1. English DogsMad Punx And English Dogs
This was an EP. They’re also from Grantham. Actually the the singer Wakey, he came to the Coventry gig on the tour last year. It was fucking incredible, and he was fucking pissed as well. Him and his wife were pissed out their heads. They live on a narrowboat and apparently that night they went home and both of them fell in the river. I want to get him on a record. I meant to but I’m quite selfish and I forget. But I thought he was a great singer. He did this EP and an album, called Attack Of The Porky Men. I bought that on CD and it cost me £30, an import from America, because it’s not on CD really, I think someone just burned it.
I didn’t start listening to English Dogs until about 2006. I liked trawling through old punk stuff on YouTube. Discharge, GBH, Exploited: stuff I wouldn’t have listened to as a kid even though I was never an English Dogs fan. And then I came across that EP and I thought it was brilliant.
You can tell it’s a Grantham accent. That was brilliant, mind blowing almost. And also the lyrics were just crap, "Psychokiller rah rah rah…" It’s just rubbish. He’s got this diluted Lydon-esque approach, but that’s what I love about it. A lot of that new wave punk, around the 80s, it’s all crap isn’t it. It kind of reminds me of Roachee, it’s all crap. People like them are similar in my eyes. So it was a really big honour when he came backstage. He was off his nut. He had a can of cider in his pocket and he came in and was talking to me and looking at all the beer on the side.
I said he should just take it. He was like, "You’re joking, can I?" And was putting all this beer in his pockets, him and his missus, "Right, mate, mate, I’m going alright." And the thing is, he knows. He knows. He said, "When you went out there and you just looked at the crowd and went ‘FUCK OFF’ this is what I’m going doing, you know, don’t you, you know." Even though, on the hierarchy of punk he’s like, down here, he believes in it and he can identify that kind of spirit. And I thought that was really quite touching. I’ve got his number, I should text him.
