Pure Mania (1977)

This is another album I found out about from a Robert Christgau capsule so I give him the first word. I especially like his "raving without letup" because that's exactly the way I experienced it and still do, as the mood suits (admittedly less so over the decades). I have never found anything else by the Vibrators with half the appeal of this, try as I might. But this is enough. This is plenty. I understand the objections that punk-rockers with a certain purity orientation are inclined to make to it—"bubblegum" and "commercial" are fair enough descriptors, and as Christgau notes the preoccupation with sex gets absurdly "narsty" too (representative titles: "Whips and Furs," "I Need a Slave") (but equally representative titles: "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," "Baby, Baby"). Nevertheless, practically every song here makes me want to jump up and down, I tend to keep playing it louder the longer it's on, and it's never hard to make a daily habit of it once I think to listen to it again. I know I might be mistaken, but it sounds like the purest distillation of a certain strain of punk-rock to me, particularly the way the bass notes play as if the strings are just slightly too loose and being slapped at, Sid Vicious style, and the unmistakable British accents of the singers too. The tempos are fast and the songs brief, a third of them coming in at under two minutes, and the whole 15-song set lasts barely 35 minutes. "You Broke My Heart," at 3:28, is practically the "Whipping Post" of the set, the place where they slow down and air it all out. As a vinyl product, I used to think one side was better than the other but I could never remember which because they both sounded so good. Sometimes I wanted to start with the weaker side but neither one ever turned out to be that, or anyway I was jumping up and down no matter which one I started with. I'm jumping up and down still, though I would never think to refer to the action as "pogoing." That's something people do for authentic punk-rock. What I'm doing is just an immature frenzy of appreciation.