Dark times. A far right ruling party who exist to defend the establishment at all costs. A leader without a conscience intent on subjugating the nation’s people. A sycophantic fifth column that cascades propoganda and opinion like it was the truth.
Sound familiar? well, actually this description fits the Britain of the early 1980’s, a time in which the fabric of society was being just as gleefully ripped apart by Etonite sociopaths as it has been over the last five years. Then however music was a cornerstone in the fight to give the disenfranchised a voice – The Specials Ghost Town the most prominent blow – but outsiders in their own movement, The Redskins were revolutionaries who took on the capitalist machine from under its own skin.
Fronted by motormouthed polemicist Chris Dean, the trio astutely sugared their ideology by playing music which threaded soul, punk, rock and roll and blues; their famous ambition was to ‘sing like The Supremes and walk like The Clash’.
Released in 1986, Neither Washington Nor Moscow was the trio’s only album after the predictably disastrous excercise of signing to a major label. Now reissued authoritatively with tons of additional live, session, remix and previously unreleased material thrown in, songs like Keep On Keeping On, Kick Over The Statues and the exhortation to striking miners Hold On not only still sound great – but also have an eerie resonance, even in today’s post industrial times.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 