"Satisfied" by Dave Pepper
Review
Dave Pepper has form in revisiting his past bands (of which there are many) and approaches rediscovering gems from them with the same level of enthusiasm he has for exploring new genres (I dare say there a couple of those remaining, but there won't be many).
However Dave being Dave, he's not content with just re-rereleasing them so new & younger fans can enjoy them: both his workaholic tendencies & sheer love of playing have led him to completely re-record the X-Certs' "Satisfied".
This song nearly made it out as a record: it was scheduled as the B-side to "Feeling in the Groove" in 1979 but label Zama never actually released it, so here, roughly forty-four years late, here it is.
Originally recorded with Zero (Kev) Summers and Gray Summers (Smith) on drums & bass respectively, Dave played guitar and sang & wrote it with Gray. This time round, it features Ramon on drums and Jose on bass, with whom Dave plays in his current base in Spain (if you didn't know that, I suppose the names are a bit of a clue).
I'm going to put my hands up at this point & admit that on playing it after Dave told me he'd revisited it, I thought he'd just remixed it: to me it sounded just like the X-Certs so much care & love had he put into recreating it (if you want to hear the X-Certs, "Asylum" is on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume One': https://hotmusiclivepresents.bandcamp.com/track/asylum).
When you add four decades of experience and technique enhancement to your craft, it's hard to wind back the clock and to recapture the energy & rawness of 1979, but they do a bang up enough job to have fooled me. You can sense the excitement they had in playing it.
Dave said he had "always enjoyed" "Satisfied" and now he's demonstrated why & how much: it's a cracking new wave song which sounds a feel totally fresh: the lyrics pretty much redolent of the era & Ramon does a great job of playing 1979 style drums…..
You can access "Satisfied" for yourselves via this link: https://davepepper1.bandcamp.com/track/satisfied
