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In the
intervening time they had signed a five LP deal with NEMS the company
founded by Brian Epstein, which also
did them few favours in the bitchy end of the Punk scene.
Matt Dangerfield: We signed with Nems because they were a very good live agency. At least
if we were with them we should be able to get gigs. This was a time when venues were saying don’t darken our doors again. We were the first
punk band of that generation to get an album deal. Late 1976.
Another
plus point about Nems was their distribution deal through RCA which
would mean Boy's records would be available everywhere on release. |
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At the time things looked bright for the Boys as they set to
work on their second single, Honest John Plain’s “First Time”, a tour
with Velvet Underground legend John Cale and their excellent debut LP.
Self produced after name producers couldn't capture their sound the
Boys recorded 18 songs in 3 days. Then they hit bad luck as the record
wasn't released for 3 months. It wasn't all Nems' fault. They weren't to
know Elvis, RCA's biggest star, would die and all pressing plants would
be devoted to Elvis records.
Likewise for 'First
Time.' It entered the charts at 84 but Nems had to withdraw marketing after its first week and it sank. The damage was done though. By
September the Boys were intimating in the Music papers like Record
Mirror, that they had lost confidence in their record company.
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Critically they did ok
but among the sturm und drang of the various punk bands forming their
image and sound made people suspicious which Pete Silverton
articulated in his Sounds review of their first album.
...the Boys have
come too far, too fast to have done it all without a touch of
voodoo. When they first started most everybody saw them as a joke. I
mean they weren't deep punk were they? Too sweet by half. They didn't
look like they could threaten a dodo, let alone Rod Stewart. So what
if they they sounded good and seemed to have fistfuls of
excellent songs?
Unphased they
bullishly declared
in a Record Mirror interview.
Kid Reid: Nobody
has seen the half of us yet 'cos we're only just feeling our muscles.
We've already got enough material for another album and musically it
will be totally different from this one. We don't care about what's
punk - we care about what's us." Kid
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Indeed
their second LP “Alternative Chartbusters” trod a slightly more poppy path than the
debut but did nothing
sales-wise. Following recording their third album Nems refused
to pay the subsequent recording costs and that was that.
The Boys then took a
18 month break from the business while record company problems were
sorted. Matt Dangerfield produced records for the likes of Toyah, The
Dark and Gary Holton. Duncan Reid played with old pals The Hollywood
Killers, Jack Black played in the first Hazel O'Connor band as
well as joining the Rowdies and New Guitars and Honest John actually
joined the Lurkers for an album and single and then New Guitars before
returning. |
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By the time the Boys got
round to issuing their third LP it was almost the end of the decade as
“To Hell With The Boys” came out in November 1979 on the Safari
imprint. The band had lost momentum and not only that the music scene
had changed markedly in that time as the Two Tone revival was reaching
it’s peak and Punk was just a memory for many.
Following this Casino Steel returned to his
homeland in Norway after the LP was completed for tax reasons and the
band became a four piece. Still hoping to make that elusive
breakthrough, the “Weekend” single aired on national TV on “Swap Shop”
but after the next single “Let It Rain” and the disappointing “Boys
Only” LP they were dropped by Safari, Kid Reid left the group and was
replaced for a short while by Howard Wall of the Lurkers.
This lasted for a few gigs until the band fizzled out towards the
middle of 1981. |
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PS From 1977 the Boys switched to their alter-egos the Yobs and
released a seasonal foul-mouthed comedy Punk record every year until
1982. In 1978 while in dispute with NEMS they bootlegged themselves
and released the single on their own Yob records This included the LP “A Christmas Record” which comprised of
delights like “Ballad Of The Warrington” and “Another Christmas”,
though probably their best known effort was the completely
Santa-unrelated “Worm Song” from 1977. |
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