here are few items that I really miss from my cider fuelled youth, but the one that’s memory lingers on the most is my “Sample it, Loop it, Fuck it and Eat it” PWEI t-shirt. Now coming apart at the seams and faded, this unnecessarily vulgar logo / creed is still a testament to the group’s sheer brazenness at stealing bits of other folks records and mixing it all together like the Bomb Squad on a sugar rush.

10. The Who’s “Helpless Dancer” [“Dance of the Mad Bastards”]
Who better to rip off than those big fat pigs The Who who endlessly recycle their own songs for dreary compilation after compilation. “Helpless Dancer”, a cack handed semi-ballad from Quadrophenia, seeks to sum up the frustrations of the youth of the world. Best to slice out the last line of the song and drop into the middle of the song about getting off and out of your head and dancing like a loon. Where the PWEI lyric sheet claims the line reads “You stopped dancing”, The Who claim it’s “You stop dancing”. Who do you trust Pete Townsend or the Poppies?

9. Eric Satie's “Gymnopedie I for Piano” [“Psychosexual”]
A quick two minute long piece about being well horny (“a psychosexual sex terrestrial”) incorporates this daydreamy little melody into a bed of frantic vinyl scratching and Hip-Hop beats. The net effect of this soundclash is to add a fuzzily warm bed sheets post-coital tone to a song primarily about bumping and grinding.

8. Robert De Niro in Deer Hunter [“The Fuses have been Lit”]
From the album This is the Day This is the Hour This is This! “The Fuses have been Lit” is a dark mass of advertising slogans, radiation references and visions of a dystopian future. Pulling the infamous De Niro “This isn't something else. This is this!” line from a scene of boiling tension, alienation and threats between friends adds another sinister layer to an already murky vision.

7. Ministry’s “Thieves” [“Everything’s Cool”]
Not so much a sampling as a huge broad daylight theft of this robotic Ministry riff which they use to create pretty much the entire backing track. A monstrous monotonous excrescence and undoubtedly the worst PWEI song ever recorded or released.

6. Adam and the Ant’s “Never Trust a Man (With Egg on his Face)” [“Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me, Kill Me!”]
A furiously loose PWEI song about the “not so private hell” of alcoholism rattles along with pounding guitars and bizarrely climaxes the exact same way that Adam’s song does (a lovely bunch of “la la la”s). The reason they used a handful of “La”s from the end of song about a schizophrenic murder (or alien mind control, if you prefer) here is open for debate.

5. Numerous speech samples from Akira [“Karmadrome”]
Clint shouts out a brummie rap about pre-millennial dread boosted by snatches of conversation from the greatest anime movie of all time. Pointy LED bleeps pinprick between squalling guitars and air raid sirens which careen into a thrash metal ending over a “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”-style choir.

4. My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” [“Axe of Men”]
These incredibly familiar notes had passed by me unnoticed for about a decade before I picked up on them one day on a pair of the cruddiest walkman headphones ever constructed in Taiwan. In that instant, the brute force of the (also uncredited) 808 State “In Yer Face” riff was instantly superseded by the shanty chimes of the MBV melody.

3. U2’s “Until the End of the World” [“Menofearthereaper”]
The rhythm of U2’s thinly disguised last supper story is laid under layer upon layer of beats, clanks, sparkles and shuffles. So clear is the lift that I can’t help but wonder what punishment Bono decided to mete out upon the hapless Poppies when his lawyers pointed out the theft. I imagine he would’ve tried to fuck them over like he did Negativland had he ever actually been informed.

2. Dialogue from Jungle Burger [“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”]
My mate Ian came across this snatch of dialogue during some selfless research of late 80’s cartoon smut on a movie (that the smudged handwritten label) called . Involving bouncing scrotum beasts and dirty pawed Monkeys (oh, and lots of boobies) this piece was taken from an old geezer who had crashed his plane in a forest of pubes or something else suitably juvenile.

1. Dialogue from The Warriors [“Can U Dig It?”]
An obvious, but classic case of PWEI larceny that turns from a shout-out to the mythical Gramercy Riffs gang into a celebration of big guitar riffs. The use of “RIFFS...yeah!” in this context says everything that needs to be said about PWEI; it’s obvious, it’s fun, it’s loud and it’s cool.