Astral Glamour

From January to December 1977, a punk band called The Rejects opened for the Damned, the Vibrators, the Jam, XRay Spex, the Adverts, Gen X, 999, and dozens more. Then, in an ultimate two-fingered salute to the music biz, they changed their name to The Homosexuals.

Over the next five years, The Homosexuals created a musical world of their own. Holed up in no-rent studios and squats, they mined every genre from psych-folk and Afrobeat to punk and dub, added killer hooks, and then exuberantly tore it all apart. They wrote and recorded for five years, but they never took out an advert, sent out a promotional record, or got paid for a gig. And despite releasing six records and a cassette on their own, they accrued a grand total of two reviews. After Recommended Records' release in 1984 of a collection of early tapes and vinyl tracks as "The Homosexuals LP," the band disappeared into a 20-year silence.

The legend has grown, and today the Homosexuals are arguably the most acclaimed-and-least-heard band of the post-punk era. Their complete works on vinyl might be assembled for £500 or so but you’d still be missing their tape (fewer than 10 copies are known to exist). After more than a year of research and restoration, and a hundred hours of conversations with band members, the story of The Homosexuals can now be told. "Astral Glamour" gathers 81 songs and three-plus hours of legendary 1977-1983 artpunk -- every Homosexuals song from their records and the C-60, plus a dozen other tracks never released anywhere before. "Astral Glamour" also features a full-color 32-page booklet with scores of unpublished photographs, posters, lyrics, song-by-song comments, and an extensive history of their early years.