Ah, the Bluesbunny Vinyl Vault! It's the home for a whole variety of special editions and limited releases. The subject of this review was a limited edition of 200 copies in a handmade sleeve.
Honey Bane may well be a name that many of you are unfamiliar with but way back in the early - some would say glorious - days of punk in this country, she was something of a scandal having spent time on the run from a juvenile detention centre. Prior to her commercial success on the mighty EMI label in the eighties with the truly innocuous "Turn Me On, Turn Me Off", she even managed to sing with Killing Joke and, of course was the singer for the seminal punk band the Fatal Microbes. 2006 was a long way away from those days so there was a certain degree of trepidation as the needle was lowered into the groove.
I need not have worried as "Down Thing" was a lot close to her Fatal Microbes output than that of the EMI years. Of course she's older and wiser now so her youthful energy has been replaced with a more downbeat, laconic approach. The song buzzes around in your head like an angry animal with no way to escape. It's not a happy song but it stands tall.
"Got Me All Wrong", on the flipside, is all acoustic and plays like a folksy protest song but it's actually quite a dark song about male oppression rather than some political statement.
Going by the evidence of these two songs, it seems maturity has done Honey Bane no harm at all. Quite pleased about that, actually. Having taken a look at her MySpace page, it looks like you can still get a copy of this single from the lady herself.