DESCRIPTION:
The other day I wandered off to see The Mob perform at a venue in North London, and I saw something I personally have never seen. Someone had a Forgotten Rebels T-shirt on. A 'Tomorrow Belongs To Us' sleeve artwork T-shirt.

Natalie, who was wearing the T-shirt, is from Canada so would have been more accustomed to bodies adorned with 'Forgotten Rebels' T-shirts randomly walking around the streets and in clubs and gig venues. The Forgotten Rebels hail from Hamilton, Canada.

I explained to Natalie, after explaining that I was surprised to see the T-shirt in the first place, that I actually own the debut 12" single from the band, and that I thought the record was, ahem, a little dodgy, albeit absolutely stunning musically. 'Stunning' meaning the lo-fi punk recording, being of that era. A cheaply recorded chugging Sex Pistol influenced guitar and bass, snotty, snearing Johnny Rotten vocal style.

Now to the gritty bit.

The songs on this 12" extended play single have titles, with rather obvious leanings. Those songs with those titles, with those rather obvious leanings, have lyrics, again, with rather obvious leanings. The rear of the sleeve artwork, pinpointing the singer Mickey, would not look out of place on a Combat 84 or Skrewdriver sleeve.

Many many years after this record was not being taken out of my collection, information is connected world wide via the world wide web. Now, with the internet at hand, I do a little research, and find a book by Bob Brydon about the scene in Canada, 'Treat Me Like Dirt'.

There on the preview pages of Google Books, there is a whole chapter dedicated to The Forgotten Rebels. I speed read a little and the songs make a little more sense, not in what the lyrics are leaning towards, but the reason those lyrics were written out in the first place.

A snotty youthful punk attitude to piss anybody off, parents, teachers, and later on club owners and radio stations.

This might or might not be true, it might be a major case of backtracking, chaining this record tightly into a dark cupboard, and getting on with changing line ups every few months trying to sound like The Faces.

But there obviously was a point in that attitude back then, as many teenagers would be as obnoxious as possible whether in a band or not, and displaying deviant pointers in lyrics or clothing for shock value. Siouxsie and Sid's swastikas for instance. 'Belson Was A Gas', 'Bodies' and so forth.

The Forgotten Rebels seemingly have spent a lot of time since this recording explaining it was a 'punk record' and 'we' wanted to shock by any means necessary. This record, and of course by default, the sleeve, got photographed with a Canadian establishment figure in politics at the time of release. A prank that Malcolm McClaren would have been proud of, the establishment figure not having a clue about who the band were or what these song titles represent, or lean towards. The national radio stations hated the record, the printed media hated the record. The band were banned from several venues.

And 'hippies' are mentioned in the song 'Nazi'. As in 'Never Trust A Hippie' a McClaren punk commandment #327.

Talking of the song 'Nazi', there are lyrics that I missed the first time around on hearing this record which I now notice on the internet in 2016;

"I only wrote this song
Just to screw up the press
You gotta be quite an idiot for believing this mess
If I were a Nazi, I would've shot you dead
With a .44 bullet in your bloody bloody bloody head"

Maybe a kind of clumsy disclaimer from the band recorded at the time, to distance the subject matter from the band.

The singer Mickey De Sadist's father and mother were Polish Jews who survived Auschwitz I have also learned via trawling the internet, so...

If The Forgotten Rebels were just out to shock during the early days, then the band certainly succeeded.

Whether the band were pure punk shock value or a Canadian right wing extremist redneck band I'm still not sure, but I would lean towards the former.