Customer Reviews

Fulham Fallout

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More cro-magnum rock, direct from the fissures and caverns of pre-history; from a slightly innocent time when caveman music wasn't just 'in' but was downright essential.

'FF' is a fast one; it has a directness that makes you yearn for an era when uncompromising music was fashionable. It has a mind-boggling simplicity which transparently harbours no pretension (much like your fervent reviewer), because, apart from a kind of base shrewdness, there isn't a huge amount 'going on upstairs'; you get a reality icy blast that The Lurkers made 'FF' because they couldn't conceivably have made anything else.....

Its whole reason for existence is a loud (and God it IS loud!) blustery attack of a kind not heard since the likes of Link Wray roamed the Great Plain. There's a good 20 cuts on 'FF' and each one sounds like it took 20 minutes to write!
It's a relentless barrage of fizzy lager, Chelsea boots and idiotic boogie-woogie. All the righteous things we crave and cherish.(and now sadly are AWOL!)

The whole experience of 'FF' can be likened to being chased around some stalagmites by a pack of ravenous sabre-tooth's.
It kicks off with the grinding 'Ain't Got A Clue' (no political jokes please..) and then just doesn't let up. One feral speed anthem follows another, each taking this spinning, brackish racket to new levels. Of course it sounds dated, guitars haven't sounded this loud in generations- and music hasn't been performed by such grinning oiks for a lot longer than that. The idea that pop music can be anything other than over-produced pap with a ten minute lifespan is a long extinct concept in our idealistically sterile, plot-anaemic karaoke universe.

Punk rock was originally invented as an antidote to stadium rock and disco, but it seems to me that the stuff that got caught in it's shockwave was nowhere near the brain cell numbing, intelligence shredding nonsense we suffer now. (Where IS that anarchy ...!?). So like most movements in art and culture; after it died- it was all for nothing, but Holy Schmoley it's death throes were awesome!

'FF' is cheerful, boppin' rock'n'roll that makes you wanna chuck yourself around the room. It exists on a level which has now (rightly) been consigned to myth to the extent that some even doubt that it was EVER fact; mutter in hushed tones that it was all an extravert hoax.
'FF' is irrefutable and noisy evidence that it wasn't.

[Note: review is based on the Captain Oi! special edition released in the UK, but the Beggar's Banquet version listed here at Amazon appears to be basically the same.] Every disc in Captain Oi!'s reissue canon is put together with so much care and attention to detail that it makes me wonder why most other labels even bother sometimes. `Fulham Fallout' was the band's debut album, originally released in June 1978, and it gained the band some level of notoriety... in England at least. The Lurkers are a tough band to categorize, as they have definite elements of pub rock and pop in their sound, but also plenty of early punk mayhem (particularly in tracks like `Total War'). They are an easy band to adore, though; the musicianship, the songs (those hooks!), the lyrics... why The Lurkers are ignored by mainstream attempts to memorialize the early days of punk is beyond me. In addition to the 14 tracks that make up this perfect album, Captain Oi! has given us a whopping 12 bonus cuts, including the single version of `Shadow,' four demos, and loads of B-sides. Somewhere along the line The Lurkers were dubbed `The British Ramones' and, really, that should be enough to convince you to seek this classic out immediately.