Libertines (The) - What A Waster / I Get Along Single

The Libertines - What A Waster / I Get Along Single (20th Anniversary Edition)

To celebrate its 20th birthday, The Libertines’ debutsingle ‘What A Waster’ is being repressed on seveninch single (backed by original B-side ‘I Get Along’). Part calling card from the stars, part postcard fromthe gutter, when The Libertines made their firstintroductions there was no time for a gentle warm-upor an orienteering session to point out all the fireexits. Hell, there was no way out anyway becausewith their first single Pete and Carl and Gary andJohn dropped you straight in the middle of theenergy and chaos that surged through their livesand fuelled their band. A storm of Bond-theme likeriffs and ‘Carry On’ entendres, that charged forwardwith brakes-off drums, bass and the singers’intertwined vocals, ‘What A Waster’ wasn’t a song tohelp you get your bearing with a new band, it was atrack that made you realise this group wouldbecome your whole world.  With its Hogarth set to music visions of society’sunderbelly, and a Gerald Scarfe-like sharpness to itswit, though The Libertines debut single - backed byequally energetic B-side ‘I Get Along’ - might havecome out of the blocks at full speed, but there was apreciseness and a thought behind ‘What A Waster’’sramshackle charms. Twenty years on from itsrelease, The Libertines' opening salvo retains afreshness that is as much down to its wisdombeyond its years as it is the youthful exuberance itinspired in band and fans alike.