*This title is no longer available via Carpark Records*
Hot on the heels of Sex Pistols-mania, brothers Alan and Paul Apperly knew they had to form a punk band. After placing an ad in the paper and turning down a few vocalists, they settled on Robert Lloyd. He had carried a few of the Ramones amps on their first UK tour and followed the Pistols around, which was punk experience enough. In early ’77, Birmingham’s very first punk band, the Prefects, were formed. Their lifespan was brief and existence unheralded, but somehow they managed to attain the type of punk to post-punk experimentalism only seen by the likes of Joy Division and Wire. Early tracks like the 7 second “VD”(John Peel’s favorite) and “Escort Girls” would be Class of ’77 Punk Rock classics, if anyone ever heard them, but that was only a starting point.
Development was quick. Artrock and Krautrock influences begin combining with their punk rock roots. As Paul Morley would write a few months later, “The Pistols/Clash are the dinosaurs they’re reacting against…” First, there was “The Bristol Road Leads to Dachau”, where the Prefects usual terseness and humor were left behind for an intense, repetitious, blistering 10 minute account of a pub bombing. By their 1979 radio sessions, they were balancing creatively arranged and produced taut punk numbers, with what must be some of greatest post-punk of the era. But before any proper records could be released, they imploded and reinvented themselves as the Nightingales, blazing trails similar to the Fall and Mekons, and the Prefects were largely forgotten.
Acute Records is excited to present for the first time ever their complete studio recordings plus two live tracks for the definitive Prefects collection. With this long overdue reissue, the Prefects place amongst the most significant UK bands of the era will hopefully be restored and you can hear what Hyped2Death’s Chuck Warner called “the best unsigned ’77-78 punk band in the UK.”
