Various Artists - "Come and get yer Punk in Woolworths" (a Die or DIY? mixtape#5) 2013

Now, this isn't the first "Fake Punk" compilation ever. That honour goes to "The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle" soundtrack,but even that pile of exploitative shite contained at least one absolute classic in the live "Belsen Was a Gas";thanks mainly to the 2 seconds of silence that greeted the ending of the song before the wild applause kicked in. Punk Rock in general is an abject lesson in how the powers in the unelected real government orchestrate events to stifle dissent. First 'they' demonise the dissenters, turn them into a monster that's gonna take away your children.This creates a climate of fear, and the natural animal response is to attack without really investigating what you are attacking. So messages are ignored, lies are believed and the subject of your implanted fears are immeadiately marginalised. Second comes the ridicule, when you get establishment figures,popular comedians, making "funny" punk songs. Its slowly becomes a joke that nobody takes seriously. Caricatures of drunk leather clad morons with dyed mohicans, spitting and moaning about being on the dole; become what "Punk" is all about (The Exploited in fact!). Thirdly, comes the absorbtion into the system and culture. Now the subject has been pacified it can be commercially exploited,and a sanitised version can be piled on the shelves and distributed to the people. Don't listen to those prats who say that Music can't change the world! The world we live in today is unrecogniseable to the pre-rock'n'roll society. Culture and attitudes were exclusively shaped by pop culture. The philosophers of the past, were replaced (note the past tense here) by the Pop stars of the 60's through to the 80's, and the alternative underground figures linked to the new rock inspired counter culture. You don't need to argue this fact to the intelligence agencies, they have released declassified files on The Sex Pistols and John Lennon; albiet only the harmless ones. They know the power these messianic figures can have over the masses. You could link the flood, and ready availablity of CIA developed 'Mind Control' drug LSD in the sixties, to a recognition of an opportunity to test the euphoric effects of these drugs on a large number of willing victims; at the same time as the military was spraying it over the Vietmanese jungle. And, somehow, nearly all the US army was dosed up on the very potent 'Orange Sunshine' variety of acid. This leads to a suggestable state of mind, and a feeling of euphoria that rarely leads the subject to question life in general.Alternatively it can lead to the Syd Barratt effect, and you can see what a danger to the status quo he became! Aldous Huxley, advocate of LSD, and member of the Tavistock Institute (MK Ultra experimental centre), provided a rather insight giving quote about this dodgy drug: "There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." (Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961) Check out the excellent books by Neil Sanders for more detailed analysis on the subject, HERE!   The same three steps were equally applied to Psychedelia,as well as Hip-Hop,Punk,Original Rock'n'Roll,and (cough) Grunge. (I am discounting Acid House and subsequent "Dance" culture,as I believe that to be another drug feulled crowd control experiment, that was far TOO sucessfull, they have your children). It all can be rather eloquently summed up by "Punk Poet", Patrik Fitzgerald, which opens this compilation and donates the title from the first line of "Make it Safe": "Come and get yer Punk in Woolworths, Bondage trousers 12 pounds, Mohair jumpers sold next to cardigans, It always comes around. They turn it into a joke, anything that threatens them. They turn it into a dog or cat, that they can stroke, but couldn't bite its own tail. They make it safe." Such insight, from a marginalised punk figure!.......but he did sign to fucking Polydor i suppose.Unfortunately very few people are perfect. The records on this compilation range from the Fake Punk bands that went wrong for the record companies; like The Vacants and FU2, who were actually very authentic. Then we have the bandwagon jumping watered down clichéd "Punk" of The Drones and Satan's Rats, who were the first wave of the cultural absorption bands. This was betrayed when Satan's Rats become the awful Photo's with pop android Wendy Wu. The Drones were just a joke basically; opportunistic pub rock also-rans, spewing out punk platitudes about the queen and being "Yourself"; they helped to turn it into a joke without the help of third rate comedians like the despicable Charlie Drake.
Then we have punksploitation that is actually rather good, like the Alan Milman Sect and Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias. They looked great and they sounded great; but can't discount them from the culpability of helping to turn it all into a joke. Next we have the Fake Punk's of Horrorcomic, who were formed from Record company back room staff, to fill the Punk band slot on their label.And the fake Punk of The Exile, who looked like the cast of a 1970's London Pub in The Sweeney. This is probably a good look, considering that Dr. Feelgood looked that that too; but I rather suspect that they actually were four blokes from a 1970's pub, albeit one from Glasgow. The godfather of Fake Punk was Stewart Copeland, ex-progger and member of Fake Punk royalty, The Police. His irritating alter-ego was Klark Kent, who released several coloured vinyl recordings around 1978/80; disturbingly with the help of his CIA connected brother Miles.In fact their father was a long serving CIA agent! Wouldn't surprise me if the lovely Stewart wasn't in the club too! That'd explain a lot.Cunt! Then you've got the inadvisable cheese of Fakery, in The admittedly entertaining Plastic Bertrand (one of the Five famous Belgians of folk lore).With the moronic and repetitive "Pogo Pogo", which is great stuff. And the unashamed cash-in of Pistols demo maker,Chris Spedding(s), "Pogo Dancing", which is loveable pop cheese of the highest order; and the Vibrators were his backing band for this single bizarrely enough. There's American Punk cheese from various prostitutes and exotic dancers, the marvellous Mary Monday (one of thee greatest singles ever or what?), and the laughable Cherry Vanilla. Dunno what the Americans have got about cross-dressers and pole dancers, but it certainly helps marginalise the more meaningful part of the counter culture.Some people find this fun, but it bores the shit out of me. Last, but definitely not least, come the god-awful Novelty Punk discs. These are the 'Man's' secret weapon. How to turn dangerous ideas into a lame joke with even lamer jokes. Fuck me, there are some shit, unfunny, and interminably irritating bollocks on display here. I left the most unforgivable examples for the last four tracks. Which include, two complete Twats (Buster Gobsmack,ha fucking ha)from the even twattier TV lowest common denominator rubbish vehicle called "That's Life" (on UK Tv from 1973-1994). Admittedly it did once feature a dog that said "Sausages" to order (check out his single,yes!, HERE); But these hideous pricks were so off the loop, that they did this crap punk parody in 19 fucking 88, when punk had been long sanitised and forgotten.This is how unbelievably shite this show was! Alvin and the Chipmunks, from their lp "Chipmunk Punk", give us their rendition of some soft rock tune called "Refugee", and recreates what it must feel like to be trepanned by a rusty spike.A definition of Evil if ever I heard one! Talking 'bout EVIL, the closer is an infinitely unfunny piece of utter shit, by career paedophile and record biz insider, Jonathan King. With a response record to the Pistols "God Save the Queen", with him doing a shit impression of her majesty thanking the pistols for their good work.This creature is a perfect example of an establishment insider defending his bosses; and god knows what sexual deviancy he was involved in with his public shool chums in MI5/6. This fellow is a total cunt,and execution without trial is probably too good for him! On a lighter note, we have  Los Punk Rockers album "Los Exitos de Sex Pistols", which is a hilarious cash in remake of Never Mind the Bollocks, where the singer hasn't even bothered to find out the lyrics; so he just makes up stuff that sounds like what Rotten is singing. Ranks up with William Shatner's "Transformed Man" as one of the best good/bad albums ever made! "I'm a Lazy seeeeven" (Seventeen, by Los Punk Rockers).  

Track Listing:
1- "Make it Safe" - Patrik Fitzgerald
2- "Fuck You" - Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias
3- "Pretty Vacant - Paul Jones
4- "Pretty Vacant" - Los Punk Rrockers
5- "Pogo dancing - "Chris Spedding
6- "Pogo Pogo" - Plastic Bertrand
7- "You Make me Sick" - Satans Rats
8- "I've Seen it Vomit" - Bog Ugly
9- "I Just Want To Be Myself" - The Drones
10-"Punk Rocking Granny" - Duggie Briggs Band
11-"Beat on the Brat" - The Vacants
12-"Sniffin' Glue" - F.U.2
13-"Don't Care" - Klark Kent
14-"The Punk" - Cherry Vanilla
15-"I Gave my Punk Jacket to Ricky" - Mary Monday and the Bitches
16-"Down at the Vortex" - Yellow Dog
17-"Seventeen" - Los Punk Rockers
18-"England 77" - Horrorcomic
19-"Jubilee 77" - The Exile
20-"I Wanna Live in NW3" - Johnny Rubbish (disturbingly, a mate of Hugh Cornwell!)
21-"Johnny B. Rotten" - The Monks (These idiots were The Strawbs, and definitely NOT the Monks of 'Black Monk Time' fame;-shifted a lot of units in Canada????)
22-"Kill" - Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias
23-"Stitches(demo)" - The Alan Milman Sect
24-"Gob on you" - Not The Nine O'Clock News
25-"Gimme that Punk Junk" - The Water pistols
26-"Punk Strut" - Kevin Short and his Privates
27-"I Might be a Punk(but I love you)- Norman Gunstone
28-"Punk Bashing Boogie" - Don E. Sibley
29-"Going out with a Punk" - The Punkettes
30-"I'm a Punk" - Norman and the Hooligans
31-"Punky Christmas"- Matt Black and the Doodlebugs
32-"I want to be a Punk Rocker"- Andy Cameron
33-"Punk Prrincess" - Dave and the Derros
34-"We Wanna Be Famous" - Buster Gobsmack eats Filth
35-"Refugee"- Alvin and the Chipmunks
36-"God Save the Sex Pistols"- Elizabeth R.

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