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Patrick Stott | Rolleston, Canterbury, New Zealand | 10/12/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"The Bollock Brothers main claim to infamy was the 1983 album `Never Mind The Bollocks', a poorly executed but complete cover of the Sex Pistols' album of the same name, with a few altered lyrics.



With that in mind, it's easy to see where `'77, '78, `79' is coming from. This is badly done, but in a B-grade horror movie so-bad-it's-almost-good kind of way. It supposedly features a number of guest artists, including the three surviving members of the classic Sex Pistols line up, Billy Idol, a couple of members of Killing Joke, and comedian Arthur Mullard. However, this may be stretching the truth a little, as Jock McDonald claimed to be in a band called 4Be2 (which became the Bollock Brothers) with John Lydon (Johnny Rotten to the rest of us), but McDonald's co-conspirator was actually Lydon's brother Jimmy.



The eight tracks here clock in at 23 minutes, and really, it's 23 minutes of not much, but this is the Bollock Brothers after all, so expectations shouldn't be high in the first place. Basically, the whole album is simplistic covers played with a decent rendition of an old school Punk sound. It's catchy enough, particularly opener "Midnight Moses", originally by the Alex Harvey Band, but like everything the Bollocks have done, the lack of effort means it ends up, well, rubbish. The Who's "Can't Explain" is completely beyond the band's ability. Gary Glitter's moron stomper "Rock And Roll" is promising enough, but McDonald's silly Ronnie Biggs impersonation, reading a poem from the Easter Bunny, mucks it up.



The Bollock's original "Count Dracula (Where's Your Troosers)" has a 70s Glam Rock feel similar to the previous Gary Glitter track crossed with the Sex Pistols at their drunkest, and is probably the best song on the album. It has a catchy little melody which isn't a world beater, and silly, camp horror lyrics, but its pleasant enough to listen to.



Two Sex Pistols songs get the Bollock treatment here. "Did You No Wrong" has no guts to it, and it was hardly a Pistols classic anyway, while, incredibly, "Satellite" is performed worse than the original. The silly voiceover makes a return for "Wipeout", and for reasons best known to Jock McDonald, advertises the movie Mad Max 2. "Day Tripper" becomes almost a spoken word song, and probably should have stayed that way, because the sung parts are way off key.



If slapdash Punk karaoke sounds like fun, you could try this. You could also watch the test pattern on TV. It would be equally as entertaining."