The Jerks
Punk77 says….The Jerks produced a bone fide 24 carat B punk classic with their single Get Your Woofin Dog Off Me / Hold My Hand (1978 Underground Records). Stupid lyrics (originally entitled ‘Get Your Fucking Dog Off Me‘) yet a great tune and Iggy’s Be Your Dog Thrown in for good measure at the end. B sides not bad either. Melodic punk. Overground Records are pushing it saying they could have been bigger. Virtually none of the late seventies punk bands made it any further because they neither had a strong enough fan base nor, if you removed the punk from them, had too much to separate them from any other band to survive the eighties and The Jerks were no different.
They did at least have a few good singles that ebbed and flowed as punk mutated and that’s enough to ensure their place in punk history and bootleg compilations! Excellent tracks include Back to Berlin, Cool and You’re Not Worth it. All these and more collected by Overground on their Jerk Off compilation. A fine band.
Overground Records say: Having witnessed the 1976 ‘Anarchy In The UK’ tour, five teenagers from West Yorkshire met in a dilapidated garage and plugged in to create their own blend of noise, attitude and disturbance. This garage produced Yorkshire’s most successful punk band who outsold Abba in that part of the world and entered the top 100 with their debut single ‘Get Your Woofin Dog Off Me’. To this day it remains one of the fastest records ever recorded. The success of the single ensured gigs were plentiful and tours followed with Penetration, Generation X , The Adverts and Sham 69.
Their increasing profile brought them to the attention of Lightning Records who promptly signed them while the major labels deliberated. This deal saw the release of their second single Cool in 1978.
Lightning developed into Laser under the wing of Warner Brothers. The band relocated to London and recorded their third and final single ‘Come Back Bogart’ in January 1980. Despite good reviews and radio play it flopped and the band called it a day.
The Jerks exemplified British Punk rock: raw urgent, fast and provocative. A strong visual image and no shortage of potential hit songs. With more vigorous marketing a larger slice of luck, the ending could have been a lot different.
Abridged from Overground Records press release for the new Jerks Cd ‘We Hate You’ – Live at The Vortex, Marquee and Leeds.
TalkPunk
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