Inner City Unit – Pass Out

Hype Text previously in Notes above:
"In April 1979 the first ICU converged at Turners Caddilac Ranch; the guilty parties were: Nik Turner (HAWKWIND)- Vox & Sax, Dead Fred - Vox & Keys, Trev (JUDGE) Thoms - Vox & Guitar, Mo Vicarage - Synth Dino Ferrari,- real name Ermanno Ghisio-Erba - (HERE & NOW)- Drums. Thoms and Ferrari were both in Steve Peregrin Took's 1977-1978 band Steve Took's Horns before being picked up by Turner for ICU.

They played the 1979 Glastonbury Festival as SPHINX this show was filmed by the BBC. After playing Stonehenge and various other festivals Dino In September the band released its 1st single Solitary Ashtray on its own label and begins to rise on the club-dump circuit. December 1980 see's our heros turning down the major label + staying with their own label (Riddle records) to record their 1st Album - PASSOUT at low cost in 3 days. The 3rd and final release on Riddle was the single.

PASSOUT is the first ICU album, it was self financed and reached number one in the indie album chart, back in the days when the indie album chart was taken from the sales from one shop "Rock On" in Camden Town, ..The distributor for this disk was ...Rock On, in Camden."

With a name that could be touted by a firm of hooligans and the sound of the suburbs on speed, here we have Inner City Unit, fronted by former hawk Nik Turner. I must admit that today is the first time I have listened to Pass Out in thirty-odd years. I regularly played this in the days when I didn't have that many records, and its good to give it a spin again. I purchased it from the legendary Colin at second-hand emporium Rock On, probably not long after its release. Rumour has it that they did a signing at WH Smiths and presumably off loaded a few records onto unsuspecting members of the public. Released on Riddle Records (not to be sniffed at), with a picture of Chairman Mao on side two, it is in fact a signed copy. It is fast and furious, very shouty, with a certain amount of humour, as these guys can't be serious, can they? There is a cod reggae version of Hawkwind's Brainstorm that slowly speeds up to a frightful crescendo, while Turner's other epic, Master of the Universe, gets a weird keyboard sound in a frenetic run through. Watching the Grass Grow ended up on the HW Stonehenge album a few years later, though strangely Solitary Ashtray didn't. Nik Turner plays his saxophone badly throughout to good effect, and the band is actually quite tight, while somehow not sounding it. The platter ends with a Guns of Navarone meets Bonanza in Newtown not-quite ska rendition of Amyl Nitrate. Fairly rare but still cheap, this is not for everyone.

Mine's not signed, does that make it rarer? Does it?