Artist	Song
Splat!	Mistook
Big Flame	Man of Few Syllables
Stump	Grab Hands
Big Flame	Sink
MacKenzies	New Breed
The Shrubs	Warm Sun
The Ex	El tren blindado
A Witness	Car Skidding
Twang	Sharp
MacKenzies	Mealy Mouths
The Shrubs	Blackmailer
Noseflutes	The Ravers
The Great Leap Forward	Let's Jive While We're Still Alive
Stump	Big End
Jackdaw with Crowbar	Fourth World
The Ex	Knock
A Witness	Red Snake
The Great Leap Forward	Propping Up the Nose of the King
Noseflutes	Heartache is Irresistible
Twang	Snapback
Jackdaw with Crowbar	Sunk by an Iceberg

Comment:

,There was a time, not so very long ago, when, if a certain Radio One DJ announced that he had a new record to play from the Ron Johnson label, you would pin your ears back and prepare to be frazzled by punchy drums, steel-piercing, sharp, shocking guitar strums and shouty lyrics. . . wonderful", opens the one and only Amazon.uk review of ,Rigour", a CD which comprises the complete output of the great Big Flame, the only band from the RJ stable who was ever honored by their work being re-released at all. But let's start at the beginning: In 1983, part-time biscuit packer Dave Parsons from Nottingham founded Ron Johnson Records, first and foremost to release the debut EP of his own band, Splat! ,I was 21 when I started RJ and knew nothing about making records or running a business - I just loved music." Over the next 5 years, Ron Johnson released 34 records (mostly 7" and 12"s) by 12 bands (from Birmingham, Cork/London, Derby, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and the Netherlands) all of which are represented here, with the exception of the Sewer Zombies whose LP was a licensed release (and an unnecessary side-trip into the then fashionable realm of hardcore noise a la Napalm Death) and thus doesn't really count. ,The records never sold well", Parsons says, and ironically, just about their only record that did sell marked the beginning of the end for the one-man-operated label. ,The Ex double-single [`1936 - The Spanish Revolution'] was a fiasco of Rough Trade's making - they sold it at a price that was lower than the manufacturing cost and because it was reviewed as such amazing product for such amazing price felt that they couldn't put the price up - it sold 15000 copies and RJ lost ú15000!" RJ folded in 1988 and soon sank into much undeserved oblivion, but left behind not only a stack of unpaid bills and royalty checks, but also an exciting and surprisingly homogenous body of work by a bunch of manic young musicians producing an awesome wall of sound, a quirky, jerky cacophony of guitar-staccato noise and angry beats. This may serve as a small testament to a great little operation that lit up my boring, post-adolescent life `bout 20 years ago. PS: A loving appreciation of the RJ label (along with a complete discography) can be found at: http://www.timewasting.net/ronj. PPS: The tracks are more or less in chronological order. The title refers to the one and only label comp which was released at the time, called ,The First After Epiphany".

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