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.
The Vapors had the task of playing before the the human force of nature that is in the form of Henry Rollins and they did OK. 'Turning Japanese' was the first single that I bought with my own money (before I exchanged in for B.A. Robertson's 'Kool In The Kaftan' of all things as my next door neighbour purchased 'TJ' at the same time and I thought that we were missing a trick as we could tape each others records.... but remember 'Home Taping Is Killing Music' so don't do it kids.... unless you are 11!
Straddling mod and punk genres at the time of the '79 mod-revival they were/are a solid band!
Spizzenergi, a band who famously changed there name on a near annual basis, be it Spizzenergi, Athletico Spizz 80, Spizz Oil, The Spizzles..... are still gigging regularly and were gracing the Opera House stage at Rebellion and, apparently frontman Spizz is well known to circulate at gatherings where his band play, but how would we know this new wave gent.... oh hang on....
Now here's a fine band which unfortunately I missed this year (well, they did come on at 12.50 in the morning!). I did see them a few years ago supporting The Skids I think it was and they were great and really great girls as well when we chatted at the merch stand. It is good that they have made a great effort not to be shackled by the Ramones association as they are so much more than a plain old tribute band. Take a listen to some of their solo material, it's really good stuff!
02. Lobotomy 03. Psycho Therapy 04. Blitzkrieg Bop 05. Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment 06. Havana Affair 07. Glad To See You Go 08. Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue 09. We Want The Airwaves 10. Rockaway Beach 11. Bonzo Goes To Bitburg 12. Loser 13. Consumed 14. Filth 15. So Called This, So Called That 16. Rock ‘N’ Roll High School 17. I Wanna Be Sedated 18. The KKK Took My Baby Away 19. Commando 20. Sheena Is A Punk Rocker 21. Let’s Dance 22. Pet Cemetery 23. Endless Vacation 24. We’re A Happy Family 25. Chinese Rocks 26. Beat On The Brat 27. Pinhead
This gig popped up on a social media feed couple of weeks ago and I promised myself that I would go along. Pre-gig, there was something of a discussion on the merits of lunchtime gigs... and the fact that on a Sunday lunch time it was possible to get a fix of punk rock and still be back home in time for the Antiques Roadshow... old punks never die, but they do slow up a bit!
This set of Songs and Stories was ideally placed in the schedule since on 5th September the film 'Kick Out', The Story Of The Newtown Neurotics finally gets its premiere. The original timelines for the film, like so much else was royally scuppered by COVID-19 such that the launch that was to take place at The Red Lion Ballroom, Leytonstone, if I remember correctly, was cancelled. Flick through the calendar some 3 years and the band have managed to get a much more prestigious venue for the occasion, the 100 Club no less.
As Steve explained in his introduction, making a documentary (or should that be rockumentary!) is no small feat. A band with a career as long as that of the Newtown Neurotics will have interacted with thousands of people from different periods of the band's existence, all with a story to tell. So the art in putting something like this together lies in the sorting process, what to keep in and what to leave on the cutting room floor. Another challenge brings in our 'friend' COVID again. Since the aborted launch, the band released another album of new material, their first for 34 years! So, to release the film in the form that it was back in 2020 would do the band a disservice. As an aside, The Stranglers will have the same problem if and when the lawyers finally get to a settlement that will allow it to see the light of day... only changes there are somewhat bigger than the release of a new album. Anyway, back to The Hare. This lunchtime gig gave Steve the opportunity to relate stuff that didn't make it into the film as well as adventures beyond the Newtown Neurotics.
Steve related the band's modest beginnings, starting with gig at Standon Village Hall, somewhat less iconic than the 100 Club. He went on to detail origins to 'Kick Out The Tories' were revealed to have started life as a dreadful Christmas kind of jingle thrown together for a Christmas Eve gig at the Triad Centre in Bishops Stortford (which was located just a 5 minute walk from my front door)... dreadful it may have been, but it was punk rock! Surprisingly it was also divulged that the song, the band's anthem if they can be considered to have one, was intended to be a one off song penned for the purposes of a TUC gig. Whilst it is regrettable that the song has had a direct relevance for the biggest chunk of the band's career, I am glad that the song wasn't cast aside after that one gig!
Flyer courtesy of Steve Drewett.
'Hyporcrite'
(and apologies for the camera orientation)
One of the highlights of the Neurotics' pre-1988 (the year the band split... before they reformed!) was undoubtedly a tour of East Germany with Attila The Stockbroker and Billy Bragg, a kind of socialist revue package for the DDR! It was here that the band played to their biggest audience (estimated to be in the order of 8,000 with a further few thousand outside having been unable to get in) at Berlin's Palace of the Republic, a venue more prestigious than Standon Village Hall and the 100 Club!
Palace of the Republic
Berlin
After stories of touring behind the wall, things became rather more personal as Steve recounted his inspiration for writing 'This Fragile Life', one of the band's finest songs. There was an old lady who resided in the Potter Street area of Harlow, a woman down on her luck and struggling to subsist. She would regularly take a bus to a job that involved collecting potatoes (surely quite a laborious task for one not so young). After some time, the lady was found dead and alone in her house having succumbed to hyperthermia (as has been the fate of many elderly people here in the UK during this current cost of living crisis that we are enduring). The memory was clearly still raw, even after the passage of forty years or more as the writer became rather choked. That such a situation can and does exist in the UK, the 5th biggest economy in the world let us not forget, is a disgrace.
As I recall, the first set would up with 'Living With Unemployment', a reworking of The Members' 'Solitary Confinement' for 1980's jobseekers everywhere. It was interesting to learn the late Nicky Tesco's take on Steve's efforts... 'Why don't they write their own fucking material!' JC Carroll on the other hand loved it.
'Living With Unemployment'
Also in the first set was the rarely played 'If Only', a track that appeared on the reflective 'Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?' album. I almost saw this many moon's ago in my first week at Brunel University when Steve played a solo gig at Uxbridge Labour Club in 1988. However, being a group of students completely lacking a sense of direction or an ounce of common sense for that matter we failed to find the venue and spent a fruitless evening traipsing the damp autumnal streets of Uxbridge... 'Does anyone know where the gig is?' we should have asked!
Punk poet Cherry B returned to the stage at the end of the interval for another couple of poems before Steve continued his musical journey.
Cherry B
(didn't get the title but it's a poem about Nigel Farage)
Unfortunately, we had to leave shortly into the second set so we missed tales of North Korea and Brazil. There was only time for one more song, 'Thinking About You' from the short lived 'The Indestructible Beat, the band that Steve formed after the Neurotics. I did get to see them once though at a Cable Street Beat benefit in Camden.
So, all in all a great way to spend an Sunday afternoon and an excellent taster for the 'Kick Out' film premier next week.
Here's a recording of a promotional radio interview featuring JJ and Baz on one of their fairly frequent forays down under. A 30 minute potted history of the band (with album tracks removed). Nothing sensational apart from some candid comments from Baz about Paul's departure, here but a nice listen.
I guess I am not alone in having a pile of poorly labelled CD and DVD discs that I have been meaning to sort for years now. Many are duplicates, some not. Dipping into the pile, I came across this DVD recording of the band in Sheffield from back in 2006. Unfortunately, I have no idea where this came from so I have no one that I can credit for this one, which is a shame because it is really nicely authored! Thanks anyway, whoever you may be.
Of the four opportunities to see ex-Adverts frontman, TV Smith, over the weekend, this was my must see set. In fact it was probably my number one must see set of the entire weekend! I have written about Cheap on these pages in the past. Like the Explorers, they were a short lived band that existed between The Adverts and Tim's long solo career. Once again, like the Explorers, only one album surfaced, postumously in the case of Cheap. With the exception of 'Third Term' (which surely to God cannot happen next year!), the songs in Cheap's set are so painfully relevant today that it is hard to imagine that nearly three and a half decades have raced by since TV penned them! In those intervening years the world has got warmer, wetter and madder. Oligarchs still live out their life of 'Luxury In Exile' and when some people need the income from more than one job to subsist, for sure someone stole their leisure time!
TV Smith and Paranoid Visions
Cheap's songs saw the emergence of themes that continue to this day in Tim's solo material songwriting, 'them and us', 'the have's and have nots', 'the 99%'. Society is unfair and TV Smith holds a mirror up to it and calls it out. Consider the lunacy of two of the richest men on the planet challenging each other to a cage fight whilst millions forego meals just so that their children can eat, how pathetic, no not pathetic, just obscene. As a post on social media put it recently 'Whatever happened to the kind of philanthropist that built libraries rather than space ships?'
'My String Will Snap'
However, it wasn't just about the music. It is the fact that nights were spent in the back rooms of pubs, The Anglers Retreat in West Drayton, The Bull and Gate in Kentish Town or The Square in Harlow where I hooked up with a crowd from the Uxbridge area that I am still friends with to this day.
For the occasion Tim resurrected the look of the day to a tee, top hat with scarf band, blazer and umbrella (of course!). He even sported a hand printed 'heart' Cheap t shirt and there can't be many of those still around. The band behind the replay were Dublin's Paranoid Visions who played the songs brilliantly. The sight of TV wielding that umbrella propelled me back to the Anglers Retreat all those years ago and I was twenty again.... at least in mind if not body! I hope that he and the band enjoyed the experience as much as I did.
