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.
Having posted a Toronto radio interview with JJ and Baz earlier, it seems as good a time as any to post the gig that occurred later on in the day (or at least what exists of it). The fact that 'No More Heroes' appears twice makes me think that this is in all likelihood pieced together from mobile phone captured audio. A quick listen to 'Heroes' shows it to be the one and the same i.e. both are from the same gig, but the audio is different, possibly due to it being captured by someone located in a different part of the auditorium. As they say, it is what it is.
I was sent this interview yesterday evening (many thanks to Mark for the share!). It's a pretty comprehensive interview that JJ and Baz conducted with Equalizing-X-Distort CIUT 89.5FM, which (according to Wikipedia) is a Toronto based, independent radio station with a strong leaning towards punk. Maybe it is their independent status along with the station's musical tastes that resulted in a more in-depth, open interview. In contrast, when the band interacts with more mainstream stations who have not done their homework and enter into discussion armed only with pre-conceived notions of what the band are about the results are telling.
Much of the content is admittedly going over well trodden ground, but the insights into the meanings behind some of the tracks on 'Giants' their then newest studio offering.... near fisticuffs in Southend and Birmingham.... are welcome.
Asked about bootlegs of the band, JJ is all in favour, which is good to know! What's more, whilst he makes reference to losing a couple of dollars on these things, no money is lost to the band due to the activities of the Aural Sculptors site, simply because no money is made!
At the closing of the interview, Baz says to the interviewer 'See you tonight at the gig' meaning that the interview was conducted on 31st May 2013, the day of the band's gig at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, the opening gig of the band's North American 'Giants' tour. It would have been the second date were it not for the fact that visa issues resulted in the pulling of the previous night's gig in Detroit. The file label states 2nd June 2013, which I am guessing may tally with the date on which this interview was broadcast.
The download file contains two versions of the interview, the full broadcast and an shorter version in which the music has been edited out, leaving the talk only.
Still buzzing from last week's gig in Berlin with 'Rabenschwarz' reverberating in my head, here is another example of Anja Huwe live. Once again a good mix of solo material from the 'Codes' album alongside older Xmal Deutschland material. Here she is in Denver earlier this month in what was her second set of dates in the US this year if my memory serves me correctly.
I was in big trouble booking the events of this past weekend! A Saturday night in London town followed by another gig… in Berlin town. Two gigs in the space of 24 hours was not the problem per se it was the sparrow’s fart flight to Germany that was the issue. We live close enough to Stansted airport such that our car and windows receive regular dusting of spent aviation fuel, so it is our airport of choice, but this means Ryanair and whilst their flights are cheap, they tend to depart with the coming of the dawn! Still by my reckoning, if the bands that we follow (the musicians in which are almost always older than us) can do it, then so can we.
Saturday night’s entertainment was a celebration punk’s ‘Year Zero’, 1977, that was set up to coincide with the 50th anniversary of one of the most notable punk gigs of them all, the ‘100 Club Punk Festival’ of 1976. On this, the second night, the proceedings were kicked off with a Q&A with Marco Pirroni, best known for his work with Adam Ant in Adam and The Ants and beyond, however, for the purposes of this gig he was present as someone who had played at the Festival on 20th September 1976.
'So I was standing 'ere and Sid was over there.'
(Marco on the night he played with the Banshees)
The Q&A held promise for a while, as people realised that a discussion on stage was in progress, the chatter ceased. However, the interview did not go well. Marco is the real deal, to steal a term from the Dictionary of Mod, he was a ‘Face’, one of a handful of witness from within of the most exiting few months in rock history. As such there were 1001 questions that could have been fired at Marco. Unfortunately though, the interviewer struggled to get past ‘Did you ever expect to be talking about punk 50 years on?’, ‘Did you know something significant was happening?’ and ‘Marco, you were more into the clothes than the music, correct? To which he responded several times ‘Yes, because there was no punk music then’…. As this loop of questioning went on the audience were lost and the chatter returned quickly reaching a volume that drowned out the Q&A anyway. A missed opportunity indeed. Luckily, his book was available on the night and that I’m sure can fill the gaps that the Q&A failed to address.
No time was wasted before TV Smith took to the stage to deliver a blistering set that was effectively an almost complete rendition of the ‘Crossing The Red Sea’ album. For a man of 70 he still ‘means it maan!’ He left an audience in no doubt that the songs that he wrote as a 20 year old still mean the world to him now. We were located stage left and for the early part of the set a very tall bloke looked on appreciatively. I thought that bloke looks like Richard Strange and indeed it was and Tim invited him onstage for ‘Back From The Dead’ from 1978 (as an aside Tim and Richard recorded an album together many years ago which only saw the light of day in 2021 under the title of ‘1978’). Another notable in the set was ‘Quickstep’, a song only attempted (and ‘fucked up’ in the opinion of TV) once at Rebellion this year. This, a second, attempt sounded fine to me. TV and his Bored Teenagers crashed out of the set with a thunderous ‘One Chord Wonders’.
TV with Richard Strange
The Punk Festival theme continued with the headliner’s ‘John McKay’s Reactor’. In keeping with anniversary, the set was made up of early Banshees material that John McKay would have played in the studio or as part of live sets…. Much better that than another 20 minute version of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’!
A Reactor-less John McKay
It was indeed great to hear that very distinctive, angular guitar sound grinding out of his amp. If I had a criticism (and it isn’t one really) it would be that Jen’s vocal is a bit higher than Siouxsie’s, something that could be remedied by a strict cigarette diet… but then again the means would not really justify the end! It was actually a great set, made all the more memorable by the involvement of one of punk’s most noted guitarists. Their set closed with ‘Love In A Void’, ‘Hong Kong Garden’ and ‘Helter Skelter’.
Back home at 12.30 I opted to lie on the bed for a while, but sleep did not come, probably due to nervous anticipation of a volley of phone alarms set to go off in quick succession at around 2.30. Hey, who needs sleep when you have rock ‘n’ roll!
The flight was on time and trouble free, although both Gunta and I decided that in general the experience of air travel is just awful these days. The real frustrations started at Passport Control as we entered Germany. 90 minutes to get through, even after registering my biometric details for a third or fourth time in recent months. Another Brexit gift to the nation!
At about five o’clock I was feeling a little hyper, either through mild sleep deprivation or due to an adrenalin rush caused by a Virtual Reality experience that took me around and over the top of the iconic television mast in Alexanderplatz. Funnily enough whilst the VR experience triggered my fear of heights the actual experience of scaling the tower and viewing Berlin from on high had no effect on me… thankfully the ‘evacuation platform’ as they call it remained unsullied!
'DDR Calling!'
Back on earth we checked in and headed to the gig. Anja Huwe was playing at in the Betonhalle (concrete hall) within the Silent Green cultural complex on the site of a former crematorium serving the Berlin-Wedding area. The setting was perfect for this a ‘Sonic Morgue’ club event.
'Welcome to the Sonic Morgue'
Berlin 20th September 2026
The venue was amazing. From what I can gather, this industrial space was created in the early 1990’s by building onto the former crematorium. A concrete tunnel leads down into an area containing the bar and gathering space before another set of steps leads down into the auditorium. Overall it was a great setting for a gig.
The somewhat barking Das Kinn
Support came from an act (one person cannot really constitute a band… and to call him a one man band would conjure up all the wrong ideas). This guy played a set of electronic music with his own vocals that drew heavily on Devo, the early Human League a bit of Numan and The Normal. It was weird, very visual and very good to watch. He was also very humorous and self-effacing in his interaction with the audience… or so Gunta told me.
The Rhythm Section plus Raven
And so to the main attraction of the night. I have plugged Anja Huwe’s solo album, ‘Codes’ on here a couple of times, the material from which makes up approximately a third of the set. The other two thirds of the set being made up of Xmal Deutschland material. The new and the old are easy bedfellows despite a 40 year separation. The ‘Codes’ tracks are perhaps a little more reflective than those Xmal songs but it all works together – take a listen to the mash up track ‘Polar Forest’ to see what I mean. The band opened up with an instrumental before Anja took to the stage wearing a shrug of black plumage, a nod to the raven. She was showing no effects for having just returned from dates in the US. The set is well established but that was just fine for me. I was impressed by her vocal. This stuff is not easy to sing (like I would know!!), especially the Xmal Deutschland songs. Caterwauling Owen once described it as, all I can say is that she can still caterwaul with the best of them. Throughout her career she has had a lot of cameras pointed at her so it was interesting to see her turn the tables when she armed herself with a Polaroid and took shots of keen members of the audience. Needless to say my miserable boat was not picked out for such treatment.
It was a brilliant night of expected and unexpected pleasure.
Not much to write home about with this well known bootleg. Nice at the time I suppose, a cobbled together collection of demos covering a period of eleven years, with JJ's 'Girl From The Snow Country' thrown in. I guess this would be one of the last 'classic' bootlegs. I cannot think of many that were produced after 1991. Anyway it is here for completeness. Search Rat Zone for better!
They were very much a band for firsts. First to release a single, first to get to America and the first to split. 1978 was a particularly frenetic year for the former members of The Damned. Upon parting, Dave Vanian was in and out of Richard Strange's Doctors of Madness in no time at all, Rat Scabies became a White Cat, Captain Sensible formed a new band King (a world apart from the King of Coventry as it were), whilst Brian James formed Tanz Der Youth (and Lu Edmonds formed The Edge). Whilst all of this activity was undoubtedly very creative, none of it was particularly successful (when put up against The Damned) and certainly none of it was long lived!
It did not take the punk renegades long to fathom on which side their bread was buttered and it was not long before Scabies, Sensible and Vanian were once again sharing a stage. So as not to confuse people too much they opted for the name The Doomed and with Henry Badowski in tow they played a handful of dates. A month or so prior to touring as The Doomed they appeared as Les Punks with Motorhead's Lemmy deputising on bass at Camden's Electric Ballroom. This is the stand out gig of this particular incarnation of the band. They played an interesting set that night with the inclusion of Hawkwind's 'Silver Machine' and 'Motorhead's 'City Kids' for the benefit of the new if temporary bass player. Also, for some strange reason the Rich Kids' 'Marching Men' is played. Several songs from the as yet unrecorded 'Machine Gun Etiquette' also get an early airing in this gig which sounds pretty raucous.
Just around the corner was yet another line up as Algy Ward, formerly of The Saints, took on bass playing duties on a permanent basis (or what at least passed for permanent in the world of The Damned).
Many thanks to Mark for this, an upgrade from my MP3 version. Cheers!
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