MUDKISS FANZINE

A debut from a trio fronted by ex-Cock Sparrer/Little Roosters guitarist Gary ‘Guitar’  Lammin, backed by former members of first wave punk also-rans Chelsea and post-glammers the Heavy Metal Kids, The Bermondsey Joyriders comes to us from 1978, via a detour around the Mississippi Delta.

The twin facets of Lammin’s influences sit together like jellied eels and key lime pie. On the one hand, he’s a proper geezah, with a Docklands heritage and a voice suitable for warning ships away from sandbanks. Conversely, he has a passion for the blues that led him to leave the increasingly Oi-orientated Cock Sparrer to pursue his musical interests with the Roosters.

These elements combine here to produce something of an incongruous mixture. The album opens with ‘The Cafe Racer’, which could have been recorded by Eater, or similar, back when a man was a man, a punk was a punk, and Brian James was in the Damned. The first hints of the BJ’s penchant for transatlantic motifs is evident at song’s end, as a State Trooper pops up to reprimand our boys about exceeding the speed limit. To be fair, anyone who manages to stretch the A2 all the way to Memphis needs to be travelling at quite a clip.

From there, the ersatz Americana comes thick and fast – ‘All The Darkness’ takes us south of the Border (no, not Deptford) to receive a healthy blues infusion topped by a vocal that sounds like the Business’ Micky Fitz trying to be nice. This is followed by a spare sounding cover of Sparrer’s 1977 cut ‘Runnin’ Riot’, which loses in oomph what it gains in technical proficiency.

Perhaps the peak of this incongruity is ‘Football’ – which sounds like early White Stripes, or Seasick Steve, but capped by lyrics that alternatively recount Lammin’s personal history and lionises the beautiful game. I’m not sure when the frontman last took himself along to a match, but it ought to be pointed out to him the working man’s sport is now priced out of most working men’s means.

After the album’s title track, a largely un-anthemic instrumental, comes ‘Genuine’, a track which, given its title and the vocalist’s affectation of an American accent, shows a wonderful disregard for irony. Musically, it echoes the kind of pub-rock riddim and booze that is no longer a feature of pubs that aren’t what they were, anyway.

However, ‘Who Are Ya’, brings us straight back dahn the Old Kent Road, finding the frontman in the mood to offer all and sundry ‘some’, as he reels off a litany of vaguely confrontational sounding non-sequiturs and cultural reference points. Like many of the album’s ten tracks, this features a pleasing slide guitar that clearly indicates the direction in which Lammin should consider going.

‘Again and Again’ casts our man as neighbourhood sage, reluctantly dispensing wisdom over a blues/rock backing, while ‘Part Of My Problem’ namechecks pretty much the whole of the New York Dolls’ initial two albums over a 12-bar homage that sounds curiously like ‘Brown Sugar’. The album comes home with ‘Rock’n’Roll Demon’, which goes on for nearly six minutes and seems to have been extended into an instrumental jam to get the album’s running time up above the half hour. Lyrically, the song mixes clichéd recountments of the accepted rock’n’roll lifestyle with a those of doomed romance, and Lammin’s Stateside accent packs up after about two-and-a-half minutes.

Impressively, The Bermondsey Joyriders was recorded in just twelve hours, and although it is unlikely to achieve the bands avowed desire ‘to help bring music back to its feet’, it does showcase a trio of competent musicians who would, in the right setting, undoubtedly provide a decent knees up. I’ll get me spoons...  

Review by Dick Porter