This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… Contenders from Easterhouse

Ah, Easterhouse. Scottish name, but hailing from Manchester. Brothers Andy and Ivor Perry fronting the band. A small assist from Morrissey who allowed them to support the Smiths and a first EP co-produced by Martin Hannett. House band, so it is said, of the Revolutionary Communist Party… really, can one see Frank Furedi and co. getting down to a band that were sort of like the Smiths, sort of like the Wedding Present and with a hint of the Chameleons… at least until the utterly dodgy second album, which only had Andy’s involvement, which arrived in a fanfare of synthesised horns and truly vile guitar solo’s, whatever about that resonant voice, and promptly slipped off the edge of the world (by the by, I’m entertained to see a comment – a comment! – from the CLR as ‘source’ here… ).

For no more was heard from them (well, apart from a small reunion in 2005 with Andy Rourke joining them live).

But when stuff was heard from them, in the mid to just after the mid 1980s, what was heard was arguably one of the most political albums of that, or indeed any, decade. Angry, definitely angry. But soulful.

Then there was the Inspiration EP which on songs such as Nineteen Sixty Nine, Easter Rising and Inspiration dealt – favourably – with Republicanism and the hunger strikes.

The lyrics?

Clunky… no doubt about it, ejh once referred IIRC to them being sixth form doggerel, but excoriating.

A Labour party man comes knocking at my door/around election time, once more he’s counting on my loyal support/ there’s been betrayals he agrees, and there I have his sympathy/ but we must think of unity to keep the party on it’s feet/ What did his party ever do for me?

If it should sink without a trace I won’t lose a moments sleep. You’re out on your own.

Hmmm… a credo for independent socialists… or indeed Thatcherites… so perhaps the RCP connection wasn’t that odd… and consider the following…

Where is the man who’s speaking out for me? Community leaders want more black shopkeepers, the union’s a say in the jobs sold away, and I’m told that my homes in a nuclear free zone, but that ain’t much help when there’s bills to be paid. Police accountability, non-nuclear war strategies have made the fight a mockery.

Yes, perhaps Frank Furedi was dancing to it after all…

Or the previously mentioned Nineteen Sixty Nine:

The savage beat of soldiers feet. Streets of broken glass. That crushed the lie of justice that England brings to foreign lands. The truth came out without a doubt in 1969. How many must have thought that things would work out differently. Labour men in government, the workers own party. Who brought out their true colours and nailed them to the mast. Served the Union Jack as they always have in 1969. You have to draw the line sometime. And I draw mine…
…
How desperately they try through schemes of treachery and lies to hide their hands stained red with blood of countless Irish lives, they talk of dangerous gunmen, the sectarian divide and then they try to kill the truth between 1969…
… A machine of murder, the system of brutality, at H-Blocks cells a concrete hell to bury the truth…

It shouldn’t work, the lines don’t scan, but in the context of the music I think it comes together.

Songs such as Get Back to Russia, or Lenin in Zurich did pretty much what the titles implied… ‘At least the Russian working man knows exactly where he stands…’. Indeed.

Anyway, here is a Rough Trade live promo which has recently appeared on YouTube.

Whistling in the Dark

Nineteen Sixty Nine

Get Back to Russia

Coming Up for Air