Now this one is definitely a loud farting and fucking and fighting and puking and pissing and shitting and drinking and drinking and drinking sonic blast from my past. First heard of this long-gone group around the end of 1985, when I was 15 going on 16. Read about them in the Daily Record. They had been given a government grant to make their first record, "Beer And Sex And Chips And Gravy," that was rescinded when the actual resulting record was heard by the grant granters and the story hit the papers. So hearing about them was a happy accident. I got the album in Edinburgh, took it home…and it went straight to my mid-teenage heart, exhibiting, as it did and does, a wry juvenile toilet humour (it's funny as fuck and the humour still stands up after all these years) and an incredible tabloidesque use of words and wordplay by the crazy singer Muttley McLad.

I have always reckoned that man is a great, underrated wordsmith (if a very limited one, in that practically all his songs dealt with, well, beer and sex and chips and gravy) and that lines like "She said I was good looking and I looked a bit like George Michael/but she didn't want a fucking she were on her menstrual cycle" or "You are what you drink/and I'm a bitter man" simply can't be beat.

Muttley sings in a broad northern English accent (the band being from Macclesfield in Cheshire, where they get their name from), using broad northern slang, and I can't recall anybody else ever using words and singing like he does, making up his own words (at least I think they're his own words) like 'grummidge' (rummage) or 'sustinate' (get sustenance) or using the pub-conversational words (the album is recorded as if the band is in a pub and the songs are like drunken conversations put to music; brilliant concept) of overheard others laced through songs. Pretty fucking clever, all in all.

Now. When I say pretty fucking clever, I mean that with irritation-limitations. The misogyny he often displayed in his lyrics is genuinely disturbing in places, as is the rampant homophobia (he goes on about "battering poofs" all the time…and you know what they say about the worst gayhaters…) in many of the songs. But on one level it's all so cartoonish and juvenile it's impossible to take seriously, just a man who is old enough to know better trying too hard to be offensive.

Now. Talking about homophobia and misogyny might not make this record sound too wholesome. And indeed it isn't; it's certainly not to every taste. But the punk songs on "BASACAG" brilliantly and energetically convey the boredom of living in a small town (they never mention working, so it's basically an unemployed drunk's album) where there's nothing better to do than drink and fight and fuck or visit the fair…or visit Blackpool, as they do here. This song, and a few others, are amongst my all-time favourites, they're so uplifting and funny and un-PC and genuinely brilliant. Muttley, wherever you may be you cantankerous nutty old bastirt (and I doubt it's in a nursing home, as yer manager Slimy Git told me in an email recently)…I salute you for some great songs. Just don't shake my hand. We don't know where you've been…

Graham Rae is a Scottish scribbler from the cheery charming picture-postcard-perfect post-industrial up-and-coming internationally renowned tourist destination of Falkirk, now resident in the US. He has been writing for as long as he can remember (started at any early age, carving graffiti into womb walls) and am halfway through my first novel (well, third, but the other mishmash misfires don’t count),’ Weekend Warriors.’ He has been writing about film for various electronic and print publications for 18 years now, and you can see a sporadically entertaining eclectic selection of his ramble/rantings at www.filmthreat.com.

© 2008 Laura Hird All rights reserved.