Special Duties

Somewhat overlooked stateside, Special Duties were a pretty damn good second line punk band right
at the height of the scene.......they consisted of Arrogant on vocals, Duty on guitar, and Nigel Baker on bass, and drummer Stuart Bray. After looking them up on Wikipedia, I do seem to recall that they had some kind of a fued or beef with Crass, forgot all about that, I could have used some of it in my (somewhat lame) "Battle of the Bands" compilation.......

Amatuerish as hell (kind of a prerequisite given the time/scene), they really did put out an entertaining single or three, neatly wrapped up here is "The Punk Singles Collection", which is pretty damn good. Who do they sound like? Well, they were heavilly influenced by the Adverts, to the point of actually covering "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" (pretty good actually), they sound like, maybe, Sham 69 or maybe Stiff Little Fingers. They are not well remembered at all, and likely won't be going to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame unless they pay thier way in......but this collection is VERY listenable for punk fans, if you are a fan of late 70's UK punk and are not familar, give this a shot.....helll, I hadn't heard any of their stuff for like 20 years or so until I slipped this one on, just on a whim......

As I've said before, I think the punk scene was BASICALLY a "singles" scene, not album oriented at all (with a few exceptions of course)........these guys understood that and cranked out a slew of good, sloppy, angry UK punk........likely, we perhaps wouldn't even wish to hear the album filler, but I'll say this singles collection merits 4 stars at least.......they have the stones to not only cover the Adverts track mentioned before, but also the Clash ("Tommy Gun"), and crank out the (I suppose) anthemic "Sid Viscious was Innocent".......along the way though there are some really great singles, "London Town", "Violent Society", "Police State'....fuck it it's all great if you like this kind of thing as I do......Thier battle with Crass was interesting, they take them on in a couple songs.......

Hey, THIS one is a "niche" post.......if you are a fan of 1970's UK punk and are not familiar, jump on it......if you are not, you likely won't care for it, one of those things......I just listened to this today, though, and thought, damn, you hardly EVER see these lads on the web anywhere, and they WERE good enough that fans of obscure punk will really go for this.

It's what I do, it's why I'm here.

SPECIAL DUTIES-THE PUNK SINGLES COLLECTION-01 Violent Society/02 Coldchester
Council/03 Violent Society/04 It Aint Our Fault/05 Coldchester Council/06 Police State/07 We Gotta Fight/08 It Just Ain't Me/09 Special Duties/10 Bullshit Crass/11 You're Doing Yourself No Good/12 Punk Rocker/13 Too Much Talking/14 Mutt/15 London Town/16 Judge and Jury/17 Shadow/18 Wembley! Wembley!/19 Up the U's/20 Lost Cause or Not/21 MRR Rules/22 I Wish It Could Be/23 Gary Gilmore's Eyes/24 Johnny Won't Go To Heaven/25 Sid Viscious Was Innocent/26 Tommy Gun


Ya can't say I haven't put in ample time TODAY for your entertainment.........and it's my fucking pleasure, believe me.......today: EXCELLENT reggae from my brother Cliff, some Dutch hardrock from Aniday, some rare Hole, and a Special Duties singles comp.......and trust me, wait until you see some of the stuff we (Brian and myself) have lined up for the VERY near future.

Thank you for visiting, listening, commenting, and especially, CONTRIBUTING.....seems like as good a time as any to say it again......IF you have something interesting, PLEASE share it.....which reminds me, thanks to Rob from Canada for the Throbbing Gristle stuff, with some help from my online friends, I managed to locate "24 Hours", which I mentioned before, 24 cassette tapes packaged in a suitcase, only 50 "official" copies were released.......Well, once I get it assemebled, we'll have THAT monstrosity, combined with rare Gristle from Rob and Brian both......and that is how this works. Your mother told you that SHARING is the way to go.......your mother was never more correct.