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, 2 September 2018

20 From '86 (13) The Damned Hammersmith Odeon 12th November 1986


Here's another from the year 1986 with The Damned recorded at London's Hammersmith Odeon. Interestingly, last night I have my first viewing of The Damned's documentary 'Don't You Wish That We Were Dead'. In it a rather bitter Rat Scabies gave some insight into the feelings within the band at this time. For a band who had by necessity to survive on its wits for the 10 years of its existence, after the success of the 'Phantasmagoria' album and the massive hit they had had with 'Eloise' the band were riding the crest of a wave commercially. This allowed them for the first time to record in huge, plush studios using state of the art equipment and the best gear that money could buy. According to Rat however, creatively the band were running on empty having entered the studio without much new material at all. As such the resulting album 'Anything' is not viewed with great affection by those that recorded it. Personally I feel that it has some good material on it but it comes no where near the aforementioned 'Phantasmagoria' in terms of quality and in being a consistent body of work. However, looking at the entry for the 'Anything' album on Wikipedia I had to smile when I read the following! "The Vancouver Sun also praised the album, stating that the Damned "have made the switch to mood music quite well, almost rising to the level of the mighty Stranglers"".

Many thanks for sharing this gig!

MP3 (as received): https://we.tl/t-6M8gVOl3cP

01. Sanctum Sanctorum
02. Wait For The Blackout
03. Psychomania
04. Anything
05. Shadow Of Love
06. In Dulce Decorum
07. Lovely Money/Is It A Dream?
08. The Girl Goes Down
09. Restless
10. LA Woman
11. Smash It Up
12. Eloise
13. Street Of Dreams
14. Plan 9 Channel 7
15. Neat Neat Neat
16. Love Song
17. Born To Kill
18. We Love You


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1 comment:

  1. sewer rat2 September 2018 at 11:10

    the album version of Edward The Bear is crap compared to the Grimly Fiendish B-side version. a lot of The Damned's studio problems lay mainly at the feet of dave vanian....he never turned up. that's probably why Trojans on phantasmagoria is an instrumental. me personally, as a life-long damned fan, think Anything is quite a poor album.

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