DIY's most fervent evangelists, the Desps chanted "it was easy, it was cheap - go and do it" at the end of their early 1977 debut "Smokescreen". That slogan then became the chorus of "The Medium Was Tedium", the follow-up released later that same year. "No more time for spectating", they declared on "Don't Back the Front", an antifascist anthem on the flip side of "Medium", adding the listener-inciting battle cry "cut it, press it, distribute it/Xerox music's here at last". A sleeve note revealed that "Smokescreen had cost only £ 153 and said the band "would really like to know why you haven't made your single yet".
As for the Desps' actual music, it was almost puritan in its unadorned simplicity, its guitar sound frugal to the point of emaciation. For the Desperate Bicycles, it was as though sloppiness and scrawniness became signs of membership in the true punk elect. The very deficiency of traditional rock virtues (tightness, feel) stood as tokens of the group's authenticity and purity of intent.
The Desperate Bicycles - Smokescreen - 1977
The Desperate Bicycles - The Medium Was Tedium - 1977
The Desperate Bicycles - Don't Back the Front - 1977
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