A rant

S*M*A*S*H

They came, we saw and nicked their S*T*A*R*s!

Did they affect our lives?

Yes they did, and here's how and why.

Emerging amidst a music scene celebrating Brit(pop)ishness, S*M*A*S*H arrived kicking and screaming about the reality of living in small town England. They were an adrenaline fuelled mix of anger, energy, righteous indignation, politics, DIY punk empowerment and star jumps, all choreographed to some of the finest punk-pop songs you'll ever hear.

They played hundreds of toilet gigs to thousands of normally overlooked punters, produced fanzines, badges and fantastic cheap sloganeering T shirts by the bucket load, released a single named after and inspired by Germaine Greer's 'Lady Love Your Cunt', played to hundreds of thousands from the back of a lorry at the Anti Nazi League Carnival in Brockwell Park, were responsible for some of the best singles of the 1990s and a rather disappointing album, and inspired us to start writing a 'zine.

And then they smuggled a song about killing the Tory cabinet into the Hit Parade.

Soon after they were themselves killed off by press hypocrisy and label incompetence, a band inspired and also finished off by the times in which they lived.

And now they're back. Looking older, possibly wiser but still as driven, S*M*A*S*H have returned with a bunch of new songs and many of the old ones too. Hearing these at a Bedford gig recently took me back to the excitement of 1994 when it seemed that a band could perhaps ignite and change the world.

Perhaps one still can?

Rosey R*E*P*E*A*T, 2006

Visit and listen to S*M*A*S*H here

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Now here's some pix of the band from the R*E*P*E*A*T scrapbook...

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Unknown venue and photographer