The Soul Patrol - Mara b/w Take Back the Night

Killer reissue of a blue steak rare 7" of hard-rockin' fuzz-punk action outta Louisiana in 1979. The Soul Patrol is an interesting name for a band active during this era - lines between genres weren't so fluid then, soul and punk seemingly antithetical. And yet the southern nature of these two tracks gives them a little more swing than that of the KBD peers you might be tempted to position them alongside. It's also arguable that despite arriving at the end of the decade, there's a more proto- quality to The Soul Patrol, garage rockers still, oblivious to the wider world, the stylised, ideological expressions of punk not quite making filtering into their lexicon at this point (though you can hear Rocket From the Tombs in here somewhere). It's to their benefit, as they remain less codified, familiar of course, but not precisely as you'd expect. Funnily enough, it's a sound that was reborn and popularised in Detroit in the early part of this century, but as is often the case, there's not much like the real thing.