These songs are hard-wired into most adults’ brains and can almost float by on the radio, so familiar are we with them, so they are more than ripe for irreverent cover versions. Most of these do no more than perk up, speed up, roughen the edges but it still makes for a fun album for a singalong on a car journey, bringing a different edge to the sound. The moment when Fear’s cover of ‘Honky Tonk Women’ is no more that garage rock but when it switches to drum-driven double speed, it can’t fail to bring a smile to anyone’s lips.
The standout for me is the bass colossus that is Jah Wobble. Except that, instead of turning in a dubby bass version of ‘Start Me Up’, he turns into an East End barrow boy channelling John Otway on vocals, which is somewhere between belligerent and hilarious as he speaks the vocals. Elsewhere an old Flaming Groovies deep cut, ‘She Said Yeah’ shows the band could do no wrong. The UK Subs cover ‘Paint It Black’ in an unsurprising way, while Peter & The Test Tube Babies do a classic late-punk / poppy hard-driving version of ‘Mother’s Little Helper’. The Skids manage to subvert ‘Wild Horses’ – most people go Americana on it but they add an insistent martial guitar figure. The Angry Samoans deconstruct ‘Miss You’ effectively, giving it a weird Devo workout, instead of the yearning of the original. The Pink Fairies, who were punk before punk was punk, do a pub rock version of ‘Street Fighting Man’ with Larry Wallis. The Vibrators have a world-weary drained voice that will probably never get any ‘Satisfaction, while The Members have a cheeky English-chappie take on ‘Angie’.
Other bands are drawn from later waves of punk and achieve their aims to a greater or lesser extent but what I take from this is good-natured fun.