This Stiff Records produced ad appeared on the same page as the recently posted Stranglers 7th November 1976 Marquee review. Stiff Records were something else when it came down to promotion!
Monday, 7 September 2020
Lynval Golding Attacked in Coventry January 1982
Report of the attack that appeared in Record Mirror 16th January 1982.
I have recently acquired quite a lot of copies of old Record Mirror's and I am more than happy to while away a few hours perusing the singles and album reviews from way back when. But on a much darker note this piece reminded me of what happened to Lynval, guitarist of The Specials and Fun Boy Three man in early 1982. The guy was attacked and his injuries were such that he was lucky to survive. It happened in his home town of Coventry, a multi-cultural city that he and his six fellow Specials had given some meaning to in those dark days of the late '70's/ early '80's.
That band and in particular that man did so much, and indeed continues to do so, to promote the bloody obvious sense of racial harmony. Through his music and his very being he stands up to racist morons. I had the pleasure of meeting him on a couple of occasions and I have never met someone so positive, lively and enthusiastic about his music and what it means. He is a lovely, genuine bloke.
Black Lives Matter (yeah and All Lives Matter and so on and so forth....) everywhere but in particular in the US, where Lynval now resides, things are out of hand.... we shall see what happens in November, but it seems right now that the US is reliving the late '60's. It's all very disconcerting.
20 From '82 (14) The Damned Marquee Club London 15th December 1982
And just to force the message home that rather than being anti-change, Wardour Street's Marquee Club played host to all of the punk 'luminaries', many of whom returned to its small stage long after they had outgrown the club circuit. The Damned were one such example. Here they are playing one of three Christmas gigs at the end of 1982. Great set and lots of the usual abuse from and at the man Sensible. Many thanks to the 'Second Time Around' site for sharing the file.
MP3 (as received): https://we.tl/t-jPcrECb8Mm
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-Rfn4HFBpXN
01. Ignite02. Disco Man
03. Generals
04. I Just Can’t Be Happy Today
05. Stranger On The Town
06. Wait For The Blackout
07. Bad Time For Bonzo
08. Lively Arts
09. Melody Lee
10. Love Song
11. New Rose
12. Smash It Up (Part 1 & 2)
13. Noise Noise Noise
14. Hippy Hippy Shake
15. Pretty Vacant
16. Ballroom Blitz
17. Happy Talk
Sunday, 6 September 2020
The Stranglers at the Marquee 7th November 1976 (Review in New Musical Express 13th November 1976)
Unlike the last two posts I do not have a recording of the gig as an accompaniment to the review that follows, which must have been one of the bands earliest. That would be nice indeed!
This review of a gig that they played at the famed Wardour Street venue on 7th November 1976 abounds with references to the similarities of the band's sound to The Doors (and the Velvet Underground). Aside from the reviewer's skepticism of Hugh's proclamations about the worth of The Marquee, all made from the stage of the said venue, it is a very positive piece of music journalism, with an early prediction of the band's rapid rise to success that was just a few months away. He also predicted that 'Go Buddy Go' would be a hit for the as yet unsigned group.
As for Hugh's disparaging tirade against the Marquee, I am a little perplexed. Far from being a dinosaur rock venue, it was always my impression that the management/bookers for the Marquee were pretty savvy when it came to identifying the 'next big thing' in music. As mentioned in the review, The Stranglers were by no means the first in the crop of punk/new wave bands to play there. The 'Live at the Marquee EP' by Eddie and the Hot Rods was one of their best known releases and put them on the map. Most of the London based proto-punk Pub Rock bands also took to the Marquee stage on a regular basis.Throughout 1977 the venue was synonymous with punk.... The Adverts, Buzzcocks, X Ray Spex, The Damned, Chelsea....all Marquee Club regulars.
I guess at the time that The Stranglers found punk in the middle of 1976, the fact that not twelve months previously the band's regular gigs featured a string of 1960's covers played to apathetic audiences in sparsely filled pubs would not have made good press in that steamy summer of hate!
The Stranglers
MARQUEE
“We’d like to mourn the death of the Marquee. The place is dead. The regulars have grown into the wallpaper, the Marquee don’t know what’s going on today. Wait till we’ve finished then smash the place up.”
Hugh Cornwall (sic), guitar player with the Stranglers, looks old even by my standards, yet whenever he opens his mouth he spews forth kindergarten nihilist polemics, the sort of immature garbage you can smile at when lisped by babes like Rat Scabies or Barrie Masters…. But from a grown up recycling Doors licks, well, it’s just sad.
And when he’s doing it he’s on stage at the Marquee, striving desperately to join the Pistols in getting banned from there – when it’s the Marquee that launched unquestionably the most successful of all punk affiliated bands (that’s still what the Hot Rods are) – it’s plain stupid.
Despite their verbal idiocy, which seems also to run through their songs, the Stranglers are pretty certain to be huge. The fact is they are a terrific band.
Every member is a strong player: Jet Black (strangely enough the central motif of one of their best songs, “Down in the Sewer”, reminds me of Jet Harris/Tony Meehan kitsch instrumental cinemascope) is good and energetic, but he can hit that Mo Tucker metronome when required; Jean Jacques Burnel may be a lousy singer – but some of his bass work – particularly on a rather childish anti-education tirade embellished with discipline fantasies called “School Man” (sic) – is authorative enough to act as lead.
Dave Greenfield enacts his Ray Manzarek duties with aplomb, his astute use of piano and organ both as colour, as lead and as play-off against the guitar is a joy to hear, and he throws in an okay Dracula type vocal on “You’re Not Real”, while Cornwell is fine as a singer and breaks up his Velveteen riffing with lovely flowing Robby Krieger leads.
On just hearing them live, their words leave something to be desired. “London Lady” for instance appears to be a regressively sexist rock ‘n’ roll put down, while “Bitchin’”, a rant against everything in general and “posers” in particular, ill befits a mob of would-be 1966 L.A. hoodlums.
But the music, which fuses the Velvets with the Doors, and the songs, which are dynamically structured with a sophistication quite alien to the minimalist bands who are the only comparable phenomenon to the Stranglers around these days, have a drive and a flair that is quite intoxicating. “Go Buddy Go” is a hit.
The boring thing is that their conformist “rebel” image will require them to smash up the dressing room when they appear on Top of the Pops.*
* Something that Burnel acted upon at a later date!
On the same page as the review is another ad for a gig at The Red Cow in Hammersmith, which strangely omits the date. A cross check with the gigography in the Burning Up Time Forum indicates that the band played the venue on 2nd December 1976.
Saturday, 5 September 2020
Hemel Hempstead Pavilion 28th January 1982
Right a word of warning about this one. The quality is not so good, the sound is very muddy. The reason for posting it is only down to the fact that I came across a review of the gig this weekend and what's more it was full of praise for the band so recently re-energised by the surprise hit 'Golden Brown'.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-lwbOHzgQUm
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-Vb38Vd9Jgk
I am amused by the closing lines. "As for the rest of us it will be interesting to see if they continue their success by making commercial records' But they'll always be great, live."
"Lads, lads I've got it... what about that one in French about cannibalism!"
That is of course to overlook the rather successful 'Strange Little Girl' and 'European Female'.
And then there's this from NME... a rarity... a positive review.
New Musical Express (6th February 1982)
Thursday, 3 September 2020
The Cat's Out of the Bag! - Chippenham Golddiggers 28th January 1983 - Remaster
Following on from the piece reproduced from The Guardian from March that described the ideas behind and the recording of 'European Female', here we have a bit of a treat with another Dom P remaster. We present to you the opening night of the 'Feline' tour from 'Nam (as a mate of mineused to call it), Chippenham to the rest of us! The gig is notable for the inclusion of 'Blue Sister' which was dropped from the set for subsequent gigs.
An uneasy departure in style for both critics and fans alike, the mellow subtleties of 'Feline' was ammunition enough for the music press to further slate the band as indicated in the UK music press review of this gig below.
Over the years I have come to love the album to the extent that I consider it to be the last great Stranglers album. That is not to dismiss everything that followed it but I think that you can follow my meaning. To my ear, many of the songs from the 'Feline' album would sound perfect drifting from the depths of a smoke filled drinking haunt in France or Spain, which is really the point of the album.... a European concept album.
Unfortunately, I cannot recall the music weekly from which this review was culled, but that is rather an irrelevance given the pretty much universal contempt that the British music press had of The Stranglers.... that said there are much worse reviews of the Feline tour out there!
WAV: https://we.tl/t-bIAD02govU
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-eRQhprRATc
01. Intro02. Nuclear Device
03. Toiler On The Sea
04. Ships That Pass In The Night
05. It’s A Small World
06. Just Like Nothing On Earth
07. No More Heroes
08. Who Wants The World?
09. Never Say Goodbye
10. Baroque Bordello
11. Golden Brown
12. Princess Of The Streets
13. Midnight Summer Dream
14. European Female
15. Blue Sister
16. Tramp
17. The Raven
18. Duchess
19. London Lady
20. Strange Little Girl
21. Genetix
Wednesday, 2 September 2020
20 From '82 (13) Siouxsie And The Banshees Glasgow Apollo 15th November 1982
Here are the Banshees performing at the Glasgow Apollo on the 'Kiss in the Dreamhouse' tour in November 1982. The gig was recorded and broadcast on Radio Clyde.
I saw the Banshees a few times in the early '90's and if I am honest I preferred their later material to the early '80's stuff. But, either way they were a unique band and very talented.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-sktPQXt2U3
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-OY8VcCc6Lm
01. Fireworks02. Green Fingers
03. Cascade
04. Paradise Place
05. Pulled To Bits
06. Halloween
07. Melt
08. Sin In My Heart
09. But Not Them
10. Painted Bird
11. Slowdive
12. Arabian Knights
13. Spellbound
14. Israel
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