Depressions – Messing With Your Heart // Street Kid (BARN Records) 1978. Alright so maybe The Depressions were not on par with The Adverts or The Buzzcocks. Maybe, like The Cortinas, there was a bit of a punxploitation element to the band. I can’t deny that. The Depressions were older dudes like The Vibrators or The Stranglers. They started off as a pub rockin’ Faces type band and actually jumped on the punk bandwagon pretty late. They tried to make up for this by cutting their hair really short and dyeing their hair blonde. Hell, one of them even wore an eye patch. Brawls broke out at their shows, someone died. They got a bad rep and eventually they changed their name to what they thought was the more politically correct “DPs”. Yes that’s correct. The “DPs”. Penetrating your system in stereo as it were. Then they just gave up. Poseurs? I think not. So what if they weren’t “punks” per se? The Depressions wrote some great songs and lived the life. Check out the lyrics to the B-Side Street Kid. Pure fuckin’ genius I say! Available along with everything else they released on the Captain Oi label which means US folks are paying import.
Hardcore Podcasts
September of 2010 I put together eight Hardcore Podcasts. You can check them out here if you are interested. For more insight into how I came up with the years 78-90 for the First Wave you can read about The Hardcore Superiorty Myth.
Nice, their track “chains and leather” is great!
Great band good single
The Depressions get slagged a lot for being “second string”, “punxploitation”, and “sexist”. But really! Music alone, these badboys could’ve blown the Adverts, Cortinas, even the Clash offstage anynight. Listen to those monster basslines, dual guitar slashings, deadly riffs, vicious lyrics!. One of the top ten English crews in my book. Most underrated punk band ever?
The DPs album was pretty disappointing however.
Well,well, just found this at Google. Want to say thanks for some thoughtful comments and reviews. The Depressions, we were obviously very influenced by the Punk movement in 1976. The whole grass roots music scene in the UK underwent a much needed kick up the ‘A. In our minds it had become more in line with what we had been about for a few years, originally being a brash bunch of council estate kids called ‘TONGE’ playing ‘WHO,SMALLFACES,MOTOWN’ covers as well as learning to write our own songs. Musically we always tried our hardest to improve. ( as musicians young and old should always strive to) . We made many mistakes and errors of judgement in the chaos of that era. The Blond hair dye was a record company proviso to make us look different. Some of the more sexist lyrics I squirm at now!
@Dave! Thank you for writing in! The Depressions album is a great angry rock-n-roll album. Trends be damned..that may be why it is a bit more timeless today.
As far as the sexist lyrics, most of us have said things about the ladies in our younger years that if we heard later in adulthood, would make us cringe. Your comments were just committed to vinyl so you can’t deny em like the rest of us do!