Despair - The Birth Of The Vibrators 73' - 75' (LP)

Before The Vibrators, before British punk became the soundtrack of life for generations of disaffected, rebellious youth, before the Sex Pistols swindled the whole world - there was DESPAIR. Future Vibrator, Ian “Knox” Carnochan began honing his songwriting and guitar playing chops in an English cottage just outside of London where he and a group of fellow outsider musicians formed a tight knit pack of no nonsense punk rockers.

Taking their name from a comic book by iconic American artist R. Crumb, Despair gigged regularly around London, including one show with a young Joe Strummer and his 101ers, while intermittently laying down tracks in a recording studio. Two of the songs from those early sessions - “Sweet Sweet Heart and “Dance To The Music (Whips ‘n’ Furs)” - would live on in the repertoire of The Vibrators, while the others remain just as you will hear them here, raw and raucous, with echoes of what was to come (The Vibrator’s debut album Pure Mania was just around the corner) and, perhaps, what could have been.

• Studio recordings from the vault of Vibrators frontman Knox and his earlier incarnation of glam punk rockstars, Despair!
• Features songs that would later be recorded by The Vibrators - “Sweet Sweet Heart” and “Dance To The Music (Whips ‘n’ Furs)!”