Graham Reid | | <1 min read
As their name suggests, Eddie and the Hot Rods were never really part of the UK punk scene although -- like fellow pub rockers Dr Feelgood -- they were often lumped in with it during the late Seventies.
But their thing was old school rock'n'roll (on record they'd covered Sam the Sham's Wooly Bully before this single) although as the musical climate changed they revved up their act and rode, albeit briefly, the punk wave of anger and energy. They shared a residency with Joe Strummer's pre-Clash 101ers for a while and were hooked into a "punk" tour in the USA on the same bill as Talking Heads and the Ramones.
But this song is in a direct lineage of rockabilly and rock'n'roll parents-don't-understand-me lyrics, given a more modern twist.
It's not drawing too long a bow to link this to Eddie Cochran's litany of teenage complaints on Summertime Blues.
They didn't last long -- they split in '81 -- but in their time managed to smooth out the edges even more, appear on Top of the Pops in a rather more glam guise (below) and then get dropped by their record label.
Needless to say they reformed in the past decade. Needlessly really.
For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.
post a comment