The Macc Lads

It was in Oldham, 1994, that I discovered The Macc Lads. A thoroughly apt location, sure. The first reaction was amusement. Any after that was a bonus, and it just so happened that the song which heralded their arrival in my musical universe - "Dan's Big Log" - was musically just as accomplished as any other punk, pub, or plain old, rock. More so, perhaps. The deeper you get into the discography reveals a lore (wittily digested within the liner notes) which cannot be matched even by a booklet of Strummer or Rotten anecdotes. To glorify The Macc Lads, they are the finest musical example of a band being able to keenly portray without pretension the absurdity of life around them.

The Macc Lads are deeply disturbing. Great Britain is a deeply disturbing place. The Macc Lads are not being serious, they are writing about life through song, which is often (meant to be) funny. Britons are at their best when you do not take their word seriously. Britain is a country best enjoyed through the lens of humour. The Damned related on their endurance compared to The Clash, Sex Pistols, et al, with the distinction of not taking themselves too seriously. It's important. Yet they took look pretty damn serious compared to The Macc Lads.

Punk wanted to brush prog rock aside because it was too abstract. Ironically, like the arch enemy Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols were also abstract and could not accurately portray the (working class) life taking place around them. The Sex Pistols never actually contemplated sex, and collapsed like so many weaklings under minor scrutiny and substance abuse, with the odd personality clash thrown in. The Macc Lads shrugged off violence between members. As for substance abuse? The self-confessed speed and lager diet of a 'Pistol is nowt compared to 20 pints of a Friday night.

The Macc Lads is not an intentional or deliberate satire of Great Britain. Was The Guardian article correct in saying they were so satirical as to be ahead of their time? No. They merely want to brush aside the band and file them neatly away somewhere so they cannot offend, the modern equivalent of the national and local bans the band were proud recipients of.

The band are still around. Britain is still nasty. There is still a place for the finest of all the nasty punk bands. Their 2026 album, Wild Cider Wife, might actually be my new favourite in their discography. I never thought I'd see a new album with that familiar typeface, but 2026 opened with a bang and a roar of hilarity that is seeing me through a smoky wildifre summer. The nastiness in the lore is as relevant today as it was in the mid 1980s. The reaching-for-consenual relationship the Lads have with schoolgirl Julie is buried by the real life depravity of grooming gang scandals and the ubiquitous BBC child abusive conspiracies. From Savile to Edwards and everything in between, when your state broadcaster has such a reputation, what hope is their for a working class looking to fix many betrayals?

The Macc Lads discuss gentrification in "My Pub", a song which has always ranked as one of my favourites. What person can fail to empathize with the man deprived of his familiar drinking hole? A pint o' Tetley's for half a crown replaced by fizzy lager with a German name. For the same reason John Sullivan is a working class traitor, Muttley McLad is a folk hero in song. Del Boy cannot wait to embrace the yuppie lifestyle. Muttley resists it stubbornly and how we now wish he'd won.

The Macc Lads compare favourably to Karl Marx, the latter of whom does not take into account a woman's labour. The working class struggle is framed universally as a struggle undertaken by, and for, men. The endless toil in kitchens and wash houses the length and breadth of the last millenia is as nought to Marx. To The Macc Lads, it is worth preserving in song. In "Miss Macclesfield" our narrator informs us that he "used t'go out wiv 'er, 'cos she cooked me all me meals."

The Clash are a punk band in the Marxist tradition: it's men only. Men are unemployed, men are fighting in the streets, men are going to punk gigs, men are yearning for more autonomy from their record company. Suddenly these do not sound like universal ideals. The struggle of women doesn't get mentioned . The Macc Lads sing about it almost constantly. They also sing constantly about their appreciation of women, as well as society's mistreatment of them. Not just the dubious virtues of drunken sexual excess, but the value of the northern matriarch. For who is it that Muttley, now a relatively old man, has to call in to break up his stubborn bowel movement so that it will flush? It's his dear mother.

It appears as though criticism is supported by a moving goal post. Where Johnny Rotten appears accurately derisive about Joe Strummer's fake brand of middle class punk, he himself then seems irrelevant for always taking himself so seriously and never actually having a laugh. The Damned had a laugh, but were they too serious in trying to write about anything that wasn't mundane? Did they ever sing about farting? Their canon touches on progressive in Strawberries before launching into full goth pop in Phantasmagoria. Darkly, their song "Suicide" represented an early attempt at taking the nastiness and hopelessness of British life and turning it into something, day I say it, funny. But did they ever sing

Here is a list of themes in order of hilarity:

1. Bowel movements and digestive problems.
2. Things not being like they used for t'be.
3. The all conquering sexual menace, a woman the Lads fear.
4. Fighting.
5. Sexually transmitted dilemmas.
6. The lighter/darker side of primary school life.

During some hard times, I had to sell my CD collection. From hundreds, containing classics and collectibles by the bands mentioned on this site, only two were kept: The Macc Lads - 20 Golden Crates and The Macc Lads - Bitter, Fit Crack. As they did for me, let these two guide neophytes into a British cult of the highest order.