Of all the bands I expected to become proper pop stars in punk’s Year Zero of 1977, the one I probably had highest hopes for was The Boys.
Predictably, they never had a hit of any kind, though I still think their second single, The First Time, should have been a huge hit. And, in all honesty, I still think their later single, Brickfield Nights, would have hit number one if radio stations had put it on their playlists.
With commercial instincts like that it’s probably just as well I never worked in A&R for a record label, though listening to them now, it’s inarguable that they were one of the founding fathers of what became Power Pop.
This is their debut single, from early in 1977, when they were briefly the only punk band with a recording contract, having signed to NEMS just after the Pistols were sacked by EMI, most of their peers having made one-off deals with indie labels like Stiff.
I Don’t Care probably wins the prize for the punkiest single title (and lyrics), and its intro is something of a classic too, even if it doesn’t have the pop tunefulness of their later releases, and I remember seeing them support John Cale around the time it came out, and later with The Ramones.
The Boys were led by Matt Dangerfield (vocals, guitar) and Casino Steel (keyboards, vocals) who had both been in seminal pre-punk bands The Hollywood Brats (where they first came up with their signature song, Sick On You) and London SS (with Tony James and Brian James), joined by Honest John Plain (guitar), Duncan ‘Kid’ Reid (bass, vocals) and Jack Black (drums). No, not that Jack Black!
They broke up in the summer of 1981 after four albums, eight singles and a novelty Christmas album collecting the festive singles they had put out each year – punked-up Christmas songs released under their alter-ego The Yobs (an anagram of The Boys, obviously) and adopting the individual pseudonyms Noddy Oldfield, Ebenezer Polak, Kid Vicious and H.J.Bedwetter.
The Boys reunited in 1999 and made a new album in 2014 – something of which I was unaware until now.