![]() ![]() Though not as embarrassingly awful as the Buzzcocks’ Live at the Roxy, neither is it any good. Live at the Roxy is one concert record too many. Although not as good as the first Live and Loud!!, it’s an emotional, last-chance gas. A document of the band’s 1979 farewell gig at London’s Rainbow, Sham’s Last Stand rehashes the same material as its two predecessors. ![]() While there’s something to be said for resurrected groups who don’t simply trade in nostalgia, Sham ’88 is totally banal and contemptible.īesides a straightforward hits compilation ( Angels with Dirty Faces), late-’70s Sham artifacts continue to surface. Unfortunately, their two singles, Volunteer LP and a brief, aborted ’88 US tour (they’d snuck over to play without work permits) reveal that the new Sham is nothing like the old: Pursey and original guitarist Dave Parsons attempt a fifth-rate Beastie Boys rap/metal/boogie-down trip. Immense UK sales of Live and Loud!! led to Volume 2 (though redundant, it’s more of the same quality That’s Live is a five-song live EP on a subsidiary of the same label) and the 1987 reformation of the group. It’s odd that the truly essential Sham LP - their finest moment and the only record that could put to rest their reputation as a sloppy, by-the-numbers punk circus - would emerge so late in the game. Featuring their best, most mature ( Hersham Boys/ The Game) lineup, the LP is an ideal distillation of material from the first three albums, played with fire and confidence. Live and Loud!!, a scorching live album recorded in 1979 and released eight years later, dwarfs Sham’s studio catalog. The First, Best and Last compilation does include some non-LP singles (but not their first, from ’77, on Step Forward) plus a limited-edition bonus live EP. However, having perfected their narrow craft, there was nothing to do but disband, which they did soon after. (Although it wasn’t issued in the States, American Polydor imported the LP and distributed a few copies as if it were a domestic release.)īy The Game, Sham’s playing and lyrics had sharpened to the point of respectability, with the strongest material (the single “Give the Dog a Bone” in particular) of all their LPs. Pursey worked up some “poetic” lyrics for Hersham Boys this, plus the increased use of keyboards (played by Pursey’s co-producer, Peter Wilson) meant that Sham was nearing the stage of early Boomtown Rats, complete with a surprising cover of the Yardbirds’ classic “You’re a Better Man Than I.” A break with the punk scene, but no less aggressive than usual. All told, a funny punk LP which features “Hurry Up Harry” and the anthemic “Angels with Dirty Faces,” both hit singles. parents, boy and girl, boy and girl’s boyfriend, etc.) between songs. That’s Life offers more of the same, while enlarging on an idea heard briefly on Tell Us the Truth: inserting narrative slice-of-life dialogues (kid vs. (It’s hard to judge how much of that is by design and how much is due to sheer incompetence.) More than any of those, Pursey’s Cockney yelling tabbed him as the Anykid who could, but it’s also true that almost any kid could have written the LP in his sleep. The sound, oddly enough, isn’t so much derived from the Clash and Pistols as it is from the Dolls, Heartbreakers and Ramones. The first LP sidesteps the issue of decent production by having one side with none at all and the other recorded live. Arguably their best single, “Hurry Up Harry” is about the importance of “going down ‘a pub.” Lead singer/lyricist Jimmy Pursey was earnest enough, and the band simple and basic: although their records are of no lasting import, Sham became the most popular UK punk band of their time, scoring five Top 20 singles. Their populist slogans were ultimately chanted like football cheers and taken seriously only by the enormous British Sham army. The archetypal working class ramalama dole-queue band, deliverers of socio-political bromides over blazing guitars, Sham 69 (the name, and the band, came from Hersham, a town on London’s southern fringes) had a bad case of arrested development. ![]()
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