Pop Rivets | en

1979: The Pop Rivets, a Canterbury group of devoted acolytes to punk's gritty DIY ethos, release Greatest Hits, home-recorded and enclosed in handmade sleeves (later repressed in printed covers; later still retitled for its Hangman reissue). A more mod-oriented and less reserved TV Personalities or Desperate Bicycles, the Rivets (aka Rivits) retrospectively fit neatly in with the sloppy, violent pop noisemeisters of the era, endearingly careless (though even the best songs leave mere flesh wounds as opposed to the scars inflicted by their more prominent contemporaries).

Empty Sounds from Anarchy Ranch consolidates the band's sound into a tamer, more controlled — albeit equally ill-tempered — punk stew. While Fun in the U.K. is a compilation drawn somewhat randomly from both LPs, Live in Germany '79 simultaneously nods deeper to their UK punk basis and points up their obvious (again in retrospect) trash '60s roots and attitudes — all recorded in glorious monoloudarama. .