Monday 30 June 2014

He's Dead Jim - "A Great Way to Die!" (self released cassette) 1984



"Punks not Dead Jim", said Bones as he reads the cover of the Exploited lp released a year or so before this DIY effort from Aberdeens fifth finest garage band.
"Mmmmm, Illogical", says Spock, as he finds it hard to comprehend how a group as miserably shite as the fucking Exploited had the shear  nerve to say something is 'not dead' when they have evidently played a major role in killing it!?
Luckily, other parts of bonnie Scotland did their best to counter such celtic musical atrocities such as Deacon Blue, Hue and Cry, and Big Country, by creating a special strain of unmacho punk influenced pop.
This 5 track demo cassette from HDJ, does have a please like me tone to it, but only to serve the purpose of securing Gigs from the cloth eared promoters of 1984. That being so, this has a great lo-fi sound to it, emphasised by the metallic sound baffling of the steel garage door. Another great touch is the recycling of an evil Barry Manilow cassette, to house these fine tunes. Top labels pay high flying designers thousands to come up with sleeve concepts that don't come close to this. The genius of necessity cannot be recreated by millionaires.
But what I really wanna know is..... who's Manilow cassette was this originally?
"I shite the songs that make the whole world SICK!", sings Barry in Vegas.

Neil Christie of HDJ explains:
"A Great Way to Die! was recorded about 18 months (after 'Lionise the Masses') and was done in an original edition of just one (the one you see in pics here), recorded on top of a Barry Manilow cassette. We used this as a demo to get local gigs. For this tape Andy Milne had taken over from Murray on drums, and Allan had mostly taken over from me on lead vocals, while I had taken up guitar. This all made us sound slightly more competent but, let's face it, this was not a sonic makeover of Scritti Politti proportions - we still made a bloody racket."

DOWNLOAD a great way to die HERE!

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