The Cockney Rejects

The Wild Ones

Standalone CD debut for streetpunks’ rock makeover. The Rejects’ career was left in splinters due to stunningly violent gigs and biz-bothering self-destruction, then further torpedoed by escaping the Oi! genre they helped give birth to. Their 1982 turn to hard rock, The Wild Ones alienated punk and rock tribes, but with Pete Way producing it was a convincing about-face.

There are Daltrey touches in Jeff Turner’s pinched, goblin vocals, while Micky Geggus’s guitar is right up for the job. Both peak on the blues harmonicaadorned, bludgeoning force and speed of Some Play Dirty, while The Kinks’ Till The End Of The Day is a meeting of East and North London guttersnipe minds.

Geggus’s typically blunt, funny sleeve notes mercilessly berate John Fiddler of Medicine Head’s brief spell as co-producer and a mix which still sometimes sounds underpowered, but they are full of fondness for “gentle” Pete Way, and a chemicalguzzling hard rock lifestyle the Rejects loved while it lasted.