Edition limited to 300 copies
War Extention is proud to announce the vinyl re-issue of “Rok y Roll” by Vic Serf & The Villains originally released by the It’s War Boys label on cassette in 1982. Musicians on the album comprised Vic Serf, Cathy Spermwrecker, Rita Chulo and Larry O’Houlihan along with guest appearances from Ron Dealo, Lepke B. and Sara Fancy. The recording is situated in a particularly fervent and inventive period of 1980’s independent and experimental music making, in which many musicians moved freely between such bands as Milk From Cheltenham, Tesco Bombers, Raincoats, Sarah Fancy, and record labels such as Rough Trade, Y Records, and UMYU in Barcelona. This album, however, was more part of a rampant recording program by Whelton in which he released, with help from many collaborators, an irrepressible number of bands and their albums, such as by the Just Measurers, Milk From Cheltenham, Amos and Sara, The Aaron Tenecil Singers, Klak Klak Moguls as well as Vic Serf & The Villains.
“Rok y Roll” imagines an alien race based on a planet far away who have received radio signals beamed from earth in the 50’s – rock and roll music. They assume that these signals are the language of the earth people and, inspired to communicate in the spirit of galactic fellowship, concoct a suitable reply. Unfortunately, their culture has no concept of music or song and, as a consequence, their replies are somewhat skewed. “Rok y Roll” is the result.
The It’s War Boys’ record label was an epitome of musical subversion, resistance to all the crap happening in 80’s Britain and a fast rolling index of beauty and fun. The label was originated by Lepke B., Jim Whelton, Susan B. Smoothe and C.D. Greyt. The music, recorded mostly on lo-fi tape machines, and borrowed 4 track cassette machines, found its locus in the various squats and derelict mansions that defined a now long-ago London. Important to this was the ever-present involvement of non-musicians and the untutored approaches and altered techniques they employed. Rejecting the wannabe naked careerism of 80’s pop, IWB’s mission was, as Susan B. Smoothe said, ‘nothing less than to turn the whole rotting wriggling carapace of music on it’s back and carefully prod each segment with a perceptually sharpened stick’.
The question remains… Was “Rok y Roll” a mining of past forms of inverted science fiction, in which chronologically displaced music functioned as an alien artifact… or was it an all-out attack on popular music forms? Primarily, though, “Rok y Roll” could be read as a celebration of utter naffness. Vic Serf and his collaborators asked ‘how atrocious could a music and the idea behind it be? What would result?’
Here you have the answer!