QPRIME.COM - The Dead 60's

A razor-sharp four-piece composed of singer and guitarist Matt McManamon, organist and guitarist Ben Gordon, bassist Charlie Turner, and drummer Bryan Johnson - are a return to the original British punk distillation combining garage rock urgency, skanking rhythms, shouted choruses, and romper stomper energy. Drawing its name from a decade of sonic inspiration, The Dead 60s knows its musical history and how to deliver it to a new generation of punk enthusiasts. "The whole point of the name is that it means we're into the '60s but at the same time that it's over, history. We're more interested in the future…" explains Turner.

While The Dead 60s didn't officially exist until a mere two years ago, its constituents have been collaborating in various configurations for nearly a decade. McManamon and Turner met and began writing songs together at the tender age of 11; similarly, Gordon and Johnson started playing together in their early teens. Simultaneously captivated by his father's Beatles records and the Irish folk heroes favored by his mother (especially Christy Moore and Shane McGowan), Matt began writing lyrics and playing guitar after a single impromptu lesson from his uncle. Schoolmate Charlie grew up listening to heavy doses of punk and dub, and honed his skills on the guitar before switching to bass. The son of a piano teacher, Ben studied piano and guitar before his taste for reggae-tinged punk acts like The Slits and PiL led him to the organ. After much early exposure to soul and rock steady, Bryan gravitated toward drums at the age of 13 and has remained behind the kit ever since.

Ironically, what brought the four punk enthusiasts together was their determination to stay beyond the fringe of the local music scene. "Yeah, we're different," explains Turner, "but you know what? That's exactly what people need to hear right now. Something to freshen them up, a new sound with a new feeling, and that's what we are. That's what The Dead 60s are here for." Longtime acquaintances after having spent the bulk of their formative years playing the same local venues, McManamon and Turner finally joined forces with Gordon and Johnson in early 2003. The band members' shared enthusiasm for herky-jerky punk funkers Talking Heads and dub pioneer King Tubby ensured that their output would differ radically from the neo-psychedelia that had come to be associated with the region. While the band remains expressly unpolitical in their lyrical content ("Politics are best left to politicians," quips Johnson), song titles like "Loaded Gun" and "You're Not The Law" evoke the graffiti-esque sloganeering of the late 1970s. Intensive rehearsals and songwriting sessions in a South Liverpool garage yielded a highly original batch of signature material: driving pop crossed with thrashing punk; razor-sharp skank over bouncing hip hop grooves; spooky horrorcore ska morphing into throbbing layers of spacey, echoing dub. "We all have short attention spans and don't like sticking to one specific sound or style," admits Ben. Despite the experimental nature of the band's approach to songwriting, The Dead 60s were able to lock onto a highly accessible sound that immediately appealed to everyone from punk fanatics to reggae.

enthusiasts throughout their native UK. "What we do is more of a dance thing," explains Charlie. "It's not something that's totally new to people. It's good head-nodding music."

Within less than a year of their inception, the buzz surrounding The Dead 60s was deafening. In spite of a relentless tour schedule, the band somehow found the time to hole up in Liverpool's The Ranch studio and record their debut album, out May 31, with mystery producer Central Nervous System. The result is an exhilarating, all-out aural assault that will leave listeners hot, sweaty, and screaming for more. The album's first single, "Riot Radio," is a furiously infectious dance track replete with snarling vocals courtesy of McManamon, wailing sirens, and a percussive guitar line that hits you like a round from a semiautomatic weapon. The Dead 60s are clearly a band determined to come at their music from a unique angle and have rapidly found a receptive audience on their travels around the UK and the U.S.

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