The Boys - The Boys

1. Sick On You
2. I Call Your Name
3. Tumble With Me
4. Tonight
5. I Don't Care
6. Soda Pressing
7. No Money
8. First Time
9. Box Number
10. Kiss Like A Nun
11. Cop Cars
12. Keep Running
13. Tenement Kids
14. Living In The City
15. Whatcha Gonna Do
16. Turning Grey
17. First Time (long version)
18. Lonely Schooldays
19. I Don't Care
20. Take A Heart
21. Run Rudolph Run (The Yobs)
22. The Worm Song (The Yobs)

So one of the visitors to this site had been looking to hear some stuff by The Boys, to which she found the BBC Radio 1 split with The Vibrators and the Live in Retford album. Not the best representation of their work, in my opinion, so my friend uploaded his copy of the album in 320kbps and sent me the link and said I should share it, as long as he took the time to upload it, especially in such good quality (for an mp3, that is).
This copy of the album is taken from the 2-CD set released by Captain Oi! that included the first two albums, plus a a bunch of bonus tracks. This first album is easily one of the best to come out of the punk explosion, period. It ranks up there "Fulham Fallout," "Life On The Line," "Damned Damned Damned," "Inflammable Material," etc. It's that good. It's simple power pop that is driven home like you're about to overdose on speed. It's so fun, it's so intense! To boot, there is a piano thrown in, which is just a wonderful added touch in my mind. Piano and punk rock just tend to blend well together for some reason.
This band also had three incredible musicians working together. Casino Steele had such a great ear for pop music, Duncan "Kid" Reid had an amazing voice for this kind of music (check out his cover of The Clash's "Complete Control" on The Clash punk rock cover album), and "Honest" John Plain didn't write very many songs, but he added this extra layer of guitar playing that had more personality than you can understand (listen to him play on The Lurkers' "Little Ole Wine Drinker Me" single and you'll know exactly what I mean).
Their first single, "I Don't Care," sold well enough to land them gigs playing with John Cale, The Police, XTC, The Damned, and Generation X, but the day this album came out happened to also be the same day that Elvis Presley died. Their record label stopped pressing this album and started pressing Elvis stuff instead. Thus, even if this album had received much more publicity, there'd be nowhere in hell to find the damn thing. I'm betting that an original pressing of this album will cost you a pretty penny. Lucky for us, word spread of them enough to get this schnazzy CD release of this amazing album. Captain Oi! has also recently released a 30th anniversary edition of this album which is probably worth checking out. Otherwise, you have this version of the album right here.
CLICK HERE, PUNK!