Music for the modern misfIT #4 - I Can’t come!
Into August, we look at The Snivelling Shits - once called the band that “Reduced every cliché of the (punk) era to as few chords as possible, then spattered them with a stupidity that would have been rank if it wasn't so magnificent” by writer Dave Thomson
This compilation release of The Snivelling Shits came about well after UK76 Punk was sat twitching like frog’s legs on high voltage - 12 years after the band’s debut in 1977. Brainchild of Zigzag Journalist Giovanni Dadomo, the Snivelling Shits were everything that first-wave punk was touted to be - they were vile, uncouth and crass- their subject matter was disgusting to contemporaries, they sounded shit, but they were so very authentic. Dadomo managed to leverage his writing to get the band’s first single release “I can’t come” as NME’s single of the week in early 1980, later becoming the title of their compilation album well after the band had earned their stripes on the London club scene
I Can’t Come - starts with a punked up version of “Waiting for my man” in “Crossroads”, in which I’d argue is where the shits are at their most musically competent - a lot is going on and it’s a (quite literally) a seminal opener to the album. Then comes the eponymous “I can’t come” - it’s funny, because the song just doesn’t fucking finish, at a whole 6:20, it’s a sexual pathetic fallacy about speed & orgasmic failings- it can seem self-indulgent at times. Still, it’s a cleverly written melting pot of iconoclastic punk iconography. Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi & I Wanna Be your Biro up next, they’re both the weaker aspects of the album, but they’re by no means bad songs, they just don’t live up to the calibre of the rest of the album
Et moi Et Moi Et Moi is a cover of a song by French actor and musician Jacques Dutronc, one of many obscure cultural points that’s brought up in the album.
Then, on comes “Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima” - the album’s highlight and a ballad to the life of Japanese author, model and ultra-Shinto-nationalist Yukio Mishima. Mishima is deserving of his own written piece, id not manage to do him justice. But this song does, for a while, Mishima was the epitome of masculinity, and this song explores that. Dadomo and the shits are well read, and musically the song flows like a Siouxsie & the Banshees x Tenpole Tudor epic. Give it a listen - now, you’re commanded to do so
The next three - Only 13, Terminal Stupid and Isgodaman are where the Shits earned their reputation - a triumvirate of proper filth & fury that would make a Swastika-clad Sid Vicious blush. Again - punk at its most proper and intelligent. Following on from this comes “There ‘Ain’t no Sanity Clause” - a song written by Dadomo for Dave Vanian of The Damned - The Damned had released it as a sort of tongue-in-cheek grab in November 1980 to try and get in the Christmas singles chart, but it didn’t amount to much. The song details a string of supernatural incidents involving the Damned, including Dave Vanian being visited by Dracula in exchange for ten pints of blood. The Shits re-recorded the song in 1987 as a part of “I Can’t Come” and managed to show up The Damned at their own game, what comes out is a Motörhead meets Vibrators esque display of punk brilliance - that every Bat and Wyvern under the wings of the Damned need to give a listen to.
Dadomo also co-penned The Damned’s “I Just Cant be Happy Today”before slurking away behind a desk in the NME and slaving to Journalistic practices until he died in 1997. Since then, the remaining Shits have reformed here and there, playing Rebellion festival as recently as 2019. They’ve since release “Shits Alive!” before the untimely demise of founding member Pete Makowski in 2021
And thus were the Snivelling Shits - their skidmarks happily smeared upon punk history.
