Way back in the mists of time when the world was young, Or at least when I was a teenager. John Peel ruled the evening airwaves on Radio One. He played pretty much what he wanted, quite often at the wrong speed and mumbled and pretetnded to be working class.
Peel liked everything that came from Liverpool including the football team , (the one that played in red) and favoured bands that came from the city and its environs. Towards the end of the Seventies the cities music scene exploded spectacularly in response to Punk with a whole raft of fabulous bands and personalities. Wah ! led by the irrepressible Pete Wylie were right at the front of the pack.
Wylie was a ludicrous blagger and self publicist but there was plenty going on on Wah!'s records. I bought the band's debut album Nah Poo - The Art Of Bluff a couple of week's ago on Newcastle Quayside market. It's a bristling, fibrous record that's restlessness is compelling even if it lacks immediate coherence.
But this is actually part of its appeal. What's most striking about is the almost tangible excitement and urgency of the era which it burst forth from. It's incredibly immediate. I look foward to getting to know it better.
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