Aural Sculptors - The Stranglers Live 1976 to the Present


Welcome to Aural Sculptors, a blog aimed at bringing the music of The Stranglers to as wide an audience as possible. Whilst all of the various members of the band that have passed through the ranks since 1974 are accomplished studio musicians, it is on stage where the band have for me had their biggest impact.

As a collector of their live recordings for many years I want to share some of the better quality material with other fans. By selecting the higher quality recordings I hope to present The Stranglers in the best possible light for the benefit of those less familiar with their material than the hardcore fan.

Needless to say, this site will steer well clear of any officially released material. As well as live gigs, I will post demos, radio interviews and anything else that I feel may be of interest.

In addition, occasionally I will post material by other bands, related or otherwise, that mean a lot to me.

Your comments and/or contributions are most welcome. Please email me at adrianandrews@myyahoo.com.


Sunday 11 October 2015

Too Much Fighting On The Dancefloor - A BBC Radio 4 Documentary


Here is a short documentary produced by BBC Radio 4 about tribalism in music and how such strong identification with a tribe frequently caused tensions that were vented in hundreds of gigs in the late '70's and into the '80s.

I started secondary school in 1980 and this was the first time I really became aware of such strong identification with one particular music or another. I thought it was a very positive thing, but then again having '....is a wanker' added to a Gary Numan logo on my exercise book wasn't up there dramatically with being razored at a Specials gig!

In those first years of senior school so many fashions and musical styles were represented, mod, punk, ska, metal, futurist, casual. It wasn't so unusual for a kid to leave school on a Friday as a mod and return on Monday morning as a casual! Finding yourself I think it's called.

I suppose I saw the very tail end of some of the violence at gigs, when the bands playing were overtly political they tended to draw the opposition to them. Luckily however, I was never at the receiving end of a beating (not at a gig anyway).

To see a fight at a gig now is a rare occurrence indeed. I think the last fight I saw was actually at the back of a Specials gig, but it was a comic scene, in a slapstick, Keystone cops way, a million miles away from a night out with Sham 69 in 1978!

MP3: http://we.tl/138jl3WMcy

'Ari Up Ari!'

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