Almost 50 Years On, Eater Still Ain’t Wasting Time

ALMOST 50 YEARS ON, EATER STILL AIN’T WASTING TIME




Los Angeles, California - Back in the day, Eater were one of the most notorious bands on the UK punk scene. Yes, there was that business with the pig’s head, and some tasty quotes about one thing or another. But what really got the country’s notoriously killjoy tabloid press seething was their 13 year old drummer, Dee Generate.

Shouldn’t he have been in school?

Eater burned bright but too briefly. With frontman (and best-selling author!) Andy Blade an infinitely better songwriter than the music press of the day gave him credit for; and his bandmates better musicians and performers as well, Eater’s debut single, “Outside View,” was one of the very first singles to truly capture the teenaged venom that was punk’s true meaning… as opposed to the majority of their old folk contemporaries (“heavens, he’s almost 25!”) having early mid-life crises.

They followed through with “Thinking of the USA,” an album sensibly titled The Album, a killer live EP called Get Your YoYos Out (geddit?)… and that was more or less it. 1977 became 1978, Dee Generate left the headlines (and then left the band), the tabloids found other things to get their knickers in a twist about, and the punk scene, as Blade put it, had not only become “saturated,” it had also mutated into 'New Wave'/'Power Pop’."

Eater, Blade continues, “was no exception.” But they did not go quietly.

“After the media had taken ownership of the punk scene we had created, a lot of the instigators wanted to distance themselves from it. Reflecting this new mood, Eater's bassist Ian Woodcock and I started work on a bunch of tracks for our second album with new guitarist Gary Steadman and drummer Phil Rowland.”

Recording backing tracks in their rehearsal space in Fulham, west London, the band was in the studio until more or less the end. And yes, while the decades since that time have seen a lot of Eater odds and ends make it out, Wasting Time - The Lost 1978 Sessions really does pinpoint precisely what we lost when the band folded.

Resplendent on orange 12-inch vinyl, four songs surface, with the previously unreleased title cut making such a classic Eater noise that the intervening years simply fall away. Following that, alternate versions of three further cuts, the band’s final single “What She Wants She Needs” among them, add further fuel to the fiery insistence that this would have been an amazing album.

None of the songs were completed at the time - nothing more than bass, drums, a basic guide guitar from Steadman and a rudimentary pilot vocal. But, says Blade;

“They still sounded great . I immediately recognised Ian's distinctive bass line that opens ‘Wasting Time,’ the first time I'd heard the song since demoing it, with it having never been released in any form.

“A version of another more obscure later song, ‘Typewriter Babies’ was also on the tape, along with ‘Point Of View,’ a mooted single that never was. Then there's the rough and ready demo version of ‘What She Wants’ (for me, a superior take than the tamer single version).

“The tracks sound vital and fresh - but they needed finishing. So in 2024 I decided to do just that by adding guitar & some extra vocals.”

Nothing obtrusive, though; nothing that will set the old bullshit detector beeping wildly. Blade describes them as sounding “as exciting and in your face as ever today, which is always the main thing for me.” In other words, this is Eater at their frenzied finest, and you won’t be wasting time when you play it. Haha.

SINGLE: https://orcd.co/eater_wastingtime
VINYL: https://cleorecs.com/products/eater-wasting-time-the-lost-1978-sessions-orange-vinyl-lp
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/eater_wastingtimethelost1978sessions

Track listing
1. Wasted Time (previously unreleased)
2. Point Of View (alternate version)
3. What She Wants She Needs (alternate version)
4. Typewriter Babies (alternate version)


CLEOPATRA RECORDS, INC.
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Spotify | Cleopatra Records Store
www.CleopatraRecords.com