So, what do people make of this album then. Released in February 1979, the most prolific year in the band's long career. It was a few years later that I got hold of my first copy whilst on an end of O levels trip to Stratford. Heading back south we stopped off in Coventry at which point I sloped off in search of the nearest record shop, leaving others to look at the two catherdrals. This was in the summer of 1985 and the copy I had was a first pressing with the inner sleeve.
What was the reasoning behind this release? Was it a contractually obligated album? Was it a statement piece that formally closed the door on the 'punk' Stranglers and ushered in a new direction? Or was it, as suggested by Nick Kent simply a case that so many of the bands gigs had been recorded up to that point that United Artists would be just as well to release some of it. Whatever the truth, it is a bit of an oddity.
In terms of closing the punk chapter, it does what it says on the tin, show casing neatly live highlights from 'Rattus', 'Heroes' and 'Black & White'. That said, it is a bit of a hotch potch of an album. That the album has been issued on CD no less than three times, on each occasion featuring additional and different tracks, does suggest that the album was poorly conceived when it was originally released in early 1979.
Personally, I have something of a distaste for live albums that feature tracks from a variety of different sources. It is not a true reflection of a gig.... somewhat dishonest. I much prefer the idea of hearing a full gig that is a representative snapshot of a band at a precise point in time, with bum notes, false starts etc left in. Then it is real. I used to love it when The Stranglers fucked up on stage... it usually prompted some stick directed at the jeering audience from JJ or Hugh!
I have located two reviews of the album and I am sure that you will agree that it is hard to think that the reviewers were listening to the same album.
Record Mirror (24th February 1979)
THE STRANGLERS: Live X Cert
(UAG 30224)
IT'S SO easy to be avant garde. To accomplish mass appeal in a musical idiom, when one is offering something a little different however, is a real triumph. Both the Velvets and the Stranglers offered change, of one sort or another and both trotted out great live sets. It comes as no great surprise then, to find that '1969' is along with 'Loaded' la creme of Underground work.
Available for around, gasp, a decade on import this double shows just why VU were progenitors of much of the artsy-farsy , undeniably crap, thrashings which today pretend to be boldly adventurous, but are really just a monumental pain.
All the classics are here. From 'Heroin' to 'Sweet Jane' - where did you get that riff Lou? - from 'What Goes On' to 'Rock and Roll' (great title that), from 'Pale Blue Eyes' to 'White Light / White Heat'. Probably their definitive album and a worthy young persons' guide to rock and roll. S'all that need be said apart from I’ll give it foive.
The Stranglers, ah The Stranglers. Ten years on from VU, a wealth of latterday recording techniques and a mass appeal. Contrast a weedy '1969' played to a handful of folks who don't even recognise 'Sweet Jane', fer Chrissakes, to the gargantuan depth and power of The Strangs strutting their stuff to the minions in the Roundhouse and at Battersea Park.
As a document of the end of part one, 'Live (X cert)' is an awesome success. Live albums, bar the true classics, are usually haphazard heaps of tired reruns. This work sums up the best, arguably, of the first three albums.
Played alongside the studio tracks, the quality, power and gut feel shines through and leaves 'Rattus Norvegicus', 'No More Heroes' and 'Black And White' as mere cut-outs in the deletion bin of life.
'Grip' and 'Dagenham Dave' come from as far back as November '77 and remind me that, despite it all, boys I'm still a fan. 'Burning Up Time', 'Dead Ringer', 'I Feel Like A Wog' and 'Straighten Out' come close to the first two, but really they're just good. Go back to June '77 and you'll find the reason why these pieces are merely good. The venue is again the Roundhouse and the song is 'Hanging Around', a personal zenith and possibly a soundtrack for the generation? Whatever it's the best of the best.
Two tracks from 'Black And White' are the centre piece of side two. Recorded at Battersea, a gig which I regarded as disastrous, the cuts seem to make more sense played live, especially the militantly brutal 'Death And Night And Blood'.
'Five Minutes' and 'Go Buddy Go', from the Roundhouse '77 and Battersea late '78 conclude' and leave one musically satiated.
This could be the end of the first chapter or the last page of the book. This isn't the place to discuss the band's dubious ideology but, what with solo albums in LA and numerous incidents where, by one of their own admission, they have made assholes of themselves, I am sceptical on the future. The Stranglers must let me know what they are about and not just on record. I don't understand 'em but I'd like to honest.
To conclude, these live pancakes are the albums to own if you have no other records by the bands concerned. Both deserve five stars, and five stars is what they get. + + + + + once. + + + + + twice. RONNIE GURR
New Musical Express (24th February 1979)
THE STRANGLERS
Live - X Cert
(United Artists)
The official line on this enterprise is that it represents, in the words of one J.J. Burnel, "The end of an era … a compilation of the first three albums. And rock'n'roll's all about live stuff."
The unofficial line, however, has it that the group had forked out so much money for live mobile units set up especially to record innumerable gigs, that "X Certificate" virtually had to be released-to provide a raison d'etre for all the wasted effort and finance.
That viewpoint gains credence when one notes the band's apparent disinterest in publicisIng the record, preferring to wax ecstatic about Burnel's "Euroman" project and Hugh Cornwall's
solo affair, not to mention another group studio album (presumably volume one of 'the next phase'). '
Yet "X-Certificate" has been released with their blessing, it lives, it breathes, it demands a reaction. There lies the rub, because it's a thoroughly retched record, sloppy and samey, totally without merit.
Even by the standards set by their three previous albums, it plumbs previously unassailable depths, providing both a thoroughly ' inadequate selection of former fare and spotlighting all the worst aspects of The Stranglers' supposed musical "chutzpah”.
At the outset, with "Rattus Norvegicus", The Stranglers had a sound - off-puttingly aggressive. in its overall clout, maybe, and with an offensive bully-boy venom – which abraisively delivered, drawing the, listener to the maelstrom like a moth to a flame-thrower. After "R.N." though, they failed to experiment, choosing the easy option of amping out one dimensional reprises of the old tried and trues.
If nothing else, "X-Certificate" provides proof positive of the strangle-hold that has stymied their output far more than all those tedious tirades against their noxious macho bully-boy image. Don't' get me wrong, I'm as sickened by all that crap as any other reasonably enlightened sod, but the real deal concerns the actual sound they choose to toy with. And that's why "X Certificate" is so damnably feeble.
It's all far too cosy and formularised. There's barely a speck of deviation anywhere. So we have Burnel's hyper-aggressive bass lines (he's very good at the chosen style but just a soupcon of fretboard variety would do wonders for The Stranglers' sound), Cornwell's spindly lead lines (all heard before in better settings and his rhythm playing mixed so atrociously as to render it impotent) and Dave Greenfield's going-through-the motions organ - he appeared to have some. potential until Steve Naive came along and stole his thunder. Jet Black simply takes care of business, nothing dynamic, nothing inadequate, yer proverbial mucker.
That's the main problem here - the band are merely marking time. Burnel and Cornwell are so obsessed with playin'g out their roles of macho boys that the one dimensional schtick is vengefully driven home with the continuous desire to override a merely aggressive slant. It's boring, offensive and downright irresponsible.
The Stranglers are so image conscious that they can't see that their audience is totally into apeing their hard-man personnas.
"X Certificate" 'is puerile pablum. Titles: "Grip" (same arrangement as on "R.N"•but inferior version, a bad mix all but obscuring the vocals); "Dagenham Dave" (the formula starts to make itself manifest); "Burning Up Time" (a vague promise of something different but essentially more of the same); "Hanging Around" (the "Hope And Anchor" take is better); "I Feel Like A Wog" (good pace, interesting dynamic but ultimately flat); "Straight Out" (featuring a crass monologue intro); "Curfew" (starts promisingly but still hamstrung);' ''Death And Night And Blood" (cluttered, crappy and a grave disservice to a great Japanese writer); "Five Minutes" (a feeble song, badly interpreted); and the finale, "Go Buddy Go" (a rock-out item with little to commend itself).
All in all, a wasted effort. Those who own the three studio albums really don't need interior versions of the same. "X Certificate" is also a pathetic introduction to Stranglers music.
So who does need it, beyond the most rabid Stranglophiles? No one, is all. Bullies really aren't very nice people, anyway.
Nick Kent
Quite a contrast in opinion I think you'll agree. To the point that Nick Kent made about there being little interest within the band to promote the album, maybe that is true. No musician likes to tread water and at this time the two front men were focussed on their solo efforts. On top of that it must have been around this time that the musical ideas that resulted in 'The Raven' must have been taking on shape. This live album was a retrospective of the band as they once were whilst the band themselves had their eyes firmly fixed on a new horizon. Is it any wonder then that the band's energies were directed elsewhere at the time of 'X-Certs' release? Leave that to the record company they may have been thinking. UA certainly appear to have has a budget to lavish upon this record. It was extensively promoted (look at the Music Week ad at the top of the post) and well presented.... especially in Japan!!
Needless to say, I do not share Nick Kent's disdain for the album, but let's just say I am still holding out for the deluxe issue of 'Dead On Arrival'!!
And one more... Bushell puts his two penneth in.
Sounds (24th February 1979)
THE STRANGLERS
'The Stranglers Live (X Cert)'
(United Artists UAG 30224) ****
A chill wind blows down the grimy alleyhidden in shadows and overpacked with freshly stinking mounds of rotting vegetation left over from the neighbouring daytime market stalls. Susan shivers and strains her ears for noises which her early morning imagination construes as the mutterings of armies of massive mutant rats but which are clearly the distant footsteps of boozy men getting louder and louder.
Then those cries: “YOU ARE WOMAN, YOU ARE SHIT. YOU WILL DIIEEEE.” She turns into the wind and bolts. Hits something. Hard. Her mouth drops open and the figure in front of her lifts up his Samurai warrior sword and splits her head in two, jerking off over her motionless corpse and cuckling as hungry hordes of rodents tear into her still warm flesh…..
The Stranglers make me laugh almost as much as the humourless, prudish pains who would destroy and whose sexless alternative is almost as ridiculous as the Stranglers’ own sexism. Correction, stupidity. What else do you call people who can come out with statements like women don’t belong in rock ‘cos they haven’t got cocks? ‘Scuse me while I tell that to Siouxsie Banshee, Pauline Penetration, Debbie Blondie, Poly Styrene, Chrissie Hynde, Ariana, Palmolive, Patti Smith, Joan Jett, Gaye Advert, Tina Weymouth, Janis Joplin, Maggie Bell, Beverley Glick, Lene Lovich, Rachel Sweet, Alicia Bridges, Suzi Q…..
Let’s face it, the Stranglers as philosophers come across on a level slightly below Stan Ogden. As musicians they were the bridge between punk rock and the HM crew, detested by punks and critics alike, but through graft and competent musical hybrids coupled with lyrics dripping with standard Satans from the seamy side of horror film life they achieved a ‘punk’ best seller in ‘Rattus’, a success never fully duplicated in their heavier later work.
So we turn to the album, and if I didn’t have any Stranglers albums – which I haven’t – this’d be one I’d buy ‘cos it strings together some of their finest moments.
There's selections from all three-albums here, plus some b-sides: 'Grip', 'Dagenham Dave', 'Burning Up Time', 'Dead Ringer', 'Hanging Around', 'Wog', 'Straighten Out', 'Curfew', 'Do You Wanna?/Death Night And Blood (Yukio)', '5 Minutes', ‘Go Buddy Go', recorded variously at the Roundhouse in '77 and Battersea Park '78. And it's an honest live album in so far as there's been no attempt to dress it up with studio overdubs. It sounds like It's wafting up from the sewers below und as such it's the definitive Stranglers album, capturing them in all their dirty, doomsy anti-glory.
Still there's honesty and honesty, and I think Wicked Uncle Hugh is very brave to leave all his between song raps recorded for posterity. Listen to the pathetlc 'mock street' gumbyisms: ''You don't even get a film at the 'Ammersmith Odeon and you don't get a rainbow at the Rainbow." Amazing. "Did someone say wanker. Where is 'e? Isn't he gonna own up?" Wanker.
Aw look, this is a good album. I just wish they'd get off their horses and drink their milk. Y'know, they might even beat me up now. But I don't care, I've got a big sister.
BARRY GUSHELL (name changed for reasons of personal safety).
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