Red Rockers
Condition Red

As they say, over there, unfulfilled promise? Because here, at my home, they say Red Rockers.

And how do you go from that half-masterpiece that is “Condition Red” to the flops they put out immediately afterward, how do you go from an anthemic combat-rock to a frou-frou new wave that seemed like the unpresentable version of the Spandau Ballet, I still can't explain.

If you then take your name from a track by the great Dils – those who were for some the punk Everly Brothers and for all others the American Clash – it's like you flash before the eyes of those who still believe the future of uncompromising rock’n’roll and it's also expected that you sound a certain way, the way that “Condition Red” expressed so well.

They made me think a lot of Social Distortion’s “Mommy’s Little Monster”, the Red Rockers of “Condition Red”, if only I replaced a little naive revolutionary political philosophy with the epic and street poetry of Mike Ness, for that timeless desire to resist the rising, furious hardcore tide and continue to wave the banner of blatantly '77 punk’n’roll, clinging to the pylons of the tower bridge more often than to the bars of the golden gate. Then, it's true that Social Distortion started with the Clash to get to Johnny Cash while the Red Rockers didn't go beyond the Stiff Little Fingers, despite covering “Folsom Prison Blues” (with Jello Biafra on the microphone), but that notorious attitude, that was exactly the same, and there was nothing better than those two albums at the dawn of the '80s for me.

The A-side overflows with attitude, six tracks, six little classics in the short but intense history of punk rock, especially “Guns Of Revolution” and “Grow Up”; and the B-side also overflows with attitude, with a final crescendo, from the eponymous “Condition Red” to the beautiful “Live Or Die”, where the Clash are so much more than just a simple echo, a physical presence much more than a spirit hovering in the recording studio.

They sang convinced «Die rocker, die red», the Red Rockers of “Condition Red”, they ended with a kind of MTV hit, whether it went terribly or luxuriously for them, I don't really know.