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.
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