Teenage Kicks - Various Artists > Reviews > Teenage dreams so hard to beat

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Average
Lyrics	Standard
Quality and consistency of tracks	Mixed
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Not applicable
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Sterling collection of classic tunes
Disadvantages:	A few fillers which don't really justify their inclusion

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

A real blast from the past here – 40 tracks on 2 CDs, loosely classified as punk and New Wave (although neither label can be applied to everything included here) from the late 70s and early 80s. As Pat Gilbert’s excellent article, reprinted from Mojo magazine and included in the accompanying booklet, says: “It’s fashionable to claim that, in 1976, you were hanging out with Sid Vicious down the 100 Club….. But the truth is, most of us old punks were actually down the local youth club, playing ping-pong in a pair of hand-me-down corduroy flares……”

Well, I was eight years old in 1976, so not even at the ping-pong down the youth club stage (although I do remember the corduroy flares). So apart from a vague awareness of the existence round our way of a mild moral panic about punk, or at least the local interpretation of it (green hair! safety pins! swearing on TV! breakdown of civilisation as we know it!), I managed to miss out on most of this stuff while it was actually happening, only picking up the trail in the early 1980s when chart hits like the Clash’s Rock the Casbah and the Jam’s furiously political A Town Called Malice (both included here) created an immediate and lasting impression. And of course, few people who were teenagers in the early 80s could fail to cite the original dandy highwayman, Adam, and his Ants (represented here by breakthrough hit – or at least, the first one I remember seeing on Top of the Pops - “Antmusic”) as a major formative influence, whether you liked them at the time or not.

There’s endless scope for debate about what should or shouldn’t be included here, but extensively anthologised though they undoubtedly are, not many people could argue with stuff like the Undertones’ title track, the Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love, and Germfree Adolescents by X-Ray Spex. A lot of these tracks do crop up on lots of compilations – the Stranglers’ No More Heroes, the Vapors’ seminal Turning Japanese – but that’s probably inevitable. Others, like XTC’s Making Plans for Nigel are less ubiquitous. Most of the tracks sound as fresh now as they ever did – although it’s hard to make a case for the inclusion of the likes of Jilted John except on the basis of nostalgia value, which wears thin pretty quickly. Only the Undertones and the Damned are given the honour of having two tracks included,- in the case of the former, “Teenage Kicks”, of course, and “My Perfect Cousin” (which apart from anything else contains some of the best, or possibly the worst, certainly the most memorable, rhymes I’ve ever heard – notably “His mother bought him a synthesizer, she got the Human League in to advise her”.) A few tracks – “7Teen” by the Regents and a few other end-of-CD fillers spring to mind – could, in my view, have usefully been left out to make room for things more worthy of inclusion (Going Underground by the Jam, London Calling by the Clash).

Full track listing is as follows:

~CD1~
1. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks
2. The Jam – Town Called Malice
3. Blondie – Hanging on the Telephone
4. The Clash – Rock the Casbah
5. Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Geno
6. The Specials – Too Much Too Young
7. Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays
8. Squeeze – Up The Junction
9. The Teardrop Explodes – Reward
10. XTC – Making Plans for Nigel
11. Jilted John – Jilted John
12. The Vapors – Turning Japanese
13. The Stranglers – No More Heroes
14. Sham 69 – Hersham Boys
15. Stiff Little Fingers – At the Edge
16. The Ruts – Babylon’s Burning
17. The Damned – Neat Neat Neat
18. Skids – Into the Valley
19. Toy Dolls – Nellie the Elephant
20. Splodgenessabounds – Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please

~CD2~
1. Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen in Love
2. Madness – Baggy Trousers
3. The Beat – Mirror in the Bathroom
4. The Pretenders – Brass in Pocket
5. Adam & The Ants – Antmusic
6. Martha & The Muffins – Echo Beach
7. The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry
8. The Members – Sound of the Suburbs
9. Sham 69 – If the Kids are United
10. The Damned – New Rose
11. The Undertones – My Perfect Cousin
12. Generation X – Valley of the Dolls
13. Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the UK (Demo)
14. Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Roadrunner
15. X-Ray Spex – Germfree Adolescents
16. The Regents – 7Teen
17. The Lambrettas – Poison Ivy
18. Secret Affair – Time for Action
19. Jo Boxers – Boxerbeat
20. Barracudas – Summer Fun

There’s plenty here to get you dancing, or at least jumping up and down like a nutter (advice: draw the curtains first). And in case you think this collection is only likely to be enjoyed by geriatric old fossils for the nostalgia value, let me point out that I only bought it at the request of my 14 year old son…….. I think the fact that we’ve both derived huge enjoyment from it is proof enough that (a) most of these tracks have an enduring appeal and (b) you’re never too old for teenage kicks. In theory, if not in practice.

These Sound of the Suburbs/Teenage Kicks type compilations do pop up on the market from time to time (invariably with the same punk-style design and some of the same tracks) but as either an introduction to or as a pick of some of the best music of this era, this one serves pretty well. And if it inspires anybody to seek out the superb albums of some of these bands, so much the better.

A few weak links notwithstanding, a rousing evocation of the musical and social climate of the time.

Available for £12.99 from Amazon.