'THIS IS FREE EUROPE' - 30th ANNIVERSARY ALBUM RERELEASE, 7 OCTOBER 2022 .....

'THIS IS FREE EUROPE', first released by Terz Records in 1992, is digitally rereleased on Spotify and the other streaming platforms by German label Mad Butcher Records in Germany on 7 October 2022 - and by yours truly here on Bandcamp. It just happens to be Bandcamp Friday.

Included is the original album insert with all the lyrics in English and German, translated by my late friend George Wolter from Halle/Saale in East Germany, who was our tour manager and interpreter for the GDR tours.

This was my first ever album release in Germany, after six in the UK and one in Canada. Between 1986 and 1990 I had done four tours of the GDR, then two more after the Wall came down, during which I started performing in West Germany as well (I had done some 25 gigs in the East before a single one in the West, and had learned to speak German in the GDR.) Since then I have done hundreds of gigs all over Germany.

The title track and 'Market Sektor One' (which comes in two versions, English and German) were written as a reaction to the chaos, poverty, unemployment and dashed dreams I saw in many places in East Germany when I returned after 'reunification' - and to the dark shadow of fascism which was beginning to drift across forgotten towns as the privatising Treuhandanstalt closed down industries, threw people out of their jobs and homes, turned their communal cultural centres into used car salesrooms, ripped their childcare provision away and let the 'elbow society' run riot. (There is a whole chapter about this in my autobiography 'Arguments Yard'.)

The album title has a double meaning. In the opening title track it is a shout of defiance - I wrote 'This is Free Europe!' after a gig in Hoyerswerda near the Polish border where we were outnumbered and attacked by fascists. But the brilliant cover drawing, showing the chaos, greed and disappointment of reunification, changes the words into a sarcastic sneer. 'THIS is Free Europe'?

The German version of 'Market Sektor One' has been covered by two German bands, and as an 'Ossi-Englander' I am very proud to have written something which struck such a chord.

Since it was my first release in Germany after 12 years as Attila and 7 albums, most of the rest of the tracks had been out before, but there are many different versions and rare pieces here.

The title track is the original studio version I did for this album - a live one was used on subsequent releases, and this has been rarely heard up until now. There's a beautiful piano rendition of 'Tyler Smiles' done with my friend Richard Holgarth, who produced the album, a version of 'Holiday in Albania' updated after the place was handed over to gangster pyramid sellers, a very punky French version of 'Libyan Students From Hell' and my cover of 'Washington Bullets' by The Clash, originally done for a tribute album called 'The Never Ending Story.'

Given my later embracing of Leon Rosselson's 'Diggers' Song' with Barnstormer 1649 it's amusing to listen back to 'The Liggers' Song' - my rather irreverent cover version about pissheads who nick bands' riders at gigs, backed by my great friends and GDR tour partners Newtown Neurotics.

'The Iron Men Of Rap', about boastful, misogynistic gangsta rappers, was recorded with my friends The Men They Couldn't Hang and was originally the B-side of their single 'A Map of Morocco'. 'Jingo Bells' is simply prophetic of Brexit, 'The Bible According To Rupert Murdoch' was recorded ready for my first Australian release shortly afterwards and included for a bit of fun, as was 'Tammy's Song', my response to 'Stand By Your Man' and sung by my Harlow pal Sarah 'Subservient' Ross. It's very, very silly. As is 'Retrespective Abortion', written about the clueless, upper-class rower Tory Sports Minister Colin Moynihan's attitude to football.

And also included is 'Sawdust and Empire', the title track of my second album in 1984, written about the Empire yearnings behind the Falklands War and, as 'Glanzendes Empire' one of the central pieces in those East German gigs.