2024 Occasional Albums Thing 009 - The Rezillos “Can’t Stand The Rezillos”

“Punk” was/is a broad church. Once my world had been turned upside down by the Sex Pistols I then found out about the overt politicality (is that a word ?) of The Clash, the Stooge-isms of The Damned, The Jam leaning on the mid-60’s but with late 70’s lyrical concerns, X-Ray Spex dystopian sci-fi worries that have perhaps come to pass, the ramshackle but poetic Adverts….and then what did we make of The Rezillos ?

They looked like they had stepped straight out of a 60’s sci-fi comic, they sang songs about how their baby did good sculptures, being attacked by flying saucers while also wanting to fly off to Venus, they had one all about Top Of The Pops and another about how they really didn’t like their baby (was it the same baby who did the sculptures ?) plus they covered Fleetwood Mac and Gerry & The Pacemakers ! It had the rawness and the energy but it was almost comedic, was it Punk Rock ? Well no, not really, they had more in common with The B-52’s and The Cramps, they referred to themselves as "a new wave beat group" but you can bet we took right to them back in those Punk fuelled days of ’77.

My girlfriend at the times brother, Doris (that was his nickname, I wasn’t seeing a girl called Doris), who was a couple of years older than me had a copy of The Rezillos debut single, “I Can't Stand My Baby”, (which they re-recorded for this album) which was the first time I heard them. The intro, a slashing, jagged, jangly eruption of guitars is about as exciting as exciting gets to me. The song also featured two interesting lyrics in “I think I’m going crazy, I’m gonna go radge” which introduced us to Radge, the Edinburgh slang for going mental/nuts, or Barmy as we would say in Brum. Later we get the line “This is uncool” which, some years later, journalist Garry Mulholland used to title his book listing the 500 greatest singles since Punk and Disco, a superb tome which I highly recommend to all.

Of the albums 12 tracks 3 are cover versions (“Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite”, “Glad All Over” and “I Like It”), 5 were released as singles or B-sides (“I Can’t Stand My Baby”, “(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures” and it’s B-side “Flying Saucer Attack” (although those three were re-recorded for the album), “Top Of The Pops” and “Cold Wars”) which leaves just 4 “album tracks” if you will. Of those 4 “2000 AD” is the standout, it was released a year after the first issue of Tharg the Mighty’s comic of the same name BTW.

Front persons Eugene Reynolds and Faye Fife were quite a pair, Eugene a demented ringmaster and although everyone secretly fancied Faye I think we all thought she could be a bit radge. “Can’t Stand The Rezillos” was released in July 1978, by November they had split up after cancelling most of a British tour. My memory tells me that we saw The Rezillos at Birmingham Odeon but I can find absolutely no evidence that they ever played there, maybe we had tickets for a date that got cancelled. Faye and Eugene resurfaced as The Revillos, guitarist and main songwriter Jo Callis eventually joined the Human League and we all recall how that turned out. The Rezillos were a splash of comic book sci-fi colour among the Punk maelstrom and “I Can’t Stand The Rezillos” is great fun.

2000 A.D. - https://youtu.be/jcntgPixumE?si=UG1DVxf09CklPVGM