45 years ago to the day (9th February 1981) The Stranglers released 'The Gospel According to the Meninblack'. Back then it was a release that pretty much bamboozled fan and critic alike, but from a distance of almost half a century it is fair to say that it is now viewed as a classic of experimental post-punk. In other words it is brilliantly weird!
On the same day of the release the band kicked off a promotional tour at the Locarno in Bristol. To mark the occasion DomP has remastered a recording of the gig and in comparison to what came before, it is a huge improvement and this tour opener is now eminently listenable. Cheers Dom... a great bit of knob-twiddling there!
In a review of another bootleg version of the gig it was mentioned that this gig was the only one of the tour to include 'Don't Bring Harry'. I'll be honest, I haven't gone through subsequent dates to verify this, but I think it is true... it certainly conforms to an established Stranglers' MO of dropping stuff that they do not consider to be coming up to scratch live within a few opening gigs. What happened to JJ's vocal but it disappears part way through giving way to an audience singalong and seeing that such rock star antics were not a part of The Stranglers' repertoire, something else must have happened, equipment failure? A fight?
Oh and if anyone can translate Hugh's piece into the vocoder, please leave a comment!
Clearly some of the untested material that was being unveiled on this night was challenging to play for them all, especially Dave it seems... listen out for some interesting playing on 'Hallow To Our Men' and 'Waiting for the Meninblack'. Overall, a great listen from the band's next chapter.
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