Rough Trade Shops: Post Punk

I fancied myself to know quite a bit about post-punk before I came across this compilation, but there was still quite a lot of interest for me. The big players are all represented here, but those bands like PiL, Gang of Four, and The Fall comfortably rub shoulders with the lesser-known likes of Family Fodder, Blurt, and the Prats. The No Wave scene manages to creep onto this compilation in the form of DNA and James White and the Blacks. Scritti Politti and XTC might seem a bit out of place if you're only familiar with their later pop careers, but both songs fit in quite well (the difference between the two is that later XTC was better than the XTC featured here, but early Scritti Politti was much, much better than their later chart-toppers). In fact, Skank Bloc Bologna, the longest song on the entire comp, is one of my favorites.
One thing that really put a grin on my face while listening would be the female representation, being one of the fair sex myself, it was good to see that almost half of the songs featured are done by women. And rightfully so!
I do have a minor irritance with the inclusion of newer bands on here. The difference is obvious, they just sound too derivative, and I usually find myself skipping them. Nothing really bad, per se, but they would have done better with including more 70s/80s artists instead.

Ok, so, before I ramble on too far, this is a good overview of both the obvious and the obscure. But like I said before, and the ones who compiled this would agree with me, it isn't complete. There are quite literally hundreds upon hundreds of post-punk and no-wave bands out there that weren't represented (no Joy Division?), so keep listening! This is an excellent introduction to those uninitiated with the unparalleled, wildly experimental world of post-punk, and a good listen for those of us who already are.


A Collection of some of the most influential Post Punk....   October 28, 2003
 5 out of 7 found this review helpful

Glorious, sublime, exceptional, inspired....that's some of the superlatives That are deservedly heaped upon this fantastic collection by myself. Even if your not 100% completely up to speed on the Post-Punk scene, and don't know your "Gang of four" from your "Public Image Ltd", if you have even a passing interest in this music, you owe it to yourself to give this more than a passing glance. `Gang of Four' start things of with their twitchy spoken/shouted "I found that Essence Rare".....leading through to `The Pop Group's' neo-Dub punk of "We are all Prostitutes"...and not forgetting the bouncy Punk-funk of `Delta 5's - Mind your own Business', and the Dub-reggae of female trio `The Slits - Shoplifting'. The double album weighs in at a hefty 44 tracks...and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the quality of songs will suffer with such a large tracklisting...unfortunately you'd be wrong, as whoever the group of individuals were that complied this album, were obviously treated this project as a labour of love...(and it shows), easily the best (and most enjoyable way) to familiarise yourself with the Post-punk generation.


Pretty good but could be much better   September 20, 2003
 16 out of 20 found this review helpful

There are some really great bands on here, such as: Magazine, Gang Of Four, The Au Pairs, The Mo-Dettes, Delta 5, Essential Logic, ESG, Liliput, The Slits, The Raincoats, Young Marble Giants, and The Bush Tetras. All of the above named bands do not get nearly enough credit for how innovative and influential they were to future generations of musicians, which is why it is great to see them on here. But, the song choices for most of these bands were a bit disappointing. They were the obvious choices. Meaning that whenever you see one of these bands on a comp, the song which is featured here is usually the one that you'll find. Which is great for people who have never heard of these bands, but for the people who do know these bands, and were hoping for something different, or even perhaps more rare, it's not so great.

The biggest flaw that I saw in this compilation was the fact that not all the material is from the Post-Punk era (meaning the late '70s/early '80s). There are quite a few bands on here which are from today, and these bands have the tendency to rip off some of the earlier bands that are featured here. It is obvious which songs are from the present and which are from the past (even without looking at what year they are from), since the songs from the present pale in comparison to the ones from the past. Through their music, these new bands are trying to evoke a time and a place that they weren't even a part of, and because of that, they fail miserably. It is just not possible to re-create the spirit and the energy of the era (especially if you weren't around back then), and I don't even understand why they bother trying. I really wish that Rough Trade would have kept the compilation true to the era, and not featured these newer bands. If I wanted a compilation of bands from 2003, I would have bought one.

There were plenty of great Post-Punk era bands that are excluded from this comp, which could have been put in place of the 2003 bands, such as: The Passions, Y Pants, 8 Eyed Spy, Girls At Our Best, Los Microwaves, Lene Lovich, Nina Hagen, The Suburban Lawns, The Bloods, A Certain Ratio, The Revillos, Plastic Bertrand, The Normal, The Buggles, D-Day, The Tom Tom Club, Pylon, The Belle Stars and more. These bands would have fit in perfectly with the other Post-Punk era bands featured here.

And lastly, how could you have a Post-Punk comp, and not put Joy Division on it? That is just absurd.

If you are looking for an introduction to the Post-Punk era and/or don't know much about the music, you may enjoy these CDs, but if you really love the music of this era, and know a lot about it, you will probably find yourself disappointed.