The History Of The Buzz Kids

Chapter Three

The history of The Buzz Kids. One live performance and Eight Songs.


Here follows a review our only performance got in Sounds Magazine

Garry Bushell wrote.

I wonder if that peerless pop pioneer David Bowie knew what he was inflicting on us when he recorded The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. A classic concept album for sure, but ever since then, doom-laden youths have been recycling his ideas and boring the rest of us to death.
This East London five-piece make the sort of music that ought to accompany a three-hour documentary on the life and times of East Berlin gravediggers during a major plague.
They`re dull, grey and grim. The Buzz Kids sound like Gary Numan in a tumble-dryer, look like anorexic ants and just listen to their song titles:
Deadend Yobs, National Service, They Wore Black Shirts, If Looks Could Kill...do us a favour! Just reading the set list is enough to bring on depression at a clown school.
All these David Bowie copy-cats are a bore. What makes Bowie great is his ability to change and challenge.
He`s never been stuck in a rut, he doesnt rip off other people`s ideas. Dig out all the albums, listen, learn and do your own thing.
Buzz Kids singer Garry Johnson is a piss-poor pub performer who is never likely to break out of that cul-de-sac.
Garry will appear on Top Of The Pops around the same time that Pinky and Perky touch down at Heathrow Airport.

That review killed the band and signalled the death of a wanna be pop star and the birth of a Punk Poet.

Here are the lyrics to our Eight songs.

National Service:

Born in a city of tower blocks
Alcatraz without the rocks
Sent to overcrowded schools
Beaten up if you broke the rules
And our mothers sit and cry
Cos they know were gonna die

We beat the boredom with slimming pills
Go to the seaside in stolen wheels
Bunk offschool every other day
If we get caught they make us pay
So we watch out for the boys in blue
You never know whose watching you

Soldiers wearing pin-stripe suits
Want us to march in bovver boots
Army life they say is fun
Clear the streets of all the young
We want you to go to war
And kill another countrys poor

We are the class who fight their wars
Sometimes stael from department stores
You know the kids that their kind hates
Cos we live on council estates
So they`ve invented a new state game
Playing soldiers is the name


The Buzz Kids:

Buzz kids of the neighbourhood
Never do and never should
Take any notice of what you say
Or wave flags on empire day
Just write graffiti on the wall
And never go to Sunday school

Buzz kids of the world unite
Dont see things in black and white
Who wants to wear a uniform
National anthems make me yawn
I`ve had enough of the marching beat
Get the soldiers off the street

From Oxford Street to Gretna Green
Tanks and soldiers can be seen
Carry your passport wherever you go
Answer questions just yes or no
Smart kids just be deaf and dumb
Always walk and never run

Scotland Yard and their book of rules
Suspect the kids who take the blues
Hands in your pockets beware of the law
And always remember to bolt your door
Buzz kids and the girl next door
Dont wanna play in your cold war


Ballad Of The Young Offenders:

Working class boys are sent away
To learn a lesson so they say
Give them three months custody
A bit of para-military
With circuit training every day
So they`re too tired to run away

Wake them at six to scrub the bogs
Black or white call them dogs
And your marching everywhereIn itchy prison underwear
Detention centre and borstal boys
For hateful screws were just toys

Doing three months of early nights
Trying to sleep with all the lights
Miss your girlfriend and all your mates
Locked outside the prison gates
But were all taking lots of stick
In and out the bloody nick

They cut your hair and dare you to swear
And silly clothes they make you wear
Even if your in for stealing cars
They still drug you behind bars
Playing doctors night and day
All your rights are taken away
Always in private so the public cant see
What they do to you and me


They Wore Black Shirts:

They wore black shirts and carried guns
All their women looked like nuns
Trigger-happy we knew their names
But we couldnt place their aims
I know they believed in civil war
And got horny reading 1984
All there cars were bullet-proof
But they never told the truth

I know they recruit all of the time
From building sites and the assembly line
Burning bibles and quoting God
To those who are in the firing squad
Something to do with state control
Tapping the phones of who know
And sending people to work on farms
With barbwire fences and burglar alarms

They wore black shirts and overcoats
And took away the teenage votes
Sunday drinking had to stop
Said the son of god and crooked cop
And they built walls all over town
So we all ripped their posters down
Think we stopped them just in time
Just before the midnight chime


War Games:

When Hitler was high on speed
The Royals played golf in our hour of need
And working class boys were sent to die
As Churchill`s friends told another lie
The world war games go on and on
Vera Lyn sings the same old song
And we are thirty years on
Playing around with the atomic bomb

World war three is blowing in the breeze
Half the world are refugees
And politicains should hang from trees

The world war games go on and on
Press the button drop the bomb


Suburban Rebels:

Suburban rebels playing at reds
You would be urban terrorists
You dont scare us with your badges and banners
You know fuck all about heavy manners

You think your hard when your on TV
But trendy wankers dont scare me

Suburban rebels from public schools
You got big mouths but little balls
Wave hammer and sickles never Union Jacks
You got yellow streaks all down your backs

Suburban rebels piss me off
Mummy`s a swinger and daddy`s a toff
Urban terrorists dont make me laugh
Buy a bar of soap and have a bath

You think your class when your on TV
But trendy wankers dont fool me

They`re the sons and daughters of well off bankers
Tom Robinson`s army of trendy wankers
Middle class kiddies from public schools
Who write their slogans on toilet walls
Got lots of mouth when your in a crowd
But your alone you dont speak loud


Deadend Yobs:

Deadend yobs got boxing football or rock`n`roll
If they`re any good at to save `em from the dole
But even if ya make it certain people will say
You`re still no good and you`ll be no other way
Cos you dont talk proper your accent aint true blue
You was born in a house in Hackney with a outside loo

They could be gangsters they could rob a bank
They could join the army learn to drive a tank
No hope, no luck, no future when you`re down and out
When your at the bottom nobody hears you shout
And authority keeps knocking you on the heads
From the day you`re born to the day your dead

School report read "your no good you`re a deadend yob"
Might just make it in a deadend job
So you break all the rules in and out of school
Getting into trouble nothing else to do
And when they nick us dont they bleeding love it
Sod the system gotta rise above it

Deadend yobs kids like me and you
We all know this story is true


If Looks Could Kill:

Bright lights hookers on blues
Kids with nothing left to lose
This is life in London town
Where Buzz Kids go to hang around

If looks could kill I`d be dead

Young lives wasted by knives
Teenage brides and mail-order wives
This is life in London town
Where Buzz Kids go to drown

If looks could kill I`d be dead


And some of those lyrics didnt die. They become recorded songs.
The Business `Suburban Rebels`
Insane Society `National Service`
Frankie Flame `If Looks Could Kill`

Another song from that era was also recorded
Klasse Kriminale `No Land Of Hope And Glory`

And all those lyrics appeared in my book Boys Of The Empire.