The Saints - Eternally Yours / I'm Stranded (photo in T's bathroom)
When Nick Cave and The Bad Seed’s album “Nocturama” came out I wondered who the fat-faced cat was singing in the video for Bring It On. I checked into it a bit and it led me to The Saints, a little known but heavily respected early “punk” band from Australia. I bought their first two albums just out of curiosity and with the thought that if Mr. Cave recommended them I should at least give them a chance.
Nobody sounds like The Saints, not then and certainly not now, which I think is why you don’t hear The Saints mentioned when most folks talk about the 1977 era of punk. It’s not just the fact that they were from Australia because they moved to London just as Punk was getting into full swing, but the fact that they were so aggressively themselves, so unwilling to pose, that relegated them to rock-nerd trivia land. Their music was raw but humorous and unlike the overtly political noise that was popular then, The Saints mostly bashed the boredom of their native land and the laziness of commercialism.
The Saint’s first album “I’m Stranded” is, if you trust Amazon’s ratings (which I don’t) their best. It is a good album, garage odd-rock with moments of reflection that don’t come off hokey. It’s fun as hell to listen to. But in my opinion their second album, “Eternally Yours” is what time it is. They introduced horns when everyone else was trying to look as menacing and stripped-down as possible, they attempted to start a new dance craze with Do the Robot. It failed. There is a weird kind of genius to this album; it’s aggressive without being calculated and often just straight funny. The Saints were unconcerned with fashion of any sort, musical, clothing or otherwise. To my mind, “Eternally Yours” reflects the ethos of the Punk Rawk, the belief that it was your duty to do whatever the fuck you felt like doing, while avoiding getting tangled up in all the nonsense that comes with it.
What was true then is just as true now. Too many groups are caught up in scene politics and codes of behavior and forgetting what the point is. As an antidote to this bullshit, I suggest a listen to The Saints, especially the 3 albums(“I’m Stranded”, “Eternally Yours”, and “Prehistoric Sounds”) before they splintered just as the 70’s came to an end. It will restore your faith.
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