Deep down, we always knew that “No Surrender” was secretly punk, didn’t we?
Bimbo du Jour sure did.
I wish I knew more about this band other than that they had two albums back in the nineties, they don’t appear to have issued anything since, their debut album includes a punk treatment of Goffin and King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” which works way better than it should, and their awesomely crunchy cover of “No Surrender” comes from their Six Ways From Sunday album, which you can stream on your favorite platforms.
But even if I did know the band’s full story, I probably couldn’t summarize their sound better than the album’s official description:
“[P]ut Blondie, a little Clash and Pistols, a pinch of Bush and a dash of Gwen into an El Nino blender, add single malt scotch, turn it on 11 and record the results.”
Yep, that pretty much captures it. Take a listen:
Bimbo du Jour’s cover of “No Surrender” might have been under the radar at the time, but it almost of made the cut for One Step Up/Two Steps Back: The Songs of Bruce Springsteen, a 1998 tribute album with some standout covers.
Some of the best tracks from that project turned out to be outtakes, released on an EP called Downbound Train that was so under the radar, you needed sonar to spot it. (See Billy Mann’s “Two Hearts” for another great cut from that EP.)
