The Yobs - The Yobs Christmas Album - Safari Records - Rude 1 - 1980 Merry Christmas, my friends. The Yobs were the novelty Christmas alter-ego of the London punk rock band the Boys. I have lots and lots to say about the Boys, who arose from the ashes of the glam/proto-punk Hollywood Brats and the London SS (which was Mick Jones's pre-Clash band.) They were one of the original wave of London punk bands that followed in the immediate wake of the Sex Pistols' first shows and their first two albums are among the finest collections of pop songs ever recorded. These guys knew what they were doing when it came to constructing songs and recording them. I'm sure I'll do a write-up of one or both of them here at some point. The Boys staked out the territory for pretty much every punk pop band that followed, the good, the bad, and the horrible. Those albums are among my favorite records and they hold up very well today. This Christmas album is more or less a piss-take on the whole concept of the Christmas album (and is the first punk rock Christmas album, if I'm not mistaken.) More casual and less inhibited than the main recordings, this record covers a surprisingly wide range of styles, from football chant sing-alongs, to vulgar versions of Christmas standards and originals in the same mold, to ersatz reggae and synth pop. (The latter was meant to lampoon Gary Numan, with whom one of the Boys apparently had some kind of feud.) "The Ballad of the Warrington" is simply a fine song in its own right and wouldn't be out of place in any context, though it still makes me feel all Christmassy. It's a novelty record to be sure, but I love novelty records. (And a Christmas album that isn't a novelty record-- that is, one that is relentlessly earnest and reverent-- would be too horrifying to imagine, at that.) Plus, it's just a sound I like. Anyway, it's great fun, and not such an easy record to come by these days. Many of the songs are NSFW, meaning not safe for work i...