The Flys - Today Belongs To Me: The Complete Recordings 1977-1980 (2019)

After witnessing the Birmingham leg of The Clash’s White Riot tour in the spring of 1977, Coventry rock band Midnight Circus adopted a more streamlined, urgent sound and a more punk-friendly name. As The Flys, they issued a self-financed five-track EP at the end of the year before signing with EMI on the back of a tour with Buzzcocks.

Over the next three years, The Flys were responsible for a dazzling run of witty, supremely melodic, endlessly inventive singles and two superb albums, “Waikiki Beach Refugees” and “Own”, with the latter standing some forty years later as the Great Lost Album of the pop-punk era.

However, a lack of commercial success and endless internal bickering saw guitarist, singer and chief songwriter Neil O’Connor pull the plug in mid-1980 to join sister Hazel – who’d been spotted while supporting The Flys at a Marquee Club gig – during her rise to prominence with the film Breaking Glass.

Today Belongs To Me is the first complete anthology of a band that, despite critical acclaim and major label support, somehow fell through the cracks. It includes every known studio recording – including that early pre-EMI EP – as well as nine previously unreleased, from-the-masters studio demos, with two early versions of 1979 single ‘Living In The Sticks’ joined by seven previously-unheard late Seventies songs in the classic Flys tradition.

Presented in 2-CD digipak format, and featuring a new essay on the band that includes numerous quotes from Neil O’Connor, Today Belongs To Me is the definitive document of the greatest pop-punk band never to score a Top Thirty single.