A powerpop‑punk 45 like this in 1979 Colorado Springs would’ve been about as common as a unicorn working the counter
at Woolworth’s. You could scour every strip‑mall record nook, every mall music
chain, every dusty rack of “oldies” that smelled faintly of mildew and broken
dreams — nothing. Not even a rumor. If someone did
have it, they were probably the kind of person who also owned a Japanese import
of The Lurkers and insisted British
punk sounded better on “proper UK vinyl,” spoken with the confidence of a
teenager who had never left the county.
The idea that even the hippest U.S. record store in ’79 stocked this? I mean… maybe. Maybe. But only if the clerk was some visionary who read Sniffin’ Glue, worshipped Stiff Records, and had a cousin in London who mailed contraband 45s in envelopes marked “religious pamphlets.” Otherwise, no — this thing wasn’t crossing the Atlantic unless it stowed away in someone’s suitcase next to a pair of platform shoes and a duty‑free Toblerone.
But The Lurkers are a defiant lot and show up anyway declaring there’s a new guitar in town, like they’re kicking down the saloon doors of punk and slapping a sheriff’s badge on a Telecaster. That guitar really is glorious — all the right crunch, all the right snot, all the right “we recorded this in a room with one working lightbulb and a borrowed amp.” It’s the exact DNA you want from a powerpunk single: fast, loud, catchy, and slightly unhinged.
And they sneak a little chaos on the B‑side. Because of course — of course — they sneak in a Merle Haggard cover. Punk bands in the late ’70s loved doing this: “We’re angry, we’re loud, we’re anti‑everything… also here’s a country tune because we contain multitudes.” It’s not even cover‑version week, but The Lurkers clearly operate on their own cosmic calendar.
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