We were hoping to make it over to Germany for this one. We haven't been to the area since Gunta's aunt died in Dusseldorf some years ago and we have yet to see 999 abroad. However, she has just embarked on a degree course and is having to study for the first time in 40 years, so leisure time is a little restricted for now! Sadly, Ruts DC in Dusseldorf went the same way this year too. Next year we will do better!
Enjoy!
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-6qFy9lPbVT
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-9GK8W7LZZW
Couldn't bring myself to purchase The Telegraph, but for anyone who missed it here's Liz Kershaw's interview with JJ from 19th November 2023.
You know you’re getting on a bit when your pop idols become pensionable – and that’s if they’re lucky. In recent years, so many of mine have sadly slipped off all too soon to that great gig in the sky. Others have simply slipped on stage. Bruce Springsteen, 74, took a tumble during at least two gigs on his recent 50th anniversary world tour and had to cancel a few nights because of a mystery illness. Earlier this year Madonna, 65, (who also famously had a fall at the 2015 Brit Awards) was hospitalised due to a bacterial infection and had to postpone her 40th anniversary tour. Mick Jagger, 80, meanwhile, takes a preventative approach and travels with a mobile gym and a physiotherapist.
Clearly it’s a perilous business being an ageing rock star. So what does it take to ensure you’re stage-ready at 9pm when your peers are settled on a sofa with a cup of tea? Bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel is now the last man standing from the Stranglers’ original line-up.
Next year, at 72, he’ll notch up half a century as the driving force of one of our most innovative and enduring British bands. He lives with his partner in Provence, in his French parents’ old house, but was recently in the UK for the launch of his autobiography, Strangler in the Light, and to rehearse for the band’s Golden Anniversary tour, on which he’ll once again be thrashing his bass, karate-kicking at the crowd and ripping off his soaking shirts to get his pecs out. Fifty years on, Stranglers’ gigs are still mostly sold out – and an energetic business. So how does Burnel stay so fit?
“Touring is exhausting. You have to keep in good shape. It’s all down to respect for the people who’ve paid good money to see us. How many bands are still going strong after 50 years and can sell out the Royal Albert Hall in seconds? I used to be a punk and, as an angry young man, I was very anti-authoritarian and always getting into punch-ups. But this tour won’t be Last Night of the Punks. These days I’m much more disciplined. And I’m not ready to retire yet!
I’m a seventh dan in karate – [one of] the highest rated in the UK – so I’ve always worked really hard on keeping myself fit. I’m always busy with band stuff but I never miss exercising, indoors or out. My “religion” dictates that I do at least one training session every day. I do up to 100 press-ups and sit-ups and work on kicks and exercises to work the different muscle groups – whether I’m in a hotel room or at home, where I also do cold-water swimming in my pool or a nearby lake. Or I walk a mountain trail. But I don’t run because it’s bad for the joints.
The best exercise is to be on my feet on stage. Moving about on stage stops my backache for a couple of hours. I try to give it my all and I lose about two litres [3½ pints] of fluids during a gig – by the end I’m completely drained.
These gigs will be more than three hours long, and mainly in seated venues, with an interval… or rather a comfort break – a lot of our fans have been with us since 1974.
All the playing and travelling is gruelling and it’s so easy to let yourself go. So as well as making time for exercise, I insist on eating healthily: mostly protein and greens. I always eat breakfast – usually eggs, sometimes with bacon and brown sauce, but no bread and always fresh coffee. I’ll have a salad for lunch and in the evenings, at home, I like to cook fish, lobster, meat and veg. I’m partial to truffle oil and a dollop of crème fraîche. On tour we have a couple of cooks with us. If I do have to grab any junk food I’m filled with self-loathing!
Being French I like a small glass of rose with my lunch, home or away. But there’s no other booze before the gig. The band do enjoy a well-deserved drink while we chat through our post-match analysis. If we’ve had a really good night we might pop a bottle of champagne and then a couple of bottles of red. But nobody needs a hangover, just plenty of sleep. I’ll usually get to bed by 1am wherever I am and fall asleep to Debussy. And I don’t get up until 11 unless I have to be up and on the road early. I know it doesn’t sound very “sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll” from the guy who was NME’s Stud of The Year in 1977! But still, I hope I’m not your standard septuagenarian.
I was only 21 when I met the other guys from the band. I’d just dropped out of uni when I picked up a hitchhiker near Guildford one night and met his mates, and next thing I was invited to replace him in their band. We all lived hand to mouth above the off licence owned by our drummer, Jet Black. By 1976 we were getting 200 gigs a year in pubs. Jet would collect our 25-quid fee and then treat us to Kentucky Fried Chicken, which I loved back then – though I wouldn’t touch it now.
I had no fat on me but I wasn’t scraggy. I was a little kid in London in the hungry 1950s, when food was still rationed. But my dad was tall and muscular, from Viking stock, and my mum was tall and beautiful, so I had good genes. So I was already over 6ft at my all-boys grammar school. I played rugby and as I was always getting into fights I’d taken up boxing, so I already had muscles when I discovered a karate club at uni.
As a student I had no idea how to talk to girls. Six years later, when the Stranglers were on stage there for the first time, I was an absolute babe-magnet! There’d be girls queueing up outside my hotel room door. And then top models are all over you and you’re invited to fashion shows and Grace Jones jumps out of a cake for you at a party and famous rock stars’ wives are blatantly chatting you up… It all got so weird. How did I cope? I was like a kid in a candy shop – I just went for it! I’m told I’m still cute, but actually I’m not that bothered about sex anymore. Lower testosterone – it’s a fact of later life.
On this tour we’ll be playing songs from our catalogue of around 200 from 18 albums. We’re playing some of the more obscure ones live for the first time. Back in the day we were trying to be clever and they’re quite complex arrangements and hard to play now. I’m having to get my head – and fingers – round all the notes and regain muscle memory. To be honest, we were off our heads on mind-altering drugs back when we wrote them.
For one whole year, me and some of the other guys decided to take heroin to see if it inspired us creatively. We’d inhale lines of heroin (for a high) mixed with coke (for energy). It did produce a different kind of album! But I was going to bed at dawn and sleeping all day. I was 30 and in a pathetic physical state. As thin as anything, just skin and bones. Dave [Greenfield], our keyboard player, took charge. I went cold turkey, which was grim, and after two or three days I vowed I’d never touch the stuff again.
What saved me was that I never injected anything. That and karate, which has helped me hold back – though getting injured goes with the territory. I’ve torn cartilage, muscles and tendons, broken bones and had two screws in my leg and done a whole Stranglers tour on crutches. But karate has kept me on an even keel and, as well as keeping me physically fit, it’s a much-needed coping mechanism. A way of life. A philosophy. “Never give up. Persevere. Remain faithful. Respect yourself and others.” I now share this with the students at my Shidokan karate school in London, which I set up more than 30 years ago.
Emotionally, the last six decades have been a real rollercoaster and at times I have struggled with my mental health. At my lowest point I tried to top myself. Our fifth album, [The Gospel According to the] Meninblack, came out in 1981 and went straight to number eight in the charts, but the next week it had disappeared. We were skint. I thought it was all over, so I took myself off to my garage… Luckily I really was a failure!
Hugh Cornwell, our singer, called me after a gig in 1990 and said he was leaving us. All the band’s assets were then frozen. I had no money. I had to sell my motorcycles to feed my kids. The highs have been getting my pride and the band back on track.
The Stranglers have never been seen as soppy, because we’ve never written love songs. But on our last album, Dark Matters, in 2021, two songs are about love. One [And if You Should See Dave…] for my friend of 45 years, Dave Greenfield, who we lost to Covid. Plus The Lines is about still being able to love yourself when you look in the mirror and have to face up to ageing.
Some of my peers are having Botox and dying their hair. I think they look ridiculous. I just accept the wrinkles and white hairs – as well as a bad back, detached retinas and hearing loss. I’ve yet to write a song about incontinence!
One thing that I’ve learnt over the years is that you can’t go on stage wasted. If I am tired one morning, that’s a pain, but if it gets so that I wake up every morning knackered, then I’ll think about packing it in. But I have to be doing something. I can’t bear lying around on beaches. I’d still be revving up my motorcycle or hiking with my dog in the mountains. And jamming in a local blues band with a founder member of the Yard Birds. Oh, and enjoying the Telegraph crossword every Saturday! And my little grandkids, aged two and three, who are the real stars now. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a big softy really.”
So I am a few pages shy of finishing JJ's book and read the chapter where he took it upon himself to be a champion, promoter and producer of French bands and French music. This lead me to dig out The Rat Zone presentation of the Seppuku demos from 1981.
m4a: https://we.tl/t-hEBdMPLz5n
Link to the 'Listen to the Sirens' blog..... see 1978 Tubeway Army... John Lydon loved 'em and I'm told on good authority that Pete Shelley wanted to join them!
Here's an established tribute band, Rattus Inheritus, with a focus on Mk. 1 material.... although 'Skin Deep' and 'Always The Sun' sneak into the set. Thanks to the original Dime uploader,
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-DCl5S1Axwg
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-FCfgRSj73a
As discussed last week on the 999 Facebook page there is a recording that features a song called 'People Who Died', that by all accounts is quite an obscure track. It did appear o a bootleg tape, one of a series of tapes of punk bands in London in the late 80's (?)/early '90's. As I recall they had something to do with Dave Ferguson (who I did buy this recording (as a tape) from back then in Fulham).
As mentioned by Nick in the recording, Pablo was local and The Swan was his local, which was probably the reason that 999 played there a few times in the early '90's. Here's a flyer from 1992 that also features some outfit called The Lurkers.
5th June 1992 is probably the date of this recording.
Of course the following year the band released 'You Us It' (the successor to 'Separates' in my opinion) and there were another handful of gig's at The Swan... those were happy times for me!
The sleeve artwork also makes reference to an interview conducted upstairs at The Swan on 20th November 1993. Whilst at a gig that both The Stranglers and 999 played at Fontwell Racecourse in '93, I was asked to interview the band for an article in Strangled, the fan publication published by The Stranglers Information Service (the interview transcript can be found here).
WAV: https://we.tl/t-bNqgmW8TpA
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-QgZUsh9hpi
This is the second time that our daughter has had the honour of playing in one of the most hallowed gig spaces in the UK... at least in my old eyes! However, she takes it all in her stride.
So, this then is the second London gig for Manchester based four piece, Ombudsmen. A planned date at the Dublin Castle fell victim to a planned rail strike earlier in the year. On this occasion I was gutted to be absent as work commitments had taken me to Copenhagen for the two days spanning this gig. The gig line up was the same as the Hope gig that took place in March of this year, the difference being that that gig was a matinee and this was an evening affair.
On this return date they have more product to promote, an E.P. CD entitled 'Terms & Conditions Apply' (available from https://ombudsmen.bandcamp.com/album/terms-conditions-apply ).
I did note this week that Kid Kapichi have adapted the same 'Neighbourhood Watch' logo for their new album, but Ombudsmen got there first. The adaptation was done by Mo Andrews and captures the band rather well, but then again I am a little biased in my view here!
'Terms & Conditions Apply' move the band ever forward from their first E.P. 'Fizzy Milk'. Both E.P.s are played in full in this Hope & Anchor set. Both of these E.P.s appear on Spotify too.
It is very difficult to apply labels to the band as they do not fit neatly into a defined genre, as much as a musical cliché as that may sound. There are elements of punk, electronica, funk, psychedelia and dare I say it... prog in their multi-layered tunes. The bass drives the songs whilst the guitar brings an urgency to the proceedings, a sound that compliments the vocals. Of the vocals, Mo's vocal styles vary across the set, I can hear Ari Up, a bit of Grace Slick on the somewhat psychedelic 'Yourself Is Everywhere' as well as a liberal measure of Lene Lovich.
The band play quite regularly in the Manchester area as well as further afield with recent gigs in Liverpool, Bradford and Nottingham. Hopefully, more London dates will come their way and hopefully, if that is the case, I can arrange my time better such that I am in the same country when they next play there.
Anyway, here is the gig in full. Once again I am very indebted to Lee McFadden for sharing this recording. Cheers!
Here's a DVD compilation that I put together some years ago that features a collection of TV and live appearances from 1978 to 2007. Quality varies, but it's a nice collection. Anyone recall where 'Bomb You' came from or is it another of those tracks like 'People Who Died' and 'White Trash', songs that saw the light of day for the briefest of times?
DVD image: https://go.wetransfer.com/t-F3bWP0s7pr
Artwork: https://go.wetransfer.com/t-OFKLnGXJ5h
Here's an interview with Hugh conducted by early supporter, Barry Cain from the UK music weekly Record Collector.
Much like in the case of Dave, Jet and Pete Shelley, I am still struggling with the loss of Terry Hall.
