Sunday, April 10, 2022

RIP Chris Bailey

 ... of the great Brisbane punk-not-punk band The Saints. 























These two from Eternally Yours are my favorite Saints tunes. 





Of the two "Product" songs on Eternally, I much prefer "No, Your Product" to "Know Your Product" -horns in punk, even punk-not-punk don't sound quite right to me  - but it's a good tune and here it comes with unexpectedly cool and unusual video (or perhaps it's a TV clip on some Aussie show where they still used all the glam-era video FX) 


It's a rewrite of "Satisfaction" - "ad-vert-ising / you're lying / never gonna give me what I need" - that shows how Stonesy their version of punk was. 

The famous Top of the Pops appearance, whose don't-give-a-shit aura so impressed Mark E. Smith


They did a promo video for their first single (prefaced here by some tributes from famous fans)


On a Brisbane telly show


I need to thank Barney Hoskyns for alerting me to their very existence and excellence

Of Chris Bailey's voice, Barney wrote: "One of the seminal rock'n'roll sounds, it combines the roughest, surliest aspects of Lennon, Jagger and the Van Morrison of Them."

This one below is a tune he particularly exalted 


I never quite managed to get into this third album Prehistoric Sounds, but it's a rehearsal for Laughing Clowns, Ed Kuepper's new venture after leaving The Saints, where the idea works much better  



Saints adjacent, in my mind for a reason


A revision of this, that 




Also Saints adjacent, for the same reason





More Saints goodness, suggested by Aussie reader Andrew Parker



He also points out that horns in punk would include X-Ray Spex and Flipper's "Sex Bomb Baby". Which is a good point - I suppose I mean, brass sections, as opposed to a single sax.