Various Artists: Punk Me Up - A Tribute To The Rolling Stones

Anyone brave (or should that be foolhardy?) enough to watch our UK Connection show on the SoT YouTube channel will already know that I am not the biggest fan of The Rolling Stones. Nor do I exactly love the punk scene, so what were the chances of Cleopatra Records’ various artists punk compilation paying tribute to The Stones somehow floating my boat? Well, either way, here we are with Punk Me Up - A Tribute To The Rolling Stones, a 15 track compilation featuring a host of bands who, to these uneducated eyes, appear to hail from the 70s and 80s, reimagining some of The Stones best known songs.

It’s Jah Wobble & Jon Klein who open this collection with “Start Me Up� and blow me, if the spoken word adaptation of this song’s lyrics don’t grab you right out of the blocks. Suddenly there’s a contemporary off-hand sneer that makes things feel very current - and all this before a suitably forceful version of the song itself kicks in properly. From there, it has to be said that most of this romp is good fun, Peter And The Test Tube Babies’ (it must be 4 decades since I heard “Banned From The Pubs�!) non-flash rip-roar of “Mother’s Little Helper�, Queers’ buzz-saw of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash�, Flamin’ Groovies bumping, thumping “She Said Yeah� (although the woo-woo section sounds incredibly forced…) and The Angry Samoans’ “Miss You� all hitting the mark, if not exceeding expectations.

As ever with these kind of releases, not everything quite comes off, Richard Jobson is as pretentious as ever on The Skids take of “Wild Horses�, while my favourite song here, “Gimme Shelter� is thoroughly and unmercifully mangled by Chrome. However, the good outweighs the bad, even if there’s a fair smattering of throwaway, playing it for fun shenanigans that probably doesn’t really endear itself to anyone from either The Stones’ camp or the punk scene.

I’m not sure Keef and Mick ever envisioned being paid tribute to in quite this style, but if either of those old troopers were ever to clap an ear on this collection of (nearly as) old codgers giving their tunes a new lick of black paint, I’m sure they’d give these devils some sympathy.

Track Listing
1. Start Me Up �" Jah Wobble & Jon Klein
2. Mother’s Little Helper �" Peter And The Test Tube Babies
3. Honky Tonk Women �" Fear
4. Rocks Off �" Reagan Youth
5. Paint It Black �" U.K. Subs & Dead Boys
6. Jumpin’ Jack Flash �" The Queers
7. Midnight Rambler �" J.F.A.
8. Satisfaction �" The Vibrators
9. Sympathy For The Devil �" Anti-Nowhere League
10. She Said Yeah �" Flamin’ Groovies
11. Wild Horses �" Skids
12. Miss You �" The Angry Samoans
13. Angie �" The Members
14. Gimme Shelter �" Chrome
15. Street Fighting Man �" Pink Fairies

Added: September 11th 2024
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Cleopatra Records
Hits: 166
Language: english

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