Exclusive premiere of The Reply single ‘Sneak Preview’ from ‘The Complete Collection’.

The Reply had a fantastic sound based in soulful mod punk but transferred to raw North American garage rock. Driven by maniac drums and pivotal bass, it maintained the spirit of ’76 but dropped its Britishness, adding a Yankee energy that was thick in Washington DC in that era. It was maximum rock and roll without having been translated by UK Northern Soul.

This is the complete recordings of The Reply, a fixture of the Washington, D.C. Mod, Ska and Alternative scenes from 1984 to 1989. These tracks were recorded between 1986 to 1989 and include the band’s previously released EPs, The Reply (1987) and All Good Things (1988), as well as 8 previously unreleased tracks recorded in 1989. All of the songs would be recognizable from their shows at now storied venues such as the original 9:30 Club on F Street, D.C. Space and CBGB’s.

Here is a sneak preview of what’s coming to town
Angry is the hero as he moves out
Color Killing Color Killing
Color Killing Color Killing

Here are parting words written down
Children know that you are one
Try to heal this angry feeling
Try to heal this angry feeling

Because I was in John’s Island
And I was in Jackson
For my fame I have you all to blame
I have never lost a battle
I am hatred’s name

Here is where a Church stood before it burned down
Here is where the boy stood when the killers came round
You know they circled all around him
You know hey circled round and beat him
Try to heal this angry feeling
Try to heal this angry feeling

Story behind the song ‘Sneak Preview’:
“This was the late 80s and we were trying to write songs with a social conscience. We were inspired by bands like the Clash and the Jam, and also by bands we were going to see, and in some cases hanging out with in the alternative music scene in D.C., where we grew up. In 1988, Gary and I moved to New York. We were 18 and 19. We got there and the city was really on edge with racial tension. It seemed like there was some new tragic and racially charged incident hanging over the city almost almost all the time. These tragedies didn’t necessarily become national issues like the protests going on this year, perhaps because the media was more local then, but it was all very serious and disturbing. There had been a black man chased and killed in Howard Beach, Queens, maybe a year before we got to New York. That case was still reverberating with marches. There was the Central Park jogger case and controversial arrests. Another horrific murder came when a teenager Yusef Hawkins was chased and killed by a white mob in Bensonhurst.

That’s just what I remember. Spike Lee’s film ‘Do the Right Thing’ came out in 1989 capturing the racial tension and a fictional police officer strangling a teenager to death. For some reason, I read a couple books at that time about the South, the Civil Rights movement and the racist murders that took place there over the decades. Racial hatred and murder started to seem like a sickly inevitable part of human nature and I wanted to try to write a song about that. The result was Sneak Preview. The image of the burning church and the murder in the last verse also came from what I was reading about the South, but it could be anywhere, any time. But the song is hopeful. When I wrote it, I did believe change was possible. In one of the books, I’d read about a really small island called John’s Island where the locals had organized to fight for their civil rights. That seemed hopeful, like if it can happen there it can happen all over. So in the bridge of the song, the lyric mentions John’s Island and also Jackson, Mississippi, two places that suffered systemic racism, but also places where the civil rights movement had countered it. I believed that hatred could be conquered by individual action, and the song calls for it. But looking around today it seems so little has changed.”