| Patrik
Fitzgerald was one of the oddities that Punk Rock threw up in 1977. A
lone singer with an acoustic guitar regaling punk audiences with lyrical
songs and interspersing them with chat, stories and poems. Is this what people died in the Punk wars for?
The answer is an emphatic
yes. There's no better example of the Punk DIY attitude than the lone,
slight figure of Patrik Fitzgerald making it happen and expressing
himself on stage. Singing songs of alienation, observation and imagined
situations and often braving hostile receptions to communicate with an
audience. While bands had the safety net of each other and the bombast
of volume and wattage he stood alone.
The nearest artist to
him, John Cooper Clarke, had sarcasm, humour and a rapid fire delivery. Patrik had realism, pathos and incisive, sometimes uncomfortable, lyrics.
Those early songs like 'Safety Pin In My Heart' and 'All Sewn Up' have
amazingly stood the test of time and sound as relevant today as then. Patrik Fitzgerald was the 'Punk Poet.' |
 |