Old obscure songs / band ID request

March 23, 2017 8:46 AM

Can you ID this (80s?) light rock band based on one anti-apartheid song ("how can we afford to condone a racist government?") and another slow one ("Think I'll write myself a letter / maybe then I'll feel better")?

This stuff came on a tape cassette and I listen the heck out of it on my walkman back in the day.

Most of the songs were energetic / punky rock with a clean guitar sound, maybe a little compression and/or echo on the drums and a prominent bassline.

Apart from the 2 songs above I remember one about some specific person being a badass but sadly not their name ("X is always doing Y"), with a repetitive bassline.

So, easy question, right?

posted by KMH to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

The "letter/better" rhyme made me think of Paul Heaton so was the anti-apartheid song The Housemartins Johannesburg?
posted by merocet at 11:03 AM on March 23, 2017

"She wants to send him a letter/ Just to try and make herself feel better" is a pair of lines from Van Halen's Jamie's Cryin'.
posted by Miko at 8:24 PM on March 23, 2017

Response by poster: We are talking a lot more obscure than these, but thanks for trying!
posted by KMH at 11:45 PM on March 23, 2017

Where are you from? Maybe they were a local band?
posted by bink at 10:31 AM on March 24, 2017

Punky rock, clean guitar and prominent bass... Redskins?
posted by merocet at 4:29 PM on March 24, 2017

Response by poster: The lyrics I quoted in the OP are 99% sure the actual (snippets of) lyrics. I'm pretty sure that stuff is how it really goes.

Picked up the old cassette in the UK in the 90s. Could have been USA or British band.
posted by KMH at 2:56 PM on March 25, 2017