White Trash

Black & Blue Records BNB 001

With the incredible surge of interest in late lamented The Kidda Band (their singles are fetching up to £200 on E Bay), comes news that singer and songwriter Alan Hammonds (now relocated to Spain) has resurfaced under the new identity of JOHNNY BLACK, supposedly some English ex pat who's spent four years in the Australian outback with only goats for company.

White Trash is his self promoted demos collection (contact him at www.18tilidie.com), a 10 track set of acoustic strummed contemporary protest commentary that casts a cynical and sharp eye over screwing up things by screwing around (When Harry Met Sally), the images put over by media women like Jordan (Women's Liberation's Finest Hour), rapist footballers (Roasting), Pete Doherty and Kate Moss (Baby Shambles), girls taking part in drunken nightclub rumbles (The Crime watch Reconstruction), gay bashing (The Only Gay In The Village), being hounded by ex girlfriends (I Just couldn't Say It To Your Face), embarrassing yourself at the office knees up (The Office Party), the immediate post 7/7 paranoia aboard London transport (No More Freedom) and, oh yes, a lovely caustic dig at Stoke on Trent's favourite whinging son on All Robbie Williams Does Is Moan.

More a scabrous Billy Bragg than James Blunt, thank God, this is well worth tracking down. 

Mike Davies