NIPS 'N' NIPPLE ERECTORS 'Bops Babes Booze & Bovver' (Soho WIKM 66)*** Source: Sounds Date: December 12, 1987 Author: Shaun Phillips Copywrite: © Sounds 1987 JOE JACKSON goes punk; Monty Python batters Chas & Dave to death in a well lit side street. Yes, this retrospective of Shane MacGowan's formative years with Shanne Bradley contains all the vital clues to his latterday work. With insolence of the most audacious nature, it cuts through both punk and rock 'n' roll tradition as MacGowan sweeps down the sidelines of the football pitch of music. Hardly surprising then that, after getting the bile and blues out of his stomach, and Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry off his chest (a particularly vicious match), he'd stagger to a standstill, look down and spot grassroots folk. Or maybe that was all that was left apart from the disco beat that he so vehemently disclaims in "So Pissed Off" in a manner which Stephen 'Nips' Morrissey would later adopt as his own for the blockbusting 'Panic'. The first side consists of The Nipple Erectors' seminal single 'King Of The Bop'/'Nervous Wreck' and two tracks recorded in the same session, the aforementioned 'So Pissed Off' and 'Stavordale Rd, N5' - a celebration of the band's enthusiasm for Teddy Boy music, drinking and ideologically unsound activities. Overleaf - after a name change enforced by those who would later take their puritanical scalpels to Pogue Mahone - The Nips adopted a more commercial sound. One could almost imagine 'Gabrielle', their penultimate pop record, clawing its way into 1979's Top 50, but against the new calibre of post-punk bands - The Members, The Skids, The Undertones and The Boomtown Rats - they were already beginning to sound dated. And, unfortunately, even more so now. SHAUN PHILLIPS