Performance To Performance, Doing What You Want Me To

Of all the best qualities of early punk music, the most potent would be when dispossessed and bored rockers would throw the curtains back on the music machinery and expose it for the farce it really is: rebellious youth culture as just another form of drag. Late '70's punk was ready-made for this sentiment: if your band formed before even learning to play instruments, why pretend to invest on an emotional or intellectual level anyway? Going Through The Motions, taken from Amateur Wankers, a newly-released Acute Records compilation of everything by the 1976 working class British group The Prefects, distills this essence into a not-so-tidy nearly-5-minute rant, almost daring the audience to admit that they're as much a part of the sham as the band is. Although they toured with The Clash, The Jam and Buzzcocks, The Prefects as a whole never really fit into the standard punk mold and, unable to play the game the same way their peers did, quietly imploded soon after they'd formed. "Eventually," says vocalist/guitarist Alan Apperley in the liner notes, "We all got fed up and it fell apart. But that's how it should be, isn't it?" Purchase this essential cd at the on-line services of Carpark Records.