Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited
101ers
Producer: Roger Armstrong
Astralwerks (Record Label), 2005
1 CD
Catalogue #: 74458
EAN: 0724347445828
UPC: 724347445828
You save: 25%
Includes eight previously unreleased bonus tracks.
The 101ers: Joe Strummer (vocals, guitar); Dan Kelleher (vocals, bass guitar); Clive Timperley (guitar, background vocals); Richard Dudanski (drums, background vocals).
Additional personnel: Mole (bass guitar).
Recording information: England (11/1975 - 03/1976).
Though pub-rock is largely forgotten now, it immediately prefigured punk, both musically and historically. Not only did it reject prog-rock excess in favor of a raw brand of stripped-down rock & roll, but there's a direct family tree; Brinsley Schwarz frontman Nick Lowe, for instance, produced the Damned's debut, generally regarded as the first UK punk LP, and 101ers singer Joe Strummer found fame as the frontman for the Clash. The latter's roots are easily identifiable in ELGIN AVENUE BREAKDOWN REVISITED, a bonus-cut-laden reissue of the album the band recorded during its brief lifetime. Like many pub-rockers, the 101ers were heavily indebted to 50s rockers like Chuck Berry and Gene Vincent, their music laden with rockabilly and early R&B references. But Strummer's raw-throated vocals and the primal guitar-and-drums attack of the band brought these roots up to date with a thrilling sense of urgency. Not only can the first flashes of the Clash's masterpiece LONDON CALLING be heard here, there are even early versions of tunes Strummer, Jones, and company would later record. And where else will you get to hear Strummer's gloriously ragged version of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time?"
