It didn't take UK punk long to evolve from its initial political-minded spin on garage-rock primitivism to something more abstract and arty. For four years, from the dawn of 1977 to the end of 1980, a cultural explosion occurred, with bored teens, angry dole claimants, and university brats sharing stages and ideas. Though largely forgotten now, The Prefects was right in that mix, running in the same circles as Mekons, Ultravox, and The Slits, helping to forge the disjointed, danceable noise that became known as post-punk, though punk hadn't really run its course. The Prefects broke up with only a single and a couple of radio sessions to show for its time on the scene, and now the band's complete recorded output—plus the 10-second jingle "VD," taped at a recent reunion concert—constitute the whole of Amateur Wankers, the post-punk classic that never was.
About half of The Prefects' songs stay in the jumped-up shout-and-rumble mode of Buzzcocks and The Damned. "Faults," "Escort Girls," "Barbarellas," and the like sound energetic and catchy, though not too different from what was going on at the time. Amateur Wankers' more arresting songs are slower and stretched-out, indebted to the atonal drone of The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties." Over five tense minutes, "Going Through The Motions" layers piano, sax, tribal drums, and monotone vocals to create the mood of its title. The 10-minute epic "Bristol Road Leads To Dachau" bounces two guitars off each other in patterns of scrape and slash, while an unsteady beat drives the song on and off the path. Had The Prefects made a dent at home or abroad, its signature song—its "Teenage Kicks," or "Love Will Tear Us Apart"—would probably have been "Things In General," a dreamily violent inquiry into a young punk's state of mind. It's ferocious, but profoundly compassionate.