Video Review: New Model Army, "History (The Videos 85-90)"

This 14-track visual ditty chronicles the often turbulent career of NMA on EMI. Fronted by the sober man's Shane McGowan Bradford's own answer to Californian dentistry, Justin Sullivan, NMA were -- and are -- a slap in the face of complacency, or, in a more specific musical sense, a bittersweet antidote to homogeneous corporates rock.

Opening with songs recorded live at the Marquee in 1985 ("Ambition," "Christian Militia," and the staunchly anti-drug "Heroin"), the band are seen during their most strident and and fractious phase. Thereafter some of their most memorable and defiant songs, like "51st State" and "Stupid Questions" appear.

This is combustible rock, infused with moralistic fibre. These videos are clear of the usual clutter and gimmicks, instead relying on simple urban images that serve as a reminder of the band's alter ego... By contrast, a song like "Purity" uses the great outdoors and the red glow of campfires -- a visual metaphor to evoke their yearning for a simpler, nobler time.

Stereotyped by many as grim Northerners, they are nonetheless charged with a rousing, strangely uplifting rush. Perhaps this video is best viewed in short sharp measures, but definitely recommended to their loyal followers.

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
July 1992

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!