Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It has often been announced with a kind of venomous fury that Punk is not dead, and quite rightly this argument is replete with a straightforward acknowledgement that the issues that underpinned the anger of its origins are still with us, multiplied by the excesses and demands of a political class out of control, and yet as we look back at the simplicity of the genre at its very heart, its union with other cultures and the listener will notice there is one major force the definition makers forgot; that of the influence of the groups that not only continued after the first great wave, but thrived enough to see the latest contributions from new bands stand alongside the remarkable skills of the older and the established godparents of the time.

The names trip of the tongue with ease, and yet some will only be known by the ultra-faithful, and it is to this that the art of discovery in the modern era that we are able to pay homage to arguably one of the longest lived, and spiky, high-energy combatants of the genre, and as the crisis call goes out to the seminal 999, the previously unreleased concert recording, Emergency At The Old Waldorf 1979, plays out as of it could have been performed with absolute dynamics and fortitude within the last year.

The status of the group may have been diminished by time by those with a passing interest to the movement, but as each call out to the masses is noted, as each blast from the past jolts the electricity in the mind to the point where the standards are raised and the insistence of change are seized upon, so 999’s status, which never devalued for many, is given a modern shot in the arm; a fighting fit response to the signals and corporate terrorism of a sleazy and fungi riddled age.

999’s resurfacing of an archived gig is a response, it is a glory stoked and the urge to define is made passionate in tracks such as My Street Stinks, Me And My Desire, Lie, Lie, Lie, the outrageously cool Titanic (My Over) Reaction, the hit Nasty, Nasty, and the finale in Homicide, Quite Disappointing, and Boiler , the memory is reunited with the exuberance of anger, and it inspiring, it is stimulating, and encouraging.

Emergency At The Old Waldorf 1979 is an eye opener of a release, one that invites the community to re-immerse themselves with a band that has never left the soul.

Ian D. Hall