Rich Kids: Burning Sounds

Rich Kids: Burning Sounds
Label: Creation
Release Date:1998
Recording Date: 1978
Review Date: 2000

The Rich Kids were Glen Matlock’s first band after he was kicked to the curb by the Sex Pistols in 1977. He took some great new songs he’d written and formed a new band with a 17-year-old guitarist called Steve New, and a drummer called Rusty Egan. A little later the lineup was complete when another guitarist, Midge Ure, was added. Midge had been in teenybop sensations Slick, and after the Rich Kids he went on to join Ultravox, and wrote and sang their biggest hit “Vienna.” However, I digress. In their short time together the Rich Kids recorded 3 singles and 1 album. The album, Ghosts of Princes in Towers, was one of my favorite albums of 1978, and with the competition in that great year, that’s really saying something. I always loved the poppy harmonies on top of the punk drive, and the crazy shit they sang about just added to it. Couple that with the fact that they were outsiders outsiders, shunned by the punk elite, and yet hated by the public at large – you just had to love them! Anyways, they folded in early 79, with Egan starting the whole New Romantic thing with Visage, and Steve New joined Gen X for awhile. I knew that they must have recorded more than the 15 songs they had released, but it hadn’t been til last year that this compilation came out. It is a 21-song collection of demos and outtakes. Some are old favorites, but sounding VERY different, while others are the new stuff they had targeted for their second album that was never released. The new stuff is spotty – some songs are great, but others lack any kind of direction, and it is obvious why the band broke up. However, if you like the Rich Kids, you owe it to yourself to find this. Very interesting.

Track list: Ghosts of Princes in Towers, Rich Kids, No Lip, The Move, Empty Words, Strange One, Bullet Proof Lover, Burning Sounds, Hung on You, Shape of Things to Come, Cheap Emotions, King, Precious, Just like Lazarus, Ambition, Twisted, Tomorrow’s Zero, Forever and Ever, 12 Miles High, Point it your Head, Silence.