Press 3
Worried that 21 years between albums would make a band mature and grow up? Allay those fears dear punkster, for a band going by the moniker of The Stupids hold tight to their adolescence and refuse to wear full length trousers, all the while laughing at everything around them with a specific sense of humour; don’t think Thom Yorke would necessarily come up with tracks entitled ‘Drumshop Arsehole’ or ‘Beach Dick’.
Having been the pioneers of the skatepunk thrash scene at the beginning of the 80s, it’s fair to say that The Stupids may have been a band who have missed your attention, while the likes of The Offspring release album upon album of the tried and tested formula, the Ipswich originated trio decided to give everything they had during one decade and not see how far they could drag out the same old song and dance.
Well now they’re back, and possible more refined than ever. Whether it’s the comic wailings and general farting-around of closer ‘Shagga’ or genuine pop-punk master classes of ‘Feel The Suck’ and ‘Malcom Bitch’, The Kids Don’t Like It is a fun album to listen to that doesn’t hold back from it’s thrash roots.
It does what all great punk albums do best, fit a shit load of songs into as few minutes as possible, and it really sets your thrash sensibilities on high alert with head banging and stupid dancing breaking out like a rash over your penis!
It might not quite get you reaching for that old skateboard that you fell off and bit your tongue on one too many times, but there’s a chance it will inspire a whole new generation to discover that punk music isn’t rooted in an image portrayed in Topman shop windows, or in the videos of the fake pop-punksters on the music channels, or in any image at all, but rather a feeling rooted within yourself to be yourself, no matter what. The Stupids do this with shit-eating smiles on their faces.
Peter Clark, Bearded Magazine
There was a period in the late 1980s when the Stupids were everywhere, gracing not only the cover of NME and Sounds, but the pages of the Sunday Times, the Evening Standard and even Smash Hits. Not bad for a three-piece hardcore punk band from Ipswich whose brand of "skatecore" was about as uncommercial as it got. Somehow, this brief flirtation with fame never transformed into a lasting legacy, and the kind of cult worship afforded contemporaries such as Napalm Death and Heresy has eluded them. Hopefully, the series of reissues of which this, their first album proper, is a part will change that. A blueprint for the Stupids' sound, Peruvian Vacation is silly, scrappy and all over the place. Combining breakneck thrash with pop-punk hooks (something of a lost art nowadays), it is not just one of the best hardcore records of its era, but of all time.
Jamie Thomson, The Guardian, Friday 27 June 2008
