PREVIEW: NEW ENGLAND

Attitude, that quality so many bands lack. That simple "fuck you" that distinguishes the deserving few from the hordes. NEW ENGLAND have it, and it shows in their writing. They write about hate, poll tax riots, war, money, etc. But this is life and this is how they see it, tainted as it is. They don't give a fuck about conforming.

Frontman Paul McKenna puts sex into electricity but it is not intentional. They give 'heavy metal' a hard time, but that suits them just fine, thank you.

The chemistry between them is complete and alive. This band does not need to accommodate anyone. New England are a band in the old sense of the word, they are not a front man aided by a backing band. They are solid and majestic.

Guitarist, Dave Cooke:

"You really put your personal life on the line, you can't afford to go out, you can't afford to do anything. You soon learn that if you're a musician you're the scum of the earth, and I've been the scum of the earth for the last 10 years!"

Drummer, Ian Winter:

"We've got that feeling that we're going to be around for a long time. There's a gap out there for an original sound in band and we can fill that."

Determination with a capital D! Their album You Can't Keep Living This Way is now available on Streetlink records. Their time will come!

Marilla Blellock
Riff Raff
September, 1991

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!