- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Birth, School, Work, Death is the first major-label album by the Godfathers, with two charting singles, “ ’Cause I Said So” and “Birth, School, Work, Death”.
The Godfathers – Birth, School, Work, Death (1988): I have always been a fan, but there is a lot of baggage associated with many punk rock bands: made-up bandmember names often with aggressive undertones, having minimal talent and often reveling in it, angry lyrics about almost everything, bizarre to nonexistent fashion sense, piercings galore, in-your-face posturing that rivals gangsta rap acts, stage diving and other belligerent antics by musicians and audience members alike – and that’s not to mention the skinhead and neo-Nazi punk bands. Some punk rock is performed extremely quickly – the lyric sheet for one Dead Kennedys album that I have, In God We Trust, Inc. (1981) looks normal enough, but many of the songs are barely a minute long.
Considering that the idea behind punk rock was to bring back the excitement of the early days of rock and roll, I am not sure exactly why all of this other stuff came along for the ride. The Godfathers started with the high energy and confrontation of punk rock, but they are professional musicians who folded in elements of hard rock and R&B. The result was more accessible and more enjoyable music, and the Godfathers soon attracted an avid fan base in their native England and then in this country. Their records are easily recognized by the tall letters in their name with the “the” from their name raised slightly above the other letters. Birth, School, Work, Death is the first major-label album by the Godfathers, with two singles from the album charting in the U.S., “ ’Cause I Said So” and the title song “Birth, School, Work, Death”. I have acquired most of their other records, and all are easy to like.