Monday, December 10, 2012

Crushed Butler - "Uncrushed - First Punks from the British Underground 1969-1971" (CD, RPM - 2005)

The perfect example of someone being ahead of its time. Of the few bands deserving the tag 'proto-punk'. Legendary Jesse Hector, Darryl Read and Alan Butler's three piece dynamite and predecessors of the Helter Skelter and the sadly underrated Hammersmith Gorillas (later just Gorillas) was probably Britain's own answer to MC5's soul guttering rock & roll (Whaaat? The Deviants? Come on, you must be joking right..?)! Hippie haters and prog-rock's squall enemies, were just what the Tubes immortalized with their classic "I was a Punk before you were a Punk" a few years later...Back to the basics rock & rollers, primal screamers and ex-mod mobsters. Waaaaaaayyy too wild to be compared with any other act of their time. They blew Slade, Atomic Rooster and Mott among many as the story smugly is saying now and they set the parameters for the generations to come (glam, pub rock, punk). Sometimes I really wonder what the public was then thinking by consuming massively Led Zep's pseudo blues crap...? If you think you 're offended by the last statement, stay away - if not, well this is the shit!