Punk Rock

The Adverts - Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts (1978)

I always have a hard time with favourites. It depends so much on mood or day of the week, and I could probably come up with at least a couple for every genre and sub-genre. However, the Adverts debut full length has always been near the top, ever since I first heard it in my early teenage years.

Since I'm not going to vote for my own pick for our first Album Club, I'll just throw my thoughts on the release in this first post here. Sort of a preview of the type of thing I'm hoping the album club threads will contain I guess.

1978 was an interesting year. The Sex Pistols abrasive angst kept going strong with bands like X-Ray Spex, Billy Idol was practicing his radio friendly pop in Generation X, and the Clash put out what might be my least favourite of their albums in Give em Enough Rope.

At the time, something about those original 11 tracks on Crossing the Red Sea, just seemed different. Better written, more poetic, deeper or something. Tracks like Safety in Numbers were already getting bored with the state of the current UK punk scene, as it started morphing into something different. Tracks like No Time to be 21, though nothing super original conceptually, just seemed to hit different. And of course they had a few of their previously released standard singles like One Chord Wonders.

Start to finish I think this is a solid album, and it's still in the regular rotation today. I've sadly never owned an original pressing, but finally picked up the 2011 gatefold reissue earlier this spring, which must be my 4 or 5th copy of this album over the years.