anti-theatricality and politics (punke rocke flashback)

Punkyditty from 1980 that swipes at Ronald Reagan and harps on his being a movie actor

 

The Bollock Brothers - a name constantly on the edge of one's vision as a music press reader, but I'm honestly not sure I ever heard anything by them until this moment.

J. Lydon involved - not Johnny but his brother Jimmy. 

The main feller called himself Jock McDonald (a stage name haha)

The obligatory dubversion 

The Bollock Brothers was a bit like Pistols-karaoke - that's the sense I got from my peripheral-vision as a music paper peruser, at any rate. 

And some kind of bolstering to that notion comes with this record, which might be their sole claim to fame, in so far as it could well be the very first example of the whole-album-covered album

Before Bollocks brothers, there had been the offensively monikered 4 " Be 2", for which they got some flak, but probably not enough. "One of the Lads", the debut, was rumored to be produced by Jimmy's brother, and it's a fairly blatant PiL impersonation. 

 The obligatory dubversion 

There's an Irish element in among the dubdisco - is that a ukelele? 

Now Johnny Rotten, he knows a thing or two about performing, m'boy 

"It's my entrance, my own creation

"My grand finale, my goodbye" 

Mentally I file the Bollock Bros / 4 " Be 2 " etc alongside this record 

The back sleeve says "they wanted to destroy show biz... wring the neck of entertainment" . They presumably being Sex Pistols / McLaren / Glitterbest

It's a spin-off / side-project to an abortive punk rock movie titled Millions Like Us  being made by Fred Vermorel and Judy Vermorel. Full story is here (although no explanation of the lyric that I hear as "London town where the Jews all pray"). Snippets of Sid's voice talking about not wanting to be an entertainer and the spirit of the eternal teenager (once you stop being a kid, it's all over - better to die young etc), taken from Vermorels's interviews that went into their Sex Pistols book.

Disappointingly there is no YouTube trace of the other Vermorel record - "Stereo/Porno"