Red Rockers - Condition Red CD

“Red Rockers sound like they’ve been locked in a cupboard with the Clash’s first album for three years. Yeah, great isn’t it?” - Lester Bangs

It sounded like nothing else released in 1982 – not Signals by Rush, Avalon by Roxy Music, the Cure’s Pornography, Rio by Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Toto IV, Donald Fagan’s The Nightfly, nor Robert Plant’s Pictures At Eleven. It didn’t even seem akin to such ‘82 punk classics as the Circle Jerk’s Wild In The Streets, the Descendents' Milo Goes To College or Fear’s The Record. And it sure as hell didn’t sound like the Clash’s Combat Rock.

Rather, Condition Red, the debut album from New Orleans punk band Red Rockers, echoed the power, aggression, and highly charged political anger of the Clash’s early work. And deliberately so.

Eventually, the Red Rockers joined their inspirations on a few US tour dates, showing audiences how the Clash used to do things as they leaped about in spray-painted shirts before hammer and sickle-festooned amps, screaming about “Guns Of Revolution.” Both Creem and Rolling Stone featured them, the latter beknighting them “the American Clash,” telling of plans to tour Cuba and release a vicious new single called “Voice of America.” The song instead surfaced the following year as a B-side to massive MTV pop hit “China,” an echo of what Red Rockers had been just the year before and were no longer.

"The missing 24” master tapes were found in a garage by Johnny Colla from (Huey Lewis &) The News at Sandy Pearlman’s estate sale. Thanks to Cris Cohen they were returned to us. We were able to mix the 80’s out of the record and discovered a missing track that wasn’t included on the original 1981 release." - Darren Hill (Red Rockers) 2023