When the punk rock scene began to ignite in the U.K. in 1976, it inspired thousands of kids to pick up cheap guitars and start singing about dole queues, but that wasn't all. Plenty of musos who were playing moribund stuff picked up on the notion that there was a new audience for songs that were tough, tuneful, and straightforward, and if they didn't exactly fit the punk template, they were still a valuable corrective to the doldrums of mid-'70s rock. One such band was the Flys; three of the four members had been playing in a proggy hard rock outfit called Midnight Circus, but after seeing
the Clash, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Neil O'Connor saw the light and overhauled their sound and style. Very little of the Flys' recorded body of work sounds truly "punk," but their smart, hooky, and elemental melodies, tight guitar work, witty lyrics, and amusingly snarky neo-
Bowie vocals were thoroughly enjoyable then and now, and "Love and a Molotov Cocktail" was one of the truly great singles of 1977, a year that produced more than its share of punk anthems. While they never scored a real hit, the Flys managed to release two full albums -- 1978's Waikiki Beach Refugees and 1979's Own -- and a fistful of single sides before they called it quits in mid-1980, and
Today Belongs to Me: The Complete Recordings 1977-1980 is a two-CD set that gathers everything they issued in their lifetime, along with eight unreleased tracks. Waikiki Beach Refugees is a bit better in terms of songs but suffers from a rather flat production, while Own sounds crisper and more imaginative but is a bit shorter on instant classics, but both albums are well worth hearing and certainly merit a wider audience, while non-LP sides like "Civilization," "Me and My Buddies," "Lois Lane," and "Undercover Agent Zero" would improve practically any mixtape of U.K. new wave nuggets. Lovingly assembled and featuring extensive liner notes (with plenty of commentary from Neil O'Connor, who would go in to join his sister
Hazel O'Connor's road band),
Today Belongs to Me: The Complete Recordings 1977-1980 is the definitive Flys collection, and if you have a taste for early U.K. punk and/or hard pop, this will make you a convert. ~ Mark Deming