Straighten Out Half Moon Bishops Stortford 11th May 2019

Established Stranglers cover band 'Straighten Out' play my old local, The Half Moon, in Bishops Stortford tonight!

Report to follow.

RESTORED LINK - Hugh Cornwell Spitalkeller Offenburg Germany 9th May 2012

Hugh Cornwell

Spitalkeller Offenburg Germany

9th May 2012

A restored link to the gig can be found here.

Ian Dury & The Blockheads Top Rank Brighton 5th May 1978

Artwork may have the date wrong again but here's a great set from the Blockheads in Sussex in 1978!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-zdSocztvTb

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-xjIyABdCdF

01. Upminster Kid (Including Introduction By Kosmo Vinyl)
02. Wake Up And Make Love With Me
03. Clever Trevor
04. Sweet Gene Vincent
05. If I Was With A Woman
06. You're More Than Fair
07. Billericay Dickie
08. Plaistow Patricia
09. I Made Mary Cry
10. What A Waste
11. Blockheads (Including Band Introductions)
12. Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll
13. My Old Man
14. England's Glory
15. Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll (Reprise)

Ian Dury: Vocals
Mickey Gallagher: Keyboards
Davey Payne: Saxophone
Charlie Charles: Drums
Norman Watt-Roy: Bass
John Turnbull: Guitar

Going Undercover - Tufnell Park Dome 27th April 2019

Jimmy Pursey (Sham 69)

Undercover Festival 27th April 2019

(Photograph Mo Andrews)

A few weeks ago an old college friend of mine contacted me to say that he was due to be in London  (from Dublin) for the weekend of 26th April and were we free to meet up. Moreover, he enquired whether there were any gigs in town on the Saturday night. Well, by chance the Dome in Tufnell Park was hosting the Undercover Festival and the Saturday line up was looking very good indeed boasting Penetration, Chelsea and Sham 69!

My mate Stuart, Gunta and Mo met up in The Astronomer pub in Middlesex Street, Shoreditch. Son, Rudi, joined us and a few pints were sunk as Stuart and I regaled him with student accommodation horror stories, although having seen his digs in Colchester I reckon that he has a fair few of his own!

In the end Rudi departed for home and the remaining three headed for the venue. Once inside the adjacent pub the adults settled in to watch the remaining minutes of the Brighton game whilst the daughter opted to head inside, doubtless to ensure that she would be right at the front, but also to see Menace. Game over we entered the venue just as Penetration were taking to the stage.

Pauline and Robert of Penetration

(Photograph Mo Andrews)

It was great to see Penetration again in such an intimate setting. Penetration always stood out from the punk crowd and its great to see that they are playing new material..... 'Movement' not inertia! It was fitting that they opened with 'Nostalgia' which was duly dedicated to Pete Shelley. At the point in the set where they played their debut single 'Don't Dictate', I was momentarily distracted by the bar. Returning with a pint for Stuart, my ears pricked up to a change in the vocal on the chorus of 'Don't dictate, don't dictate, don't dictate, dictate to me!', that wasn't Pauline. Looking at the stage it was clear that Pauline had offered the mike to someone at the front and it was Mo no less belting out the lines! Point taken Mo, it would be futile if I tried too!

Mo disappeared downstairs to catch The Piranhas at this stage whilst the oldies stuck around for Chelsea. Gene October and James Stevenson gave the occasion a genuine '77 feel. Chelsea were great, but the trouble I had was that the stage was set up in such a way that the barrier was forward of the PA and so the sound where we were was awful, being limited to what was coming through the monitors. Great view, shit sound. Chelsea were well received and a great warm up for Sham.

Gene October of Chelsea

(Photograph Mo Andrews)

Sham 69 took to the stage at about 10pm, Pursey, Parsons and Treganna, three quarters of the classic line up! Pursey opened by shaking his tail feather at the audience dressed like a modern day Fagin!

'I Don't Wanna' excerpt.

The set that followed was just a joy. Opening with 'What Have We Got' a chorus/response number with the simplest of requirements. I think that the band tried out a couple of new songs, 'Tear Gas Eyes' and 'Bastille Cake' but other than that the set was a greatest hits affair that none could have a problem with. Relying heavily on the bands earliest days with 'Ulster Boy', 'I Don't Wanna', and 'George Davis is Innocent', the set was supplemented with all of the expected singles as well as a couple of favourite album tracks such as 'That's Life' as well as the B-Side 'No Entry'. At the end of the gig Mo bagged possibly the biggest set list that I have ever seen (printed on A3). Are Sham 69 the most short-sighted band on the circuit?! Thanks Jim, what a great night out!

Radio France FIP Broadcast Paris 5th May 2004

Great quality radio broadcast from Paris 15 years ago today. This is great if you are a big fan of the 'Norfolk Coast' album since this set features no less than 8 of the 11 tracks that make up that particular album. Enjoy!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-nhH5KbaFrJ

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-M0LJb6mrsv

01. Norfolk Coast
02. Skin Deep
03. Big Thing Coming
04. Peaches
05. I Don't Agree
06. All Day & All Of The Night
07. Always The Sun
08. Long Black Veil
09. Golden Brown
10. Tucker's Grave
11. Duchess
12. Lost Control

01. Who Wants The World
02. I've Been Wild
03. Grip
04. Something Better Change
05. Tank
06. Walk on By
07. Five Minutes
08. Mine All Mine
09. No More Heroes

'Rattus Norvegicus' LP Review 'Ghast Up' Issue 2

Front cover of 'Ghast Up' issue No. 2 of May-June 1977 indicating the 'Rattus' review inside. I may have posted this cover before, with a suggestion that in the drawing Dave has something of Tony Blackburn about him. Sorry!

'Friends of Mine' Punk In Manchester 1976 - 1978

I have just finished reading the above book entitled 'Friends of Mine Punk in Manchester 1976-1978' and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in the history of British punk. If there is one thing synonymous with punk it is the emergence of the fanzine. Written in the bedrooms of fans of this new music who were on the spot in the provinces (it wasn't just London y'know!) when those bands now looked upon as punk first ambled on to a stage fanzines were bang on the nail. Proactive, rather than reactive, fanzine writers networked with bands, labels and record outlets in such away that they could receive singles, albums and demos to review and gain access to the bands themselves in order to conduct interviews with which to fill their pages. Generally bands were more than happy to oblige the amateur hacks of the fanzine world, it being entirely in keeping with the 'No More Heroes' ethic of the early punk scene. In terms of early reportage, the 'zines left the slow to react music weeklies standing when it came to the birth of one of the most important youth movements in our history.

'Ripped & Torn', '48 Thrills' and of course Mark P's 'Sniffin' Glue' are some of the publications of this type. However, there were many more and originals of these badly zeroxed collections of foolscap paper will set you back serious money. Why so, not only are they pieces of social history that are over 40 years old, they were not intended to last..... Mark P's request that copies of his fanzine be burned .... move on, didn't help.

And it is a fanzine that is the cornerstone of this here book. Written by Martin Ryan and Mick Middles 'Ghast Up' along with 'Shy Talk' documented the birth of the scene in punk's second city, Manchester. With a starting point of the first Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Martin Ryan has put together a fantastic narrative that puts the fanzine writing into the right context. The issues of 'Ghast Up' (all three of 'em) are reproduced in an Appendix. The book is centered around the fanzine writers and the handful of bands that carried the scene, principally, Buzzcocks, The Drones, Slaughter & The Dogs and The Fall. Cameraman, Kevin Cummins and journalist, Paul Morley also feature heavily. Funnily, when Paul Morley later wrote regularly for NME, I would read his reviews of a gig or an album and come away none the wiser as to whether he liked it or not. 'Ghast Up features some of his earliest music journalism under the nom de plume, Modest Young. It seems his particular writing style was established very early on!

Often in writings about the birth of punk they reader can come away with the impression that all of the Heavy Metal bands, soul bands and covers bands that served up their varied styles of music in the pubs and clubs up and down the land were simply wiped off the entertainment map when punk launched its first salvos of gob in late '76. It wasn't so, at least in Manchester. 'Friends of Mine' describes the venues that would put on punk/new wave gigs on a particular night of the week only to stop after a few weeks or months as the backlash against punk drove booking policy changes that impacted on band's opportunities to play. A peruse of the thorough appendix that provides gig listings in Manchester and the surrounding areas between April 1976 and December 1978 indicate how for many of the bands that punk 'destroyed' it was business as usual in this period. 'Lovin' Awareness' at the Electric Circus tonight anyone?

Inevitably, the book places much focus on the Electric Circus on Collyhurst Street, probably the most famous UK 'punk venue' after London's 'Roxy'. In it's eleven month lifetime (thereby beating the Roxy's 100 days by some margin) the venue played host to Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Damned, The Clash and The Ramones, not to mention the first gig by Warsaw who at the time were someway away from the moodily magnificent Joy Division that would ultimately become. Some of the best footage of the scene was shot in the club, with Buzzcocks, Penetration and The Jam performing in front its ghastly decor!

As a contemporary snapshot of the early days of punk in one city it would be very hard to beat 'Friends of Mine'.