Archival project that Henry Rollins & Ian MacKaye were working on revealed

photo by Samantha Saturday

Last fall, the misinformed news circulated that Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye had recorded a project together, but Rollins later clarified that what they actually teamed up on was mixing “a demo, recorded in 1979, by a legendary Punk band that recently came into my possession.”

Rollins has now revealed on KCRW that it’s an archival release by UK punk vets The Adverts, which is coming out as a 7″ on In The Red Records with demo versions of “We Who Wait” and “New Boys.” (It’s already sold out.) He said:

Fanatic! Finally, it can be told. Several weeks ago, our good pal and sonic ally, not to mention one of my heroes for decades, the one and only Gaye Advert wrote to tell me she had found an Adverts tape on her shelf but she didn’t know what was on it. She asked if I was interested in checking it out, to which, of course I replied in the Fanatic affirmative.

Days later, the tape arrived. I took it to Infrasonic Sound. The great Pete Lyman carefully baked and transferred the tracks. Luckily, the tape was in pristine condition and contained two classic Adverts songs: We Who Wait and New Boys. They were produced by Larry Wallis, he of Pink Fairies fame, at Pathway Studios in London on March 20, 1977. As you might know, both of these songs eventually found themselves on proper Adverts releases, but not these versions. As far as we know, they have never been released until now. Pete sent the transferred tracks to both myself and Ian MacKaye. I sent them to Larry Hardy at In The Red Records and Gaye. Everyone thought they sounded great. I came up with sleeve and label ideas and sent all the information to our excellent layout person, Jon Krop. He got to work. Pete mastered the tracks and days later, everything was sent to the pressing plant. Weeks after that, test pressings came back. Ian, Larry and I all thought the tracks sounded excellent. We put in the order and became we who wait. Hey now! We got happy news yesterday that the records have arrived and are ready for mail order.

We cannot explain how stoked we are to release another Adverts record. Please check it out if you can.

No word if a digital release is coming, but here’s a mock-up of all the vinyl variants: