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Warsaw Pakt-NEEDLE TIME CD (Captain Trip Japan)

Much much mucho has been written about English ace guitarist Andy Colquhoun both here and elsewhere, but no matter how much ink has been spilled upon the ground regarding this ace player it surely doesn't do the man any justice especially considering the reams of press that has been dumped on less exciting guitarists who managed to plug themselves right into Ameriga's mediocrity worship mechanism. Too bad, especially considering the amount of energy and pumice that the guy not only put into a number of those post-seventies Deviants and Pink Fairies reunion shows (and records), but the stuff he was laying down in the seventies when the radiation emanating from the late-sixties high ehergy scene was still lingering on, or at least it was in certain enclaves. It's a shame his Rockets never released anything and Tanz Der Youth are remembered solely from a one-off Radar single, but at least Colquhoun's Warsaw Pakt not only managed to get a rush-release album on Island out but a self-produced EP as well, and all can be easily enough obtained through the Japanese Captain Trip label who I'll bet have this and a few million other Deviants/Pink Fairies-related platters wasting away in Eddie Flowers' secret stash as we speak.

Nice sound with sparse studio audience. Reminds me of some seventies FM radio broadcast say if WMMS-FM in Cleveland did a Coffeebreak Concert with some local hard punk act around '76, which is of course something they would never have done. Performance is cross twixt Ladbroke Grove people's rock, late-sixties Detroit spasms and early Pretty Things-era British r&b sorta like the stuff that the British weaklies were calling punk before the money-go-round got the best of 'em. Vocalist Jimmy Coull suits the group fine with his tough thug English voice that sorta puts to waste the fact many people hold that the English are a buncha fags. Snobs and bigots maybe, but fags...naah! Wonder what happened to him anyway? And of course the rest of the Pakt fit in fine with a particularly no-holds-barred performance (esp. Colquhoun on lead) that makes me wonder in artificial stimulants are legal over there, or at least do they seem to be...

Did I mention that the Pakt's drummer was Lucas Fox fresh from Motorhead (or at least he is on all tracks but the EP ones) which should at least pique the interests of some of the more astute metal guys out there??? No wonder Mick Farren wrote the liner notes considering how much of the Deviants Warsaw Pakt felt fit to pilfer for their own sound and substance.

Don't think there's anything holding you back from getting hold of this Cee-Dee reish (which is even packaged in a cardboard sleeve like the original only shrunk down to proper size) which I suppose anyone showing enough punkitude to tune into this blog would already know. But then again I'm sure that everyone reading this already owns NEEDLE TIME and has been spinning it constantly upon espying this very review. If you are one of the unfortunates who haven't heard this once tres obscurity, you have a chance to prove me RIGHT if you so desire.