Truth is, I never heard of them until the singer left to join another west London band called The Clash.

 

The 101ers had a kind of cult fame in those early punk days among friends who had seen them there before they supported The Sex Pistols and Joe Strummer decided he was going to pursue a different path from that moment on. I don’t suppose he regretted it.

 

They were a bit different from most of the pub rock bands playing souped-up R&B; their influence leaned more towards rockabilly, albeit played at a faster tempo than the old Teddy Boys would have liked.

 

Keys To Your Heart is the first song Strummer wrote and, for all its charm, I can’t really imagine The Clash doing a straight-up love song like this.

 

Its jangling rhythm would have needed speeding up considerably to make it work for them: the rhythm section would have required more energy, the guitar to be played with more aggression, and the singer’s gruff vocals would want to be angrier than this.

 

For all that, it would not have sounded out of place in Strummer’s post-Clash career with The Mescaleros – music I’d be far more likely to listen to today than angry protest songs about riots and unemployment.

 

The 101ers never released a record while they were together but they did record some of their songs, including this one, and Chiswick Records put it out on an EP once The Clash gained attention. It was followed by an album gathering those studio sessions together under the name Elgin Avenue Breakdown.