So there I was on 25 June 1992 browsing the racks in Leeds market with my mate, when we stumbled across this beauty, Bad Dress Sense Goodbye … It Was Fun. We fell about laughing at the cover – hell, how could you not agree with that? and I bought this mini LP in a spirit of sheer joy.
There was something so great and endearingly amateurish about the whole thing, the cover, the insert and all, it just seemed to hark back to that whole punk thing* of getting together, having something to say, selling the bass player’s motorbike to pay for the pressing costs and smashing out a record. Goodbye … It Was Fun is all that.
Bad Dress Sense were born of the same scuzzy punky roots as daft pub punkers The Stupids, genres and nuances all get a bit blurry here, as they are wont to do in close-up – basically they shared at least one member, if not more at times. But Bad Dress Sense were a more serious proposition, netting a Peel Session after about two live gigs they cut Goodbye … It Was Fun in 1987. From the fact that singer Nick was sporting long hair a bandana and a heavy metal T-shirt I expected the music to be of the thrash metal/crossover variety, but what we get is pretty straight, rudimentary, hectoring Hüsker Dü style punk**.
It’s all pretty energetic, pretty good and well-intentioned, they mean it (man!). There are definite similarities to those North-Eastern bands who came along 5 years later who I really liked, like Leatherface, Guns ‘n Wankers and Dogpiss, who played it a bit tighter with a bit more variation. There’s a good noise on Goodbye … It Was Fun, but it is too short, the band didn’t have the chops yet to take it very far from source. Best track? ‘G.C.P’, the opener, starting with a dialogue clip from a film I don’t recognise, it buzzsaws away very pleasingly indeed.
The insert is great, crammed with every little detail they could possibly fit into it – lyrics, drawings, in- jokes, dedications, headlines it is the work of a band who knew they possibly wouldn’t get the chance to express themselves this way again. I like that, it makes it funny and a little poignant – not everything is for ever.
613 Down.
*later robbed by my NWOBHM brethren.
**but without the knobbly, complex bits.