Review:

on 2011-03-17 CharlesMartel Said:

This is the first two Ruts albums boxed together and reissued on a single CD. It covers pretty much the history of the band's recorded output before Malcolm Owens overdosed on heroin, and that was the end of the Ruts. As I don't count the Ruts DC or the other manifestations of the band as the true Ruts, this is all you are going to get, studio album-wise. There are a few off-cuts and b-sides which are not included here but this is about as comprehensive a collection of the Ruts studio output as you are going to find.

Despite the fact that the Ruts were one of the most musically accomplished of the first wave of punks, they have been largely forgotten now. Very few people, even those who were there at the time, when asked now to list the most prominent punk bands of the late seventies, will remember the Ruts. The reasons for that are manifold, but the fact that the Ruts, unlike the more prominent punks of the age - the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Jam, the Buzzcocks and others - simply did not want the Top of the Pops appearances which seemed, at the time, to define musical success in the UK. The Ruts were always a band of the streets - they came from the down at heel parts of Hayes and lived in squats. They were unemployed, drop-outs, no hopers and generally part of the populace the system did its best to overlook. Their attitude to the music business and the establishment as a whole was to form a model for many who came after then such as Crass.

There can be no doubt that the first album is bloody marvellous! It takes you right back to those days when you were a teenager in Britain and your life was about to go the way of the country as a whole - down the fucking pan!! The anger and the resentment of the era flows through this album. From songs such as "SUS", which lambastes the police stop and search powers used disproportionately against young black males, to "Jah Wars", a reggae influenced number, right the way through to "It Was Cold", my own personal favourite, this album conveys all the frustrations and the passions of the youth of England at the time. It was all the more powerful from having emanated from a band who were determined not to pander to the mainstream.

The second album, "Grin and Bear It", is perhaps most notable for the live versions of some of the songs on the first album. These are the real highlights of what was otherwise a rather disappointing second album. Malcolm Owens was bombed out of his brains by now and was actually thrown out of the band for a while in an effort to persuade him to come to terms with his problems so it lacks the same sort of commitment as their debut album had. "H Eyes", probably a personal account of Owens' own struggle with heroin, is probably the stand out studio track of this album. Yet the musical dichotomy between the stark punk of the first album and the much mellower, less sharp music of the follow up is evident to see.

The Ruts may never have been among the first division of the punks, but they were among the most committed. In many ways they epitomised what punk was all about - the rejection of the establishment norms and hitherto accepted ways of doing things. Both musically, and in a wider socio-political context, they were one of the few bands of their era who had something coherent to say and said it in a way which did not compromise their personal beliefs. This is a fitting compilation to take you through their recorded material.
Rating: 6/10