Krupps Sport for All cassette
KRUPPS, from Nottingham, play an often fun sort of music (primitive post-punk) and bring good cheer as a live band (or did, to me, when I saw them), so it’s stuck with me just how miserable-sounding the album-length tape they did before this one, which is their third in total, was. Sport for All turns the dial back a bit towards merriment, helped perhaps by songs playing heavily ironic tribute to Peter Shilton (retired football goalkeeper/hero to Nottingham people of a certain age/unwavering supporter of the Conservative Party/moron) and Saddam Hussain (you know). Alan Martin is a great post-Mark E. Smith off-the-dome ranter waiting to be discovered by a wider audience, and the KRUPPS engine room kicks out just the right kind of stumbling dirge jams for his tale-telling—COUNTRY TEASERS, BOGSHED, pre-album PAVEMENT kinda thing. Real people music, and real great.