At first glance ‘Classic album’ may appear a little overblown or erratic for this series of classic Oi albums here at Creases Like Knives, but hear us out. The Blaggers ITA (originally sans the dub-styled ITA as just The Blaggers) emerged out of the band Complete Control, signed to Roddy Moreno’s Oi Records and frontman Matty Roberts (later Matty Blag) appeared in a 1980 BBC documentary about skinheads in the Shropshire new town of Telford.
Recorded and mixed over the space of a weekend in Wood Green’s Southern Studios, the album on Words of Warning celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and remains in print through Mad Butcher Records. When you consider what was actually happening in the early nineties – council estate riots across the country, shopping centres divested of sports and designer wear using stolen Cosworths, LA burning after Rodney King, cut-price privatisations of our energy and water, the British far right getting their first taste of electoral success in East London (and a kicking in South London) and the IRA casually shelling Downing Street with mortars from the back of a Ford Transit – then it’s all on here, a document, almost.
A subsequent major deal with Parlophone (then part of the arms-selling EMI conglomerate) saw them dubbed the Blaggers EMI, Blaggers Inc. or, even worse, a ‘student band’ among some quarters of punk merit arbitration. Though you at least could now source their records from the 99p bin at HMV rather than sending soapy stamps to some anarcho-crusty distro.
Andrew Stevens sat down with founder member and guitarist Steve, saxophonist Olaf, and hornsman Brendan to find out more. Together with vocalist Christy, who joined later, they talked him through the album track-by-track.
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