Sham 69 “Tell Us the Truth” 1978. Promo copy with press info flyer and glossy b&w photo. Today, February 9th, is front man Jimmy Pursey’s birthday (b. 1955). The album reached #25 in the UK. Side A of Tell Us the Truth is a live recording of raw punk energy where “Pursey cajoles and bludgeons audiences into listening to his band, arousing them from the usual inertia…into a frenzied enthusiastic mob” (from the press release). Allmusic reviewer Mark Deming says the live recording “captures the Cockney yob in his native environment, complete with football chants and a spontaneous chorus of “Knees Up, Mother Brown [at the end of “Borstal Breakout”].” It’s precisely this demographic that Sham 69 targets: again from the press release Pursey says, “A punk is a kid in Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Southampton who lives in a grimy industrial estate, wears an old jacket, dirty jeans, pumps, goes out at night, has a game of football on the green, throws a couple of bricks through a window for a bit of cheek, a kick. He likes the things likes, no fucking about…They’re the punks, they’re the kids that this was supposed to get over to.” The attitude, the sound, the chants all solidified Sham 69′s status as first gen Oi! rockers (really before the term was widespread as a musical descriptor).

Side B continues the young punk working class fury with seven studio tracks that decry the British class system (“Hey Little Rich Boy”) and generally the crap hand life has dealt the punks (“Family Life” and “Tell Us the Truth”).