Grand Theft Ippo, Various Artists
“Ippo, what’s that?”, I hear you cry in disbelief. Surely it’s not some distant relation of the hippo that you’ve never had the pleasure of viewing. Of course not! For those of you that don’t inhabit Joe Royle’s current favourite place, Ippo is in fact Ipswich. ‘Grand Theft Ippo’ is a twenty track compilation CD that features a host of Ipswich’s favourite punk rock sons and daughters, and Immortal Alice!
The first thing that strikes you about the compilation is just how well its has been packaged and presented. Instead of your usual CD case, ‘Grand Theft Ippo’ comes within shiny DVD packaging, made up to look like the popular ps2 ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series. Inside said package is a lengthy colour booklet that gives details of all the featured bands. Hats off to Corndog Records for trying to do something different.
There are some very familiar bands on here that anyone who knows the UK punk scene will recognise. The likes of Lovejunk, Junk Culture and Minority are all present and correct and all contribute some solid tracks. The compilation also throws up a few less-familiar gems as well. Particularly worthy of mention are Sinfonic, with the fantastically titled ‘Jive Motherfucker’ and Rosco, with ‘Capital Star’. As with any compilation there are both good and bad tracks on offer, but that’s why your stereo has a skip facility. The real class acts on display, however, prove to be Immortal Alice and Red Flag, both playing punk the way it should be played.
‘Grand Theft Ippo’ proves to be a solid compilation, and one that shows that Ipswich has it’s fair share of talent in the punk rock department. The whole thing is well presented and the good tracks on the compilation certainly outweigh the bad. If you want to see what a thriving local scene is capable of, then you should give the Ippo lot a listen.
www.corndogrecords.com
Mark
