Punks On 45 by TheWaterboys

I recorded this with my mates in 1981 as a parody of the then-massive "Stars On 45" craze; grimly cheerful medleys of Beatles and other '60s classics sung over disco beats. We loathed those records, seeing them as a shallow nostalgic diminishment of what had once been great. So we made our punk version as a protest/pastiche, complete with moronic intro music a la Stars On 45, dodgy DJ talkover (brilliantly done by real DJ and Ensign Records man Chris Hill), and a melee of punk songs. At the end we morphed into reggae and let the words of The Clash's immortal White Man In Hammersmith Palais make the point.

We almost released it under the name The Rolling Grundies (after Bill Grundy, the drunk TV presenter who encouraged the Sex Pistols to swear on TV and so unintentionally turned punk into a national phenomenon) but changed our minds because we we didn't want to have to deal with it if the record took off. Especially if people missed the angle and thought we were simply cashing in on the medley craze.

I sing lead on two of the songs - if you can guess which, post a comment in the timeline. The chap in the picture is my old skool-pal Crigg who sang three of the others.

There was a 'b' side too - "Noise On 45" - 6 minutes of random musical bashings, dog growlings and chants of "noise noise noise" over the same disco beat. But I will spare you that.