depressed Acocks Green area of Birmingham.
no popular request, Chail and popular request, they will Te ense single on the Birmingham label, Big Bear Records, on 10 April You've probably heard of the Quads before. Their first single, There Must Be Thousands, so impressed John Peel on its release in 1979 that he immediately put it into his all-time top 20 published that year.
They've had a couple more singles released since then but neither of them achieved the of success Thousands.
That record was releas ed at a time when evervone was trying to find attach to every new song that Was being written. when the whole music industry was being turned on its head by punk.
was, you like, about bigotry in general sense. But wasn't sloganeering on a particular aspect of life in this country 'Gotta Getta Job has got a similar feel to it, and Socialist Challenge 2 April 1981 even literate!
tape looDs And to repression liberalism of Idle If this all basically is. makes a similar type of general statement altough musically totally different, says Josh 'What we're trying to do with the song is say to The people: 'Look, we know what it feels like; we know what it's like to have people blame you for not hill ding a job, for treating you like you've got no ri breathe; for finding you guilty of being young and being victim shooting up the baddies in the IRA, I like the way the echoes carry RUC, SAS, SPG, RUC, I like the way the echoes carry.
These lyrics from Oxy and the Morons' single (Music for the Deaf label) illustrate more crisply than we can the depth and compassion of their political commitment. It's a far cry from the one-dimensional platitudes that nave come to characterise most 'political' pop But it's more than just the lyrics. The music matches them for hard invention as guitars and featuring a particularly strong vinyl debut by the Rev. Ian Paisley — provide a backdrop for menacing vocals.
the other See sn Morons work their politics too. They've been twice play explicitly gigs, unlike the the Specials/Beat syndrome benefits for kids' holidays and CND in the midBelfast! And thev've even Socialist Challenge benefits!
seems like a hard sell, then it The Morons are one of the few groups worthy of socialists' support — they get virtually none from the straight pop world.
Copies of the single are available from Oxy and the Morons, c/o Box 33, 136 Kingsland High St, London E8. Cost 85p, cheques and postal orders to M McMahon.
things beyond your conLIUl.
very important that people in our predicament should realise they not alone their problems. 'We don't blame anyunemployment; we don't think that we as a band need to in that song, because what we're writing about and singing about is the fact of being thrown on the scrapheap, not the whys and wherefores.
The normalising played Because of its restraint, the power of the song is increased an incredible level. Strident vocals burst out with:
Frustration: At least it's free' Your future is yours and you're told No jobs no soul.
reproduced courtesy Bearson And there':
more the same all adding up to one of the most stunning indictments of the spectre youth unemployment yer written 'You could say,' claims Josh, 'that we're not really Oxy and the Morons - socialists should support them a 'political' band. But the way we see it is that everything anyone does political in way, because politics is simply an alternative word for if So what we are doing is writing about our own feelings on life and how it calects us, that is politiWhen bands like the Quads, who have previously been seen performing from any iden tifiable political point, start making statements like that, it's certain that the general awareness of the political situation in onlain today is on lne in crease.
Peonle are beginning to realise that the fence on which they have sat tor so long is rotting and will no longer support their weight.
They are saving. knock down the fence and build a new one - one that we want, not what they want.' And when that hapthere'll be no room wells, for sitting on the fence -and no-one will want to.
vuads are Ina rare type of people who laVO total conviction what they are doing combined а парру ар. proach to their work 'A lot of bands get so tied up in the job of getting across a message that they stop entertaining the audience. We are entertainers first and foremost. but we hope that when people go away trom one of our gig! they've not only enjoyed inescives bul incy have something to think about as well.
'You see, we've been branded as playing 'music for optimists' because although, Ike in Gotta Getta Job, we write abou topics which feel strongly about, it doesn't mean weaverone golen and totally pessimistic about the situation.
trying in that song to manufacture our own antibody the degradation enforced unemployment. It's really a matter of saying that you don't have to be depressing to make your audience aware of what is basically a horrible and soul-destroying mess.
The Quads are a new generaton omusc — la ultimate result of the tur moil and upheaval in the music business which began with punk.
A major record company executive recently told me that 90 per cent of all the tapes it was receiv. ing from hopeful bands were straight old. fashioned, sickly-sweet pop songs The Quads also play pop songs. But their lyrics are razor sharp and have a stee which through all the 'spoon in June nonsense normally associated with the genre. The Quads can be heard ir April on Peter Powell show playing ave sesson recorder the BBC's Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham.)