''Sweet Revenge'' is the fourth and final studio album of the English 1970's

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...

band

Generation X Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western world, Western demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years a ...

, though it was chronologically their third recorded album. Generation X broke up during the original 1979 studio sessions that the record comprises, which were little more than demo sessions made without a producer. The material first received commercial release in contested circumstances retrospectively in 1998.

Production

Most of the songs on the record were composed and initially rehearsed in a house in the English county of

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

in the first half of 1979, rented by the band for the purpose of working together secluded from distractions to assemble what was intended to be its third LP. During this period Generation X was looking for a new sound after the commercial failure of its second LP, '' Valley of the Dolls'' at the start of the year, and the new material was written with the intention of getting back to elemental song-writing, with more space musically in song construction.

Billy Idol William Michael Albert Broad (born 30 November 1955), known professionally as Billy Idol, is a British-American singer, songwriter, and musician. He first achieved fame in the 1970s emerging from the London punk rock scene as the lead singer o ...

, the band's frontman/singer, did not enjoy the experience of working in the pastoral surroundings of the Oxfordshire countryside, and was unhappy with the quality of much of the material that it produced. The record was demo recorded at the

Olympic Studios Olympic Studios was a renowned British independent commercial recording studio based in Barnes, London. It is best known for its recordings of many artists throughout the late 1960s to the first decade of the 21st century, including Jimi Hendr ...

Barnes Barnes may refer to: People * Barnes (name), a family name and a given name (includes lists of people with that name) Places United Kingdom *Barnes, London, England **Barnes railway station ** Barnes Bridge railway station ** Barnes Railway Bri ...

in early 1979 with the studio's in-house engineer Doug Bennett, with Idol and Tony James acting as producers. Further recording work was done at the same studio in July/August 1979, the latter sessions seeing the writing at the studio of the song '

Dancing with Myself "Dancing with Myself" is a song by the punk rock band Gen X, first commercially released in the United Kingdom in October 1980, where it reached number 62 on the singles chart. It was remixed and re-released by the band's singer/frontman Bi ...

', which was regarded as an important event by Idol and James, the band's songwriters, as the song revealed a dynamic new

dance-punk Dance-punk (also known as disco-punk, punk-funk or techno-punk) is a post-punk subgenre that emerged in the late 1970s, and is closely associated with the disco, post-disco and new wave movements.Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984 ...

sound that they had been searching for since the failure of the band's second LP (a sound which would subsequently provide the foundation of Idol's solo career in the 1980s). The LP was never finished due to ''Generation X'' breaking up in acrimony at the end of 1979 whilst it was still a work in progress. Idol and James went on in 1980 to relaunch the act under the new name of ''Gen X'', salvaging several songs from the aborted recording sessions at Olympic Studios, and incorporating them into a new long-player release entitled ''

Kiss Me Deadly ''Kiss Me Deadly'' is a 1955 American film noir produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, and Wesley Addy. It also features Maxine Cooper and Cloris Leachman appearing in th ...

'' (1981).

Release & formats

The original 1979 recordings were first released retrospectively as an LP via the labels 'Empty Records' and 'Munster Records' in Europe in 1998. It was released via legal contractual obligation without the consent of Billy Idol or Tony James - the material's composers, and in the face of opposition from Idol, who believed the material it contained was unfit for the commercial market. The studio recording tapes that composed the first release came from Derwood Andrews, Generation X's former guitarist, who had parted company with Idol and James on bad terms at the time of the original recording sessions. Knowing there was opposition to the release of the material from Idol and James, Andrews named the album ''K.M.D. - Sweet Revenge'' (1998) referencing the subsequent LP ''Kiss Me Deadly'' which Idol & James had gone on to produce after he had left the band with a re-branded act and new personnel. An attempt to release 'K.M.D. - Sweet Revenge' in the United States was successfully legally blocked. A USA release of the same material from another audio source was issued four years later with Idol and James' consent as a part of the Generation X retrospective ''

Anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

'' (2003). An expanded reissue LP entitled ''K.M.D. – Sweet Revenge Xtra'' (2004) was released in Japan, as a part of the "Derwood Andrews' tapes", without Idol & James' approval, featuring alternate mixes, this record also contains different studio variations of the songs "Rock On" and "Your Generation," together with two live songs recorded at a gig in December 1978.

Track listing

K.M.D. - Sweet Revenge (1998 Empty Records (MT-421))

K.M.D. - Sweet Revenge Xtra (2004 Revel Yell Music (RYCD019))

;Notes: *(*) Recorded at T.W.Sounds, Fulham and mixed by

Alan Winstanley Alan Kenneth Winstanley (born 2 November 1952) is an English record producer and songwriter, active from the mid-1970s onwards. He usually works with Clive Langer. His early career during the mid-1970s was as an audio engineer, working on album ...

. These two tracks were out-takes from the band's first album. *(**) Recorded live in Sheffield, England on 8 December 1978. These two tracks are lifted from ''Live at Sheffield''.

Personnel

;Generation X *

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

* Tony James - bass * Bob "Derwood" Andrews -

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

Mark Laff Mark Laff (born Mark Red Laffoley; 19 May 1958) is a retired English drummer and former member of several rock bands, including Generation X. Early life and career Mark Red Laffoley was born on 19 May 1958 at Barnet General Hospital, at Chip ...

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

References

{{Authority control 1998 albums Generation X (band) albums