Kris Needs Presents Dirty Water - The Birth Of Punk Attitude

At a distance of 30-odd years, punk is ripe for GCSE study and – don’t ask me – it’s probably a module already. Any decent piece of coursework requires examination of cause and consequence, and here Kris Needs dishes up an exhaustive appraisal of everything that went into punk, from the attitude of the subtitle to the snarls, the DIY production and the haphazard musicianship. Needs is a keen student, perhaps a little too eager – at times it feels as if he can find an excuse for absolutely anything to be “punk” – but, all up, this lengthy compilation makes a convincing argument.

Drawing on influential records from the birth of rock’n’roll onwards, the 2-CD ‘Dirty Water’ is a handy primer that proves punk was no real Year Zero, not when there was so much to pillage as long as you avoided bloated prog indulgence. Needs – veteran journalist, cultural commentator, DJ and even post-‘Screamadelica’ music maker in early-90s dance outfit Secret Knowledge – treats punk as the event his life was building up to, and picks the tracks that chronicle his own adolescence as well as the inevitable gestation of the movement itself. The songs are presented chronologically, not in order of release but by the moment they entered his own sphere, so personal history outweighs any sense of musical progression. No matter, the dawn of punk would never be as straightforward as that, and this lurch through the timeline springs a surprise at every turn.

Things start logically enough with abrasive garage rock from Lenny Kaye’s ‘Nuggets’ stalwarts The Standells (who give this compilation its name with their grubby tribute to Boston) and a fuzz guitar assault from The Seeds, but soon there’s Gene Vincent with his ‘Bluejean Bop’, dusting off the wires linking punk with raw rock’n’roll. That shared primal energy is unmistakable and rears up again in glam stomps from maniacal LA residents Zolar X and the UK’s own Jook. Less easy to get a handle on is Sun Ra’s fever-dream cosmic jazz, although the freeform anything goes pizzazz is a qualified influence.

There are box ticks from New York Dolls and MC5 – self-evident punk antecedents – and an interesting precursor to the Johnny Rotten sing-song whine on The Up’s otherwise limp ‘Sisters Sisters (Sisters Rising)’, while a plunge into the wider US scene brings up Red Krayola’s eerie psychedelia, Rocket From The Tombs’ jagged rock and the startling proto-hip-hop rants of The Last Poets. Truly, this is a broad brief (and nebulous, if we’re talking “attitude”) but never less than intriguing, and Needs deserves leeway for obvious passion as well as chutzpah.

If there are misgivings, there’s a nagging sense of licensing difficulties – the likely reason for pretty superfluous live versions of T. Rex’s ‘Elemental Child’ and The Stooges’ ‘Do You Want My Love?’. A dozen minutes of The Stooges fannying about hardly trails punk’s fierce economy even if the manic drive is there. But any compilation that boasts Silver Apples rubbing up against Can and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band is worth investigation, and the story’s worth following too: Kris Needs has delivered a roadmap that can lead you in any number of enticing directions.