Keeping up some manner of connection today, no matter how tenuous, here are The Alarm with a great sounding gig in Lyon from their early days. The late Mike Peters was of course a friend of The Stranglers and shared the stage with them on quite a few occasions. I never met the man (if I am honest, I did not like The Alarm) but he was by all accounts a thoroughly decent man.
To my ears The Alarm sounded like an Americanised version of The Clash (some may say that The Clash themselves sounded very Americanised... once they had conquered their boredom of the USA!). Moreover, back in the day I used to struggle to make a distinction between The Alarm and U2... a band that turn me off more than The Alarm ever could!
Nevertheless, for all my lack of enthusiasm for The Alarm, I did see them, or rather a version of them (with Mike Peters) when they played a warm up gig with The Damned and Henry Cluney (which was perhaps his first solo outing) in 2009. I think that I remember The Alarm playing '45 RPM' a Top 30 hit for the band recording undercover as 'The Poppy Fields'. The hoax was intended to draw attention to the difficulty that older bands had to achieve a hit.
Mike Peters died after a prolonged battle with cancer in 2025.
Thanks to the original Dime uploader (TheCommish).
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-prfGYTMlgl
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-IMEb5F6Lv3
No comments:
Post a Comment