Toy Dolls – The Singles

Toy Dolls – The Singles

Captain Oi! Records

2CD/DL

Out Now

37 track collection of the single sides from Sunderland Punk trio The Toy Dolls, including three versions of their UK hit single Nellie The Elephant. Ian Canty writes…

As far as I am concerned, the best way to experience The Toy Dolls is via the single. Over the course of an album, their brand of humour can wear a pretty thin to be honest, so all things considered this collection does make a lot of sense. The Sunderland band has been led by Michael “Olga” Algar from 1979 to the present day and they have developed a considerable fanbase over that time. This new set, that compiles all there single tracks bar the live Wipe Out, would presumably be of interest to them.

Logically enough we begin with the band’s 1980 debut 45 Tommy Kowey’s Car/She Goes To Finos on the G.B.H. label. It’s a good single and catchy too. The flipside is at a notably slower tempo than than later versions. Tommy Kowey’s Car was recut for their follow up EP and 50s oldie Teenager In Love is combined with one of the band’s early anthems I’ve Got Asthma, the latter of which somehow ended up on the Strength Thru Oi! album. Of the four tracks, She’s A Worky Ticket is a suitably manic R&B Punker and possibly the pick of this extended play.

She’s A Worky Ticket, along with Everybody Jitterbug, made up their next release, a one-off for EMI Records/Zonophone that someone in their A&R department must have thought had some hit potential. It wasn’t to be as Toy Dolls’ brief commercial breakthrough would have to wait a couple more years. This fleeting success would be obtained by a fresh version of their next 45, 1982’s Nellie The Elephant. For this disc The Toy Dolls’ moved imprints again, this time to Volume. The title track of their debut album, the addictive Dig That Groove Baby, sat on the B side.

New material then loomed into earshot on 1983’s Cheerio And Toodle Pip/H.O!. This was an up-tempo and purposeful release and one that featured the first appearance in the band of Bonny Baz, aka Baz Warne now of The Stranglers. These early items find the band less mannered than later on and are all the better for it. I’ve no idea what the next 45 Alfie From The Bronx is about, but it’s a reasonable effort and comes with the Jilted John-style Hanky Panky on the reverse.

Unfortunately the next single We’re Mad is all their worst instincts rolled into one and this makes for a long near-five minutes. I did like the Punked up version of Rupert The Bear which was one of two flipsides though. This first disc ends with the Nellie The Elephant/Fisticuffs In Frederick Street single that reached the UK Top 5 in 1984 and to be fair offered a measure of daft fun as an alternative to the more po-faced waxings of the time.

Moving onto disc two we begin with another recording of She Goes To Finos, a record that just managed to keep them out of being true one hit wonders by making number 93 in the UK charts. On the B side was Spiders In The Dressing Room, an old number from Dig That Groove Baby and added to the 12 inch version of the single was Come Back Jacky, a fairly energetic offering. Next James Bond (Lives Down Our Street) only charted in the Indies though, perhaps because it wasn’t really as strong an idea or melody to make it as a 45. The two tracks on the reverse aren’t that impressive either.

1986’s Geordie’s Gone To Jail however was an improvement with a good “mob chorus” refrain and is also included in a Japanese version. The buzzsaw Yul Brynner Was A Skinhead had a very limited release as a giveaway with the Beat Of The Street magazine and a re-recording of I’ve Got Asthma was the B side of the seemingly lost live version of Wipeout. After a creditable run of tracks, Turtle Crazy is just plain awful, a desperate attempt to cash-in on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze. The band’s nadir really and a passable cover of The Small Faces’ Lazy Sunday Afternoon doesn’t do quite enough to redress the balance.

Sod The Neighbours, bar some guitar showing off, ups the ante a little though and Cloughie Is A Bootboy at least quite well observed. Unfortunately a naff go at the Ricky Martin hit Livin’ la Vida Loca takes things immediately back down again and a couple of so so flipsides ends this set.

Of this set the first disc is by far the superior and on the whole enjoyable. Disc two begins fairly well, before really tailing off with the advent of Turtle Crazy. The earlier recordings retain a freshness that the latter tracks simply don’t have, probably because nearer to their inception Toys Dolls didn’t lean hard into Olga’s “We’re Mad” character/worldview quite so much. Toy Dolls – The Singles is really one for confirmed fans looking for the rarer tracks featured. Perhaps anyone else who likes breakneck, daft Punk Rock might quite enjoy it, right up to the middle of disc two when the quality level really drops off.

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