100 Club (50 Years of Punk September 2026) - TV Smith And The Bored Teenagers and John McKay's Reactor

Inevitably this year will see many events marking punk rock's half century. Not an inconsequential place in this spittle flecked history is the 100 Club in London's Oxford Street (still one of the greatest rock 'n' roll venues anywhere!). Hosts to the famous/infamous Punk Rock Festival over what would have been two quiet weekday nights on 20th and 21st September 1976, the event brought together the main protagonists in what was to become the greatest youth culture to emerge in the UK (my opinion of course). Later, egos and controversies (real or manufactured) would drive wedges between many of the bands that appeared at the festival.

I was not there in 1976 as I was just 7 at the time! The best that I could do was to make an appearance at the 2nd 100 Club Punk Festival and Buzzcocks on the second night.

Over the years I have seen Sex Pistols, The Damned, Buzzcocks, Chris Spedding, The Vibrators and Siouxsie & The Banshees. I never got to see The Clash (Joe Strummer, Big Audio Dynamite and if memory serves Havana 3am was the closest I got). And I missed the opportunity to see Subway Sect who played on the 1st night of the 2nd festival (along with ATV).

To mark the the 50th anniversary of the original festival, the 100 Club are hosting a number of punk luminaries on 18th and 19th September. I opted for TV Smith and the Bored Teenagers and John McKay's Reactor over X Generation X and Stinky Toys. Whilst seeing Stinky Toys would be interesting given the fact that they played the original event, not having played in the UK since 1977 may be against them (maybe they have been more active in France). Actually I don't think that I have heard anything by them.

This seems to present a good excuse to post some TV Smith and John McKay material.

It was back in 2007 that TV Smith at long last reconciled with his Adverts past and backed by The Bored Teenagers started playing that band's material again for the first time since they dissolved in 1979. Since that time he has continued to thrill audiences with high energy Adverts sets such as this one from Rebellion in 2022 when he and the band played a set of exclusively Adverts songs.

The Adverts didn't play at the first 100 Club Festival, their live debut occurred some months later on 15th January 1977 when they supported Generation X at The Roxy, but Tim and Gaye were in attendance at the 100 Club for the fun.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-GsJfVOcqXnNM7f5r

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-aAWxMTZF4Ev5k23d

The Banshees line up that played the 100 Club Festival was intentionally a one-off, Sioux doing vocal duties, Severin on bass, Marco Pirroni on guitar with Sid Vicious doing something with the drums. Later the line up settled with Sioux and Severin joined by Kenny Morris on drums and John McKay on guitar. Before John McGeogh, McKay's guitar work is widely recognised as defining the sound of the early Banshees. This line up went on to record the debut album 'The Scream' and the follow up 'Join Hands'. However, the relationships within the band were fractious and McKay and Morris famously departed from the band on the day of release of 'Join Hands', just hours before the band were due on stage at Aberdeen's Capitol Theatre.

In the last year or so John McKay has re-emerged with his Reactor band performing a mix of early Banshees songs with original material. Thanks to Malcolm for this one!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-43MKhqOBqd3ZTLUT

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-GehOKqbkRgH5RxY0

Interview (New Musical Express 4th December 1976)

So here then is an interview that appeared in the 4th December 1976 issue of the New Musical Express. A punishing touring schedule maintained throughout 1976 had earned the band some gravitas as a serious rock band, most certainly across Greater London. With continuous mentions in the weekly gig listings, coupled with increasing interest brewing over a handful of other London bands that together were coalescing into a 'punk' or 'new wave' new music scene. This extensive interview from early December '76 was amongst some of the earliest press that the band received from the big hitting music weeklies in the UK. 

For their part, Cornwell and Burnel, whilst harbouring a certain degree of suspicion towards the NME journalist, Phil McNeil (principally stemming from a review he wrote of the band's appearance at the Marquee the previous month), were yet to adopt their infamously hostile manner in their subsequent dealings with the music press. And, to be fair to McNeil on this occasion, he was not really in the business of giving the band a hard time. His observation that contrary to the band's implication that the music business was actively hindering the band, as of December 1976, the Pistols, The Damned and The Vibrators had had a relatively easy and rapid journey into a recording studio carried some weight. The Stranglers themselves had studio time booked at the end of the same month. Sure, they had undoubtedly put in the legwork to establish themselves as a live band but then again that was part of the rock 'n' roll apprenticeship that countless bands before them had served.

As to the interviewer's attempts to pin the two of them down in terms of their politics and philosophical stance on the new music scene that would serve them so well in the coming year, their responses were at best indeterminate or just confusing.

Despite the flaws in the interview it is great to read about The Stranglers and their views on the punk scene so early on. At that stage they had no records recorded or released, a live album, intended to be their debut, was due to be recorded imminently so things were looking rosy indeed for The Stranglers. As for punk, well, by the time that this issue hit the newsstands, knowledge of punk was no longer confined to music journalists and a few hundred London kids on the scene. The appearance of Sex Pistols on the Today Show on 1st December with Bill Grundy meant that by 2nd December the entire country had heard of punk.... and everything changed!

As much as I would love to present you with an audio of the Marquee performance to complement this interview I cannot, but I can add context by reference to the Marquee review referred to at the start of this interview (here) and I can direct you to a partial recording of the Nashville gig of 10th December, mooted to be their 'Dead On Arrival' album but vetoed by the band as not sufficiently representing their live act (here).

Hugh Cornwell and Jean Jacques Burnel, Stranglers lead and bass guitarists, are ready for me. The instant I walk through the door I’m assailed by their criticisms of my review of their Marquee gig which has appeared in the morning’s NME.

“You don’t look so young yourself.”

“Do you consider yourself mature then?”

“Come on then, tell us where we sound like The Doors.”

“Do you look at the audience when you review a gig?”

“Did you see how they were getting off on what we said about the Marquee?”

And so on…

This is just what I need, having leapt out of bed late , paid the earth for a cab, got soaked walking to the interview, got no cigarettes, had no breakfast, and when I’m still trying to force myself awake.

It’s especially galling, because apart from criticising the band’s “stance”, I’d given them a rare review. Musically they are one of the most exciting, adventurous combos I’ve heard in a long time.

Burnel, in standard issue black leather jacket, and Cornwell, swamped into an enormous, ostentatiously ripped overcoat, analyse my review point by point. It’s a novel experience, not simply because I am forced to rigorously defend every word I have written, but also because at no point during the interview/argument, or on our withdrawal to the pub, do the two Stranglers relax their suspicion of me.

They maintain that the Marquee is dead, despite the fact that two of this year’s most successful new bands, AC/DC and Eddie & The Hot Rods have launched themselves from Marquee residencies. That the club did not become a discotheque or strip joint years ago is almost enough to be thankful for.

They object to my linking the Rods with the New Wave, despite the fact that the Rods are the only band connected with that scene who have got nationwide exposure on TV, radio and the road,  and therefore may epitomise ‘punk’ in many people’s minds.

They carp at my Doors comparison, through it’s undeniable in their line-up and their keyboard and guitar styles, while they claim that it’s coincidence that Dave Greenfield bases his playing around 3rds and 5ths (Burnel trying to blind me with science) like Ray Manzarek.

But when we get down to my criticism of their onstage rabble-rousing we quickly dead end ourselves: “But I think you’re just battering your heads against the wall.”

“Okay, so where’s the wall?”

“Er, um, well… I dunno, I suppose it’s the music biz establishment…”

And at this point I confess to being checkmated.

But I shouldn’t have let myself be. See, The Stranglers get up on stage at the Marquee and rant about its obsolescence and tell the audience to smash the place up after the gig (“It wasn’t an order, it was a suggestion”). This I find quite unwarranted: if you don’t like it don’t play there.

The Stranglers, however, see the Marquee as a major stanchion of the system which they reckon has repressed their talent. Like most of their punk/dole-queue/new-wave rock cohorts, they are martyrs and rebels.

Humbug.

Let’s have a look at how martyred and repressed the Stranglers are.

They formed a band just a year ago. Since then they’ve been working constantly, they’ve supported Patti Smith on both her media blitz tours, and now they’ve landed a contract with United Artists. They’ve really had it tough, haven’t they?

While we’re on the subject, let’s look at a couple of their contemporaries. The Sex Pistols have just released a blow against empire called “Anarchy In The UK”, a pretty good thunderous single which I like a lot. But in going so these “anarchists” have signed themselves as miniscule fish in the colossal pond of EMI. Watch its foundations shake.

Oh, and the Damned. “Dole Queue Rock” is it? Look mate, I was on the dole for two years trying to launch a rock band. It had no bearing on the kind of music we played, and we didn’t presume to set ourselves up as spokesmen for some great new breed of Dole Queue Kids. The Damned claim to be society’s rejects – a very lucrative business.

The time happens to be right for a new youth craze, and self styled Angry Young Men are it. It’s a long time since anyone has had an easier route to a recording contract than the Pistols, Stranglers, Damned and Vibrators – none of whom have been playing in public for more than a year – and the ironic fact that their overnight success is partly due to the way the rock establishment is supposedly trying to make life difficult for them.

The Stranglers claim to be different to the other bands of new wave – while still laying claim to a place in its hierarchy – because they are “more politically aware” and are not just into showbiz, which they reckon a lot of the other bands are. Their politics? Well, that’s a tricky one – let’s leave that till later.

But they spout many of the same litanies as the other bands.

For instance, it is now apparently de rigeur for less mainstream punks to deny any knowledge of the Stooges before this year. The Stranglers like to be classified as psychedelic, though they’re at pains to tell me exactly what psychedelia is not (hippies of course), and disclaim any knowledge of the “Nuggets” bands who appear to be such a strong influence on them (Electric Prunes, Standells, etc etc). I can’t help thinking they are donning a mantle they’ve misconstrued.

Another new wave litany: they refuse to reveal what they were going before the Stranglers. It later slips out that two have teaching experience.

And another. Jean Jacques recites his “criteria for good rock”: “It’s gotta be energetic, it’s gotta rock, it’s gotta be economic and it’s gotta be aware. It’s gotta be neo-revolutionary, even if it’s just fucking people’s heads about a venue, political at that low a level. And the trouble with rock in the last few years is that it’s become verbose, self-indulgent and safe.”

What constitutes “safe” rock? I cite the Kinks, and most major beat groups as “safe” examples of great rock. Yet later I wind up arguing Cornwell and Burnel’s cause by wondering whether in these austere times, the emergence of a “new Rolling Stones” might not be a more real threat to social stability than the originals were in their heyday.

(In fact, while it may be a little complacent of me to point it out, the so-called rock revolution which is nowadays sneered at as a failure did, undeniably, play some kind of role in setting the social climate for , say, the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion, the end of the American presence in Vietnam, Watergate, and most non-economical leftward developments of the past ten years, from the SLA to Women’s Lib.

Another new wave litany: “There’s nothing worse than apathy or smugness at a rock gig.”

This from Burnel, who does most of the talking in his jumpy, boarding school voice. Cornwell, who sits, head bowed, between the two of us, occasionally fixes me quizzically and chucks in some remark.

“People are often surprised at the stances we take at gigs,” he tells me. “We only take a stance because it’s better than taking no stance at all.”

“You put over the music in the best way possible,” says Burnel. “So you use psychology. And that relies on the context and situation.

“Someone told be they saw Johnny Rotten and he looked bored, and the second time he looked bored, and the fourth time, and by the fifth time they were bored because it was the same…a stereotype. We’re much more organic than that.”

“ I think the whole scene is being manipulated.” Cornwell suddenly breaks in from nowhere.

By Malcolm?

“And other people too, who’ve got financial interests in it. They’re manipulating the kids away from what they really, y’know…”

To what extent does your audience clash or mix with theirs?

“There’s a certain amount of overlap,” Hugh reckons, “but we don’t attract the hardcore manipulated people…”

I ask why the Stranglers are sneered at in those circles.

“For not digging Iggy and the Stooges and telling them so,” erupts Burnel. “And, er, not digging really on plastic and not going down King’s Road to the Roebuck and the Sex Shop. That’s why we’ve been ignored a lot. We’ve been slated by the hip scene, only because we don’t wanna be into that trip.”

Seems to me these guys have no idea what it is to be really ignored. Later on Burnel tells me: “maybe we’re not popular because we don’t sing about pleasant little meadows and flowers and ‘I love you’, which is either bare-faced double-talk or a complete misunderstanding of current status quo. A realistic rephrasing would be: “maybe we are so popular because…”

The Stranglers, standing to one side within the punk explosion, can actually reap the benefits of the scene without foregoing their independence.

“By the end of next week there’s going to be twenty new punk bands,” mocks Burnel. “And they’re all going to be doing the same thing. It’s just going to be like a big melee… and we’ve going to come out from underneath. Because there’s no direction to a lot of them; the only direction is a commercial one, which is very successful.”

Cornwell mulls this over to himself while Burnel and I discuss Steve Miller as a brief diversion, then suddenly gives me his opinion when I turn Burnel back to the Pistols, Clash and Damned:

“Well, they rely a lot on their connections with the mental sort of agoraphobia of young kids. So I think they’re relying very little upon their music; they’re relying much more on the way that they are identifiable with their audiences.

“I think they’ve been manipulated.” The bands or audience, it’s not clear.

I put it to him that in a way the kids may have been manipulated into that agoraphobia anyway.

“You reckon? You don’t think that there’s any there anyway just because of disillusionment, a sign of the times?”

Having suggested it, I’m actually in no position to hazard any kind of guess as to whether I’m right or wrong – except that discontent rarely breeds unprompted. But I can suggest that had any of the new bands’ current audience seen them cold a year ago, there instant reaction might well have been that it was absolute crap.

“Oh sure,” Jean Jacques agrees.

“The fact that they play badly and people say ‘So what?’ That’s inverted snobbery isn’t it?”

“I reckon a lot of them suffer from bad musical systems,” says Cornwell. “Y’know, the PA’s terrible and it just comes out as a din. Once they get their musical systems together then you’ll be able to really judge if they’re doing anything.”

I suggest that maybe people don’t pick up on rebels automatically because they are rebels; they have to be told. This is a rebel for you.

Burnel agrees and cites James Dean as an example of this. “We needed heroes, so pick one out.”(Certainly it’s amusing to think of the number of people who stuck pix of Dean on their walls during the great Twentieth Anniversary media madness).

“It’s the same with the music scene at the moment,” opines Burnel.

“They’re picking out old heroes because at the moment they’re still trying to get new heroes together. That’s why Iggy… Iggy Bombom… is becoming a cult figure.

“The thing is, there aren’t any heroes. Politically there are no heroes either, that’s why everything’s going around in circles, very directionless.

Although the Stranglers play totally different music from most punk bands, they are, as I’ve said, similar (if more articulate) in their attitude – much of it, I suspect received from the rock critics’ post-Velvets intellectualisations.

Maybe they can shed a light on the Nazi fetishism that has crept in here somehow. “Well, it’s just ‘cause that is the only thing around, the only vibe, that is united and with a certain direction,” Hugh reckons. “People want direction.”

“Everyone is paranoid.” Jean tells me fervently. "There's decay everywhere. We've always lived with the assumption that things were getting better materially, progress all the time, and suddenly it's like, you hear everyday there 's a crisis, financial crisis. Things being laid off, people are not working.

Everything’s coming to a grinding halt," he goes on, while I start moving towards the door to nip out to Selfridges for a gas-mask. "No-one sees any heroes. The politicians have lost their credibility; political philosophies are no longer relevant. Sure they want something dynamic.”

Those sort of paranoid fantasies used to entice me when I was a speedfreak but I can’t work myself into a terror these days. Still, I suggest the one about the Stones not being so dangerous, as they arrived in comparatively affluent times.

The Stranglers agree. I ask if they reckon Johnny Rotten is going to be subsumed into the system in the way that Mick Jagger became tolerated as our kind of ambassador of Swingin’ London freakiness. 

“Definitely,” Burnel asserts. “Because he’s too stupid to be aware of anything larger than himself. To get to that powerful position – because rock is probably the most powerful medium in the world for young people – to get to that position, I think Rotten is too stupid, having talked to him, to be aware of anything more broader than that.

“He’s not coherent enough to sacrifice present gain for future gain.”

“I feel really sorry for him,” Cornwell states drily, “because he’s paranoid about what he’s put himself in. And he’s got to maintain this stance to the sacrifice of his own head.

“If you ever try to talk to him you can’t get any sort of, you can’t rap to him about, like what the problems are. He’s always wanting to keep it going.

“I feel sorry for him because he’s a paranoid clown.”

They don’t consider the Pistols’ EMI contract a sell-out, though they do say the Sex Pistols lost credibility through it and by, for instance staying in first class hotels when, according to Cornwell, they had said they’d never do that. Even so, the Stranglers are reluctant to admit the future probably holds similar luxuries for them, and labour the fact that they doss around. Y’know, real and street… and boring.

Returning to Nazi fetishism, Jean tells me it’s a symptom of something deeper, the country being weaker that at any time since Cromwell (hey, you can tell which one taught history). He saw Cabaret recently and reckons it parallels contemporary Britain.

“I think whether you are into it or not, it’s gonna happen. You know Plato’s theory that, um, democracy leads to oligarchy leads to aristocracy, and aristocracy leads to tyranny, or… there’s definite progressions, systems, and they always recycle. Well I think democracy has totally collapsed, it’s lost all its credibility.

“So we’re due for tyranny. People laugh at that, because England is the last place for that, but I really think it could happen.”

But you are at the centre of that scene, more or less, with the kids that wear Nazi emblems. Obviously little boys like Eater just see it as a pretty pattern on their trousers, but do you think that some of these kids are really right wing politically?

“No,” says Jean. “They’re not politically right wing but they are politically ripe. I reckon until there is another symbol to replace the swastika, or another ideal, they’re gonna stick to that one. It’s gotta be as strong as that… it’s gotta be seen to be as strong as that, as energetic as that.

“But it’ll happen within the next ten tears. Very strange things are happening, very strange undercurrents,” he adds darkly, and they’re getting louder and louder.”

Yes, but what I want is your attitude to it. As one of the leading bands, what would your influence be on the way these kids think?

Cornwell: “Well, they want to belong to something.”

Burnel: They want a change, they want to believe in something. And that is a very strong image. They definitely don’t want to be associated with leftist things, there aren’t any leftist heroes really…”

Tell that to the Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Yugoslavs…

“They’re not street level heroes, they’re all intellectuals, the leftist ones.”

Come again?

“Leftist heroes were very much middle class heroes. They want warrior heroes…”

We wander up this blind alley a while, till I realize I still haven’t got a straight answer. You’re very good at doom-mongering, Jean, but on which side of the barricades do you line up? He’s boasting about his musical sophistication being “another weapon” in his “armoury”, but… do you consider yourselves to have any sort of political ‘message’ beyond, er, self-liberation?

“Well, yes” he says. Then, after we’ve been talking little except politics for nearly an hour, he has the nerve to tell me: “But this is neither the time or place to get into it.”

Totally bemused, I try to coerce them by suggesting that if they don’t state their position themselves they leave it up to people to make up their own minds – and with all this gush about the imminent fascist apocalypse, well…

“But we’re not associating ourselves with any of the other bands,” Burnel protests. “We’re right out on a limb musically and philosophically…”

“Hey, that sounds a really heavy word, doesn’t it?” muses the guy who’s been reciting Plato.

A strange interview. The Stranglers are possibly the most self-righteous interviewees I’ve met. Modishly arrogant about their musical worth, and convinced that they have a part to play in the social upheaval they may paranoiacally see evidenced in the physical trappings of an in-crowd at whom, paradoxically, they sneer for being trend followers. Yet, when it comes to the crunch, for all their onstage aggression, they won’t commit themselves.

They are recording live at the Nashville on December 10, and they’re going into the studio at the end of the month to record a single, either “Go Buddy Go” or, more likely, “Grip”. The single’s out late January and an album, hopefully, in February.

I’m not enamoured of their spoken pronouncements, but make no mistake about it, these guys are great musicians who are going to make records that will be played until they wear out.

And as the Stranglers are well aware, that means power.

Flamin' Groovies/Ramones/The Stranglers Roundhouse London 4th July 1976 Review (New Musical Express 10th July 1976)

CORRECTION: 

It has rightly been pointed out the Battle of Dingwalls could not have occurred post gig on 4th July since the Clash playing the Black Swan in Sheffield that night. A little more digging reveals that the incident took place in Monday 5th July when Ramones headlined Dingwalls. This date is confirmed in the gigography included in Monte Melnick's book 'On The Road With The Ramones' and in George Gimarc's 'Punk Diary 1970-1979'.

The appearance of Ramones at Dingwall's may have been a last minute arrangement as NME's gig listing's for that week do not include an entry for Dingwalls, a venue that was routinely included in the newspaper's weekly listings.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of punk which means that the 250th anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. 50 years ago London marked the bicentenary (the maths here is quite simple) with a gig at the Roundhouse in Camden.

It was an odd billing that 4th July. According to the article below the headliners (Flamin' Groovies) had not played in the UK since 1972. In support were Ramones (playing their first UK gig that night) and a belligerent 'London pub band' called The Stranglers - not yet known for their anti-American sentiments at that stage (one can only assume!).

Below is a review of the gig that appeared in the 10th July 1976 issue of New Musical Express. It was the summer of '76, the year of a heatwave that is scorched into the memory of anyone who remembers it. Unbearable heat is the impression that reviewer Max Bell is looking to convey in the opening remarks of his piece. Rather than being off putting, the idea of seeing The Stranglers at an early prestige gig like this (and an infamous one to boot) in an atmosphere described as 'a malignantly swampy sweat box' is appealing beyond imagination!

The Stranglers have according to the writer improved tremendously and as such the writer views the band favourably, although the memory of threatened violence may also have come into play somewhat in this different view. Still, compared to his view of the Ramones, The Stranglers come across as virtuoso musicians.

It is funny to think that whatever their musical shortcomings in the summer of 1976, by the end of 1977 both The Stranglers and Ramones would have sold out headline shows at the Roundhouse.

As I transcribed this review I took an opportunity to listen to the Flamin' Groovies, the 'legendary' headliners on the night. Previously, I had knowingly only heard 'Shake Some Action' and guided also by the fact that the review stated that most of the material played that night was lifted from their 1976 album of the same name that's what I picked. It's very pedestrian in my view (but I like the Ramones so what do I know!!)... The Beatles tamed by the California sun. Max Bell loved them but interestingly made reference to The Beatles and The Byrds.... very much to my point.

As mentioned earlier, this was the UK debut of the much vaunted Ramones. Mark P had raved about their album in Sniffin' Glue, so it was only natural that all of the players in the nascent British punk scene were in attendance on the night in order to check out the Stateside competition.

After the gig, band members from both stage and audience decamped to Dingwalls, a club a few hundred meters away at Camden Lock. Born from a misunderstanding, JJ Burnel punched Clash bass player Paul Simonon in a fight that spilled out into the clubs courtyard. By all accounts it escalated too into something resembling a Western brawl as the simmering rivalries within a small London scene boiled over into fisticuffs. Accounts of the incident also have it that, whilst drinking together and looking down upon the fracas, Joe Strummer said to Hugh Cornwell 'looks like my bass player and your bass player are not getting on too well' or words to that effect. This was also the moment when Dave Greenfield was said to have John Lydon pinned up against the side of a van, the idea of which is very gratifying!

The incident in part put an end to any fraternal feeling that may have existed in the scene up to that point.... and it was only July 1976!

Bands in Town (4th July 1976)

(r-l: Johnny Ramone, Johnny Rotten, Dee Dee Ramone and the soon to be clumped Paul Simonon)

New Musical Express 10th July 1976

Maybe it was no accident that the hottest, steamiest, dirtiest night of the year was reserved for July 4. It’s not every day that we get to see one bona fide legendary band, and a squad of recherché New York punksters gunning for similar status, and a home grown outfit who exhibit enough moody madness to take them somewhere close to the pinnacle of nasty infamy, all playing on the same bill in one of the seediest halls in London.

The Roundhouse on Sunday came neat to being a malignantly swampy sweat box as any auditorium I have ever set foot in. The general consensus was that it was too damn hot to rock, let alone roll, so all credit to the performers and audience who stood it out to the finish. In between times the atmosphere congealed into globules of body-stained condensation, the chic were forcibly unrobed, and the young female worthies were seen bearing their ample chests for the cause.

Personally I hadn’t had so much fun in ages, though bending an ear to the post-soiree in-talk revealed that everybody was of that opinion. Still, if you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. It doesn’t do to be over critical on a night when anyone with an ounce of common would have been soaking in the freezer, and certainly not rocking in the sprawl and stench of fifteen hundred human incinerators fusing to one solid liquid mass.

First to set out into the sauna were London pub band The Stranglers, who I’ve been rather scathing about in the past. What with them threatening to employ sundry kinds of physical violence about my person, and the fact that they’ve improved tremendously of late, they did their thing with a vengeance. Rotating ideas around a sub-Doors vibration, they rattled through “Down In The Sewer”, “Grip” (possibly a single for Arista soon), “Walk On By”, and my own fave “School Ma’am”, where guitarist Hugh Cornwell simulates a distressingly convincing auto strangulation, and bass player Jean Jacques Burnel turns into a lunatic.

They received a much more polite response than that at the recent Patti Smith gigs, where the crowd were plain rude in their impatience to see them off and back in the changing room. If they keep on driving the same levels of monotony, and pulling off the choice gigs that they’ve acquired of late they should get the deserved break.

Armpits lay soggy on the slippery floor and the buzz settled into a hum of expectancy for the band we’ve all heard a deal of recently, Manhattan’s own Ramones, who were…  absolutely hilarious. I reckon they’re closer to a comedy routine than a rock group.

They succeeded in dividing opinion into believers and open ridicule. The guys on the mixer hated them and The Ramones hated the guys on the mixer back. I laughed solidly for half an hour particularly when on taking the stage , bass player Dee Dee Ramone’s mike farted into silence before a note had been mangled.

“More fuckin’ power!” he yelled. “Piss off!” yelled the knob twiddlers.

“Dese tings shoulda been woiked oit before” retoted Dee Dee petulantly.

The Ramones left huffily to a barrage of slow hand claps and jeering, only to return five minutes later with their problems far from resolved. I don’t think Dee Dee noticed. He is possibly the most half-witted specimenI’ve ever seen hulk over the golden boards. Him and guitarist Johnny side swipped their rented Marshalls like the fourth and fifth sleepers while singer Joey flapped around centre in a fair impersonation of Batroc. When he stood sideways I couldn’t see him at all. 

Thing is about The Ramones is you either take them in the intended spirit, or you go home. The appeal is purely negative, based on their not being able to lay a shit or give a shit. The thinking process involved in evaluating their performance is non-existent; it’s first step moronorock strung across a selection of imbecilic adolescent ditties whose sole variation lies in the shuffling of three chords into some semblance of order . They were still oodles more exciting than the majority of bands who usually throw up our collective amusement, even if the songs are indistinguishable. “Blitzkrieg Bop” became “Loudmouth” became “53rd & 3rd. Durrrgh.

Thirty minutes was enough to get across cos, like Nick Kent said, they could be too heavy for even the hardest punk fan. Their singer is closer to a stick of well salivated chewing gum than a human being, though he was the only one man enough to keep his leather jacket on ‘til the bitter end.

And finally the raison d’etre for melting four hours! The Flamin’ Groovies, as much San Francisco as The Ramones are peeled off the streets of Noo Yoik, and they were terrific.

What no one seems to realise is that The Groovies, despite their mythic status, are not a live force in the States. This was the first gig they’d played since ’72, when on climaxing their poorly handled trip (also at the Roundhouse) things were so grievous that the roadies employed for the occasion refused to give them their guitars or set up the equipment. Despite their magnificence, the Groovies didn’t quite satiate the audience. The reason for this were two-fold.

Firstly, unlike The Ramones, they can play properly. With the excessive heat this necessitated tuning up after nearly every number, because guitars aren’t made of tissue paper and need to sound just right if you’re unleashing a set as tightly constructed as their new material requires. Some people lost patience with this, and the Groovies’ not looking ‘heavy’.

They wear sixties suits and Annello and Davide Cuban healed Beatle Boots instead which is professional, smart and cute. It fits.

Secondly, they didn’t play their older material and a lot of folk wanted “Teenage Head” stuff. Understandable: I did myself, but then very few people bought those records when they came out (four hundred copies of “Married Woman”?) and they don’t owe their previous landlords anything by way of a plug. So they did mostly “Shake Some Action” tunes, perfectly, and those are lighter, in a Byrds, Lennon and McCartney vein, rather than greased lightening rockers.

I still don’t think it was necessary to make allowances for the change. Cyril Jordan remains unsurpassed as an exponent of the Wes Montgomery, James Burton and Sun style of pickers. He is a technician with a feel for electric guitar that is virtually unequalled. His solos on the numbers that took the roof off – the Pretty Things classic “Big City” or Paul Revere and the Raiders “Ups And Downs” – were magic. The band assault on “Please Please Me”, “I Can’t Hide” and “Miss Amanda Jones” were characterised by a type of controlled ferocity that only evolves after years of practise and a genuine understanding of the whole ball game. The Groovies are working within a vacuum because they, along with Earth Quake and Loose Gravel represent the last of a dying breed, remaining criminally unrewarded for services over and beyond the typical delineations of rock ‘n’ roll (more on that same in interview next week).

But this is no time for getting dewy-eyed. They came, played, and conquered in the grand manner, with a panache that supererogates either nostalgia or progressive deliberation. Chris Wilson sings different to Roy A. Lonely, bassist George Alexander is brick solid as ever, and James Farrell’s 1940’s National cuts another bag of ice to Tim Lynch’s lead of old, so it’s another band. Drummer David Wright is crisper and less demonic than his predecessor, Danny Mihm.

You don’t need to have any specialised input into the machinery of the animal to notice that “Shake Some Action” had a fire and spontaneity missing from the average practitioners’, or that “House Of Blue Lights”, and the encores “Married Woman” and “Under My Thumb” reminded one of the days when rock was special all across the board.

When Jordan reached for his microphone, dripping beneath the lights, and said “I recall momma saying to poppa – “Let that boy rock ‘n’ roll” he’d hit upon the core. The Groovies are doused in the stuff.

Postscript:

The Ramones set is here on Youtube. Clearly there are some technical issues but the band sound OK, they sound like.... well The Ramones!

Kraftwerk Paradiso, Amsterdam 9th September 1976

Prior to hopping on to a Sealink ferry to cross the English Channel for dates in the UK including a night at London's Roundhouse, Kraftwerk played a gig in Amsterdam's legendary Paradiso. The sound on this is very good, especially when considering that the gig was played 50 years ago and recorded on the audio equipment that was available at the time.

These days Kraftwerk shows are note perfect, highly choreographed events. This is a little different, not in terms of slickness.... Kraftwerk never were a band with a reputation for cocking up! But its is great to hear these songs an a rawer, early form, not surprisingly most notably on the two 'TEE' tracks that were yet to be released.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-RkB2j7NaE3

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-wj9MHrP4PM

Kraftwerk Roundhouse, London 10th October 1976 Review (New Musical Express 16th October 1976)

 

New Musical Express (9th October 1976)

If the Sex Pistols caused a ripple of confusion through a sea of denim in the mid-70s then I am sure that the same can be said of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider of Dusseldorf's Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk turned heads for the exact opposite reasons to Sex Pistols and their followers. As reviewer, Miles, had it below 'They are a very neat band, all dressed in suits and ties and short hair like bank managers'. By October 1976, the band in some form (always around Ralf and Florian) had been making experimental noise already for more than six years. As time had gone by that noise had come to rely increasingly on electronics and a good power supply. By October 1976, the line up had settled into what was to be the 'classic' Kraftwerk quartet of Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür. The band in this form had two classic albums under their belts, 'Autobahn' and 'Radioactivity' whilst live they were playing two tracks from what is perhaps their finest album 'Trans Europe Express' with the title track and 'Europe Endless' appearing in the set.

Unlike their contemporaries, Kraftwerk's music defies age, it is and still sounds timeless.

On 10th October they were in the UK appearing in a headline show at Camden's Roundhouse, a gig that the New Musical Express reviewed the following week.

New Musical Express (16th October 1976)

Kilburn and the High Roads/Sex Pistols/The Stranglers Walthamstow Assembly Hall 17th June 1976

No, sorry to disappoint, I am not offering a recording of this gig, I wish I could. Sifting again chronologically through some old music press, specifically from 1976, it is interesting to see how week on week London's new music gained in prominence. Scan the music listings pages and it is clear that The Stranglers were thrashing the hell out of the ice cream van, all across the capital and beyond, from the beginning of the year. The likes of Eddie & The Hot Rods, The Jam and Squeeze were also out there. Come the summer more of the bands we know and love started to crop up in the listings. But this was before The Roxy and some of those now legendary gigs... The 100 Club Punk Festival, The Screen On The Green, Notre Dam Hall...

In the 5th June issue of New Musical Express a gig was advertised that was to take place in the grand Walthamstow Assembly Hall out on the north eastern extremity of the Victoria Line.

The line up was initially to be Ian Dury's 'Kilburn & The High Roads', a band who brought a piece of music hall tradition to the early to mid-'70s pub rock scene and in doing so inspired the next generation of bands such as the Pistols and Madness in particular, with support from Joe Strummer's pre-Clash band the 101'ers and The Stranglers.

The same gig was advertised in the NME two weeks later (19th June 1976), only 101'ers had dropped off the bill, being replaced by Sex Pistols.

The following account of the gig appeared in the pages of Record Collector online.

THE PISTOLS VS THE SUBURBS

NOT EVERY PISTOLS’ GIG SEEMED LIKE A LANDMARK AT THE TIME, RECALLS IAN McCANN

In a few months’ time, local authorities would be banning Sex Pistols from their boroughs, fearful of the teenage rampage. But on 17 June 1976, the band were welcomed to the Walthamstow Assembly Halls, part of Waltham Forest’s magnificent – if utterly pompous – municipal centre: all pillars, civic pride, magistrates’ court and huge circular fountain (in which I once micturated in a pathetic act of juvenile rebellion).

I was on an ill-tempered caravan holiday with my pal Mick in Walton-on-the-Naze when the Pistols were due to play, but with Ian Dury & The Kilburns playing their final gig, The Stranglers, and this new punk rock whatsit all on the bill, I wasn’t going to miss it for the world and caught the train back for the night.

I met my mate Steve outside on the steps, just as Ian Dury was staggering in on calipers, bless his heart. (My mum knew him by sight when he lived in Diana Road, half a mile away – “I was sure he was someone,” she told me when he was a star, though he wasn’t when he lived there.) There was the air of an event, but not one where we knew what it would be like, though Steve and I had previously seen Kilburn & The High Roads next door at the Polytechnic, and walked out.

Nothing wrong with Dury, but they were a shambles.

So, the Pistols, then. It’s your turn. Go on lads, impress us.

The place was not empty, but we were rattling around a bit in there. You could probably name many members of the audience if you were local. It seems to have become Walthamstow’s answer to the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall gigs in legend, but not in reality. Pete Stennett from Small Wonder was said to have been present, experiencing his Damascene conversion from Silver Apples to punk. But I didn’t see him. What we did see was a bunch of people who looked like they didn’t belong round here. Actually, they didn’t look like they belonged anywhere, dressed in tartan, ripped clothing, with bits hanging out but in a non-sexualised way. It was probably the Bromley contingent, and doubtless McLaren and Westwood; maybe Siouxsie. A phenomenon in the making.

I remember smirking to Steve, “What a bunch of fucking poseurs.”

Never let anyone kid you that punk came from the working class. Ordinary kids adopted it, played it, loved it, but its look and intellectual conceits (and yes, anarchy was an intellectual conceit then – we knew about socialism, we had dads who worked in factories and belonged to unions and history teachers who urged us to join the SWP, but anarchy was no more than a word for making a mess to us common kids) grew out of the art schools and fashion salons. To us, poseurs, more interested in looks and swanking than anything else. People who could afford to mess up because there was something to fall back on, whether it was family money, a nice house in the suburbs, a university education, or a boutique. In fact, just the same as almost everything else that becomes a media craze.

Rotten and co came on early, I am guessing at about 8:15, to a bit of half-hearted noise from the crowd and some shrill squawking from the art school crew. The Pistols were… pretty rubbish. Metallish guitar. Clattering drums. They could play but it didn’t hang together. (It came as a shock when Anarchy was released five months later: so you could fix anything in a studio after all.) Was this the new revolution? It stumbled, rattled, flopped. Lydon, however, was amusing, though he didn’t seem particularly confident and – unlike his later Paddington Bear really hard stare – he seemed to avoid your eye. In No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, he recalls that he wore a rubber shirt and collapsed in the heat after three songs. That didn’t happen. Not in Walthamstow, anyway. There wasn’t much heat in the Assembly Hall, all cold stone and few windows, despite it being the “scorching summer of ’76” (© every lazy cultural commentator). The big event of their set was Glen Matlock busting a bass string. With aeons to fill in front of a mostly only vaguely curious audience, Lydon lolled on the mic stand, and invited comments from the requests. Perhaps he thought it was Two-Way Family Favourites. There was a vacuum, so, abhoring it like nature, I filled it by shouting “Substitute!”, knowing they played it. Lydon said: “We might – if we feel like it.” A further yell elicited the response: “Later.”

Bass string restored, they carried on. They played Stepping Stone, Submission, No Fun, among others. After they played Substitute, I yelled for it again as if it was unrecognisable, thinking I was hilarious. After a while, they went off. The world was not changed. Yet.

The Stranglers weren’t bad, but sounded a bit prog with all that noodly keyboard. Ian Dury & The Kilburns were less shambolic than Kilburn & The High Roads, but lacked warmth, and we left early again. In a short time, all three acts would be massive. But to us, it was a letdown. Was this the future?

In a curious postscript, the next spring I bought a Pistols bootleg from a badge stall in Petticoat Lane market. (They were concealed behind a curtain beneath the stall, so you had to know they were there to browse, which made shopping tricky.) I took it home – it was Indecent Exposure, taped live in Burton-on-Trent. But when I played it, quite clearly audible, there was Glen Matlock tuning up, and a dullard youth yelling for Substitute. Either there was two of me, or the credits, like Lydon’s tale of fainting after three songs, were about 135 miles north of reality. Maybe it was taken from a few gigs. Oh, and the band sounded great on the record…

This for me has to be one of the unsung gigs of the early days of the British punk scene. A handing over of the baton of sorts from the 34 year old Dury to the young Pistols (if not The Stranglers). It was to be the last gig that the Kilburns played for in NME of 17th July, the split of the band was announced on the grounds of Ian's health issues. In the event Dury's absence from the stage was a short-lived thing as with new outfit, The Blockheads, he went on to far greater success than he had enjoyed with Kilburn and the High Roads.

The other two bands performing in Walthamstow on that summer evening also went on to great success along with a certain amount of notoriety in both cases.

Ian McCann's account above seems to suggest that some of the gig (Pistols set at least) was recorded. Is much of it out there I wonder?

Sex Pistols Review Marquee London 12th February 1976 (New Musical Express 21st February 1976)

 

If gig reviews could obtain iconic status then this would be in the top 10. Fifty years ago this month Neil Spencer writing for the New Musical Express gave Sex Pistols their first review in the 21st February issue. The review related to a gig that took place on 12th February at The Marquee Club on London's Wardour Street, the headliners on the night were Eddie & The Hot Rods, the support, Sex Pistols. As was often the case, through the band's shambolic stage antics rather than through musicality, Rotten and Co. stole the show. Spencer's review gave us two quotes which are still cited today, half a century on... 'Don't look over your shoulder, but the Sex Pistols are coming' and 'Actually, we're not into music.... We're into chaos'. These words were sufficiently stirring to prompt two soon to be Buzzcocks to venture down to London to see for themselves what fuss was afoot. Within months 'punk rock' began to establish itself as the 'new music' when a scene started to come together in London and Manchester.

I have to say that on Friday night the TV was on and as we often do we were watching BBC Four and repeats of old episodes of Top of the Pops. The year was 1976 and the musical offerings being aired were dismal, horrible and turgid. It is only when you see and hear just how bad most music was by 1976 that it becomes possible to understand the seismic impact that the arrival of the Pistols had on young people.

And finally, much was made at the time of the unsightliness of Rotten, but I tell you some of the bands performing on Friday's Top of the Pops could have given him a given him a good run for his money in the beauty stakes (or lack of it)!

The Stranglers on Camera in '76 (Nashville Rooms, West Kensington)

These great shots turned up on The Stranglers memorabilia Facebook page this week. Unseen before by me. What is undisputed in that they show the band playing at The Nashville in West Kensington... but when? Photographer Cindy Stern states March 1976, but Garry Coward-Williams believes that these were taken at a later date.

As mentioned by Jet in the recently posted 'Sideburns' interview from December of 1976, The Nashville was a firm favourite with the band. I have no idea how many gigs the band played at this venue, a venue with a near unparalleled prominance in the story of the London punk scene. There are plenty of Nashville Rooms press ads that feature the band's gigs all through 1976. Regardless of the actual date I am sure you can agree that they are a tremendous addition to the photographic history of The Stranglers.

And now Garry.... that coffee table book...

Jet Black Interview 16th December 1976 (Sideburns Fanzine January 1977)

One of the most enduring facets of the early UK punk scene was the proliferation of fanzines. The fanzine was a totem of the whole D.I.Y. ethic of punk rock, perhaps even more so than the music itself since the inspiration, preparation and distribution of such xeroxed communications was 100% D.I.Y. For a time, some of them gave the established music weeklies a run for their money. Up until 1976, the likes of New Musical Express and Sounds had steered musical tastes and trends for the young record buying public, but the fanzine, for a while at least, turned the status quo on its head. Moreover, the musicians that formed punk bands were in league with this new army of industrious bedroom journalists, often being happier to be interviewed for a fanzine than the music press.

The pivotal role that fanzines played in the birth of punk and beyond has been fully recognised over the last decade or so. Multiple books have been written even university dissertations have been written on the subject.

One such fanzine was Tony Moon's 'Sideburns'. This publication only ran to four issues, but it evolved. Tony was an early fan of The Stranglers and this along with his evident amateur journalistic talents resulted in an approach from the band's management to produce something along similar lines to 'Sideburns' for The Stranglers. The result as we all know was Strangled, a publication that aimed to go beyond the facile function of a fanclub newsletter... a purpose that it fulfilled with aplomb throughout its 19 year existance.

Here is Tony's interview with Jet from December 1976, six days after the live recording at the Nashville that was originally destined to be the band's debut album (a review of the gig preceeds the interview).

Probably the best band gigging in London these days is the Stranglers – hell! I haven’t been excited about seeing a band for yonks – so its up to the Nashville every week to see the band. Up at the Marquee Jean kicks in the window to attract the attention of all the tired posers, Hugh suggests destruction – this is my kind of band. I mean they really rock – and they don’t sing about rivers, long hot summers and chicks with rainbow eyes!! Who threw in the word psychedelic? Not bad – and they do it without lights – and jazz pedals. At their gigs I really feel threatened. I like the idea – when was the last time somebody poked their tongue out at you and meant it. Since they have no records out I had to see then again and again – hell I even bought some Doors albums to vaguely remind me of their unique sound – and then a live recording in December.

The band comprises:-

Hugh Cornwall - Guitar
Jett Black - Drums
Jean Burnel - Bass
Dave Greenfield - Keyboards

Forget the convenient tags you may have had – and go and see them – “Grip” is the new single – one of their best stage numbers. They have recently signed to United Artists and as a result a live recording was made of the band on the 10th December 1976.

P. Jac – an earing with a body attached to it – picks up the scene –

STRANGLERS LIVE – 10/12/76

This report could be said in one line – STRANGLERS RULE O.K.! But as you have paid out I shall switch on my brain and give you the facts….

In the queue outside were a lot of people who had borrowed dad's old coat for the evening - the Stranglers aren’t about dressing up – they are about the best band around, along with the Feelgoods. (Blimey who is the guy? T.M.)

The band came on at about 10 p.m. and went into their single to be “GRIP”.

“SOMEDAY I’M GOING TO SMACK YOUR FACE”

Enter the Punks (their word!).

GREAT….. they pogoed and scared the shit out of the crombie boys in their dad’s coats.

The set continued with tight drumming, keyboards, guitar and devastating bass by Jean Jaques – enter the roadie – the Mutant who adjusts some wires and a toppled mike stand – Great atmosphere – I only hope that the recording mobile got it all!

Back to the gig – the band did many of their best known numbers and also some new ones –

“Straighten Out”
“London Lady”
“Something Better Change”

“Your not real oh no your not
Your not real oh no your not”

“Goodbye Toulouse” and “Peaches” were great – Jean Jaques really means it when he says he wants to fuck a good looking chick! The band rocked on with people dancing on the tables… then into “Something Better Change” and the excellent “Go Buddy Go” ending with Jean’s bass being enthusiastically pulled away from him by the audience.

I don’t think that they were as menacing as previous gigs i.e. Marquee, but they like the Nashville as a good gig. Remember Hugh Cornwall’s opening remarks….. “Listen – two years ago you didn’t care”…. “I’M A VICTIM”.

Jett Black

So who are the Stranglers then? Jett Black, Drummer and founder member picks up the story.

“Hugh and I were working in a band about two years ago, which wasn’t going the way any of us were happy with so eventually the band dissolved. And Hugh and I started to get another band together and we met John by accident, who at the time we knew as a classical guitarist, and he had written a lot of songs. We heard some of his songs and really liked them. John told us that he had always wanted to play bass, and it just so happened that Hugh had a bass so he said “there’s the bass – play it”, and after about three weeks he was really getting it together – you know, and we were then looking for another guitarist and we got one for a few months, and it wasn’t really working with him – you know – he wasn’t really into the same sort of music as us so he left and a few months ago we advertised for a keyboards man, we really wanted a keyboards man and Dave came along. We had several guys along who were auditioned - I suppose you’d say, and Dave was the only one who had any sort of feel for the sort of music that we wanted to do, so we very quickly decided that he was right for the band and immediately we got into rehearsing. We had very little work for the first few months but we spent lots of time rehearsing, and that was the earliest beginnings of the band.

T.M. – Were you more or less like any other rock band at this time?

Jett: - No we never tried to do what was current, at the time what we were doing was very similar to the sort of thing we are doing now. Although the numbers are now set, there are only a couple of numbers in the set now that we were actually playing at that time, one of them is “Go Buddy Go”. We played that right from the off, so I mean the style was similar.

T.M. – Yea!... you had a definite idea of what you were doing then?

Jett - Yea, we wanted more or less what we achieved, but I think the songs have got better in the last sort of twelve months, and the playing must have got better too!

T.M. – Does Jean and Hugh do most of the writing?

Jett – Jean and Hugh do pretty well most of the lyrics, but the actual song writing is usually a joint effort, you know somebody has got an idea for part of a song and we just sit down for a few hours and eventually come out with a song.

T.M. – So the whole band is involved?

Jett – Right – the music is totally a joint effort.

T.M. I read that you used an ice-cream van to get about to early gigs.

Jett – Yea, we used to use that – we have gone on to something better now, but we have still got the ice-cream van, which is outside and just about falling apart! It was quite unique because we don’t know any other bands that go around in an ice-cream van – but it served us well.

T.M – This all happened down at Guildford.

Jett – Yea, I was living in Guildford and Hugh came to live where I was living in a huge property there, so I was able to put everybody up. If it hadn’t been for that it would have been extremely hard to get the band together.

T.M. – What are your lyrics aiming at?

Jett – I guess you could say that we are trying to put across what we see as we live our lives. All our lyrics contain instances that have happened like ahh “bitchin” is relating to our visit to Amsterdam and there are lots of people that we met that are in the lyrics.

T.M. – “Goodbye Toulouse” is interesting Hugh mentions Nostradamus on stage, is he interested in that sort of thing?

Jett – Not especially, I mean Nostradamus is very interesting – his predictions are uncannily correct. His prediction is that Toulouse would get wiped off the face of the earth by some sort of nuclear holocaust so it seemed a good cue for a lyric, so we wrote about that!

T.M. – Your gear was bad for a while?

Jett – Oh yea, we suffered with bad equipment because we started with nothing, and we had to find the money to get equipment together. It takes a long while to get the money together if you’re not working during the day, which we never did because we always believed that the way to do it was to keep playing at all costs, so we’d become tight and develop all the time.

T.M. How did you go down in the rest of the country?

Jett – Terrible, terrible! We were booed off stages everywhere (laughter).

T.M. Your popularity is gradually spreading out from London now?

Jett – Yes, its growing now, all of the London gigs seem to be going okay. There are a lot of people in London who know our music and like it, so its really great in London, but the reaction we are getting out of town is gradually changing in the same way that it changed in London. I mean the first London gigs that we did we were booed off stage – people didn’t understand that we were trying to do something different.

T.M. – So thte band as it is now is now what – eighteen months old.

Jett – Yea.

T.M. – How do you react to criticisms and reviews?

Jett – Yea, we see them all of the time. We have got all our press cuttings from the beginning, and it’s interesting to read through them because in all the early reviews they say that we are awful and terrible, and that our music is uninteresting and boring, but as you read through them over the months you see the same writers changing their point of view, and today they are saying “Oh, we have really got something - the music is great”. I don’t know if that means we’ve changed all that much, I don’t think we have, I just think that its just that people are beginning to accept that what we are doing is valid.

T.M. – Do you think that the “New Wave” has helped your acceptance?

Jett – We were beginning to attract attention long before the punk thing started. So I don’t think its just the “New Wave” that has brought appreciation of our music on. Its just the fact that people perhaps are more aware, you know the Press talks about the New Wave of bands so maybe more people are prepared to come and listen to what we are trying to do. I suppose in a way it does help but we were doing what we are doing now about a year ago, which is long before any talk of the New Wave.

T.M. – How do you feel about your audience? Do you feel you have a following.

Jett – Oh, definitely yea, we see some faces that we recognized at all sorts of places and its spreading rapidly. I mean London audiences are great, there is a hardcore of London supporters that come to all our gigs.

T.M. – Now that you have got your contract and when you have got your records out you will have a lot more power to reach more people. How do you hope to retain your close audience contact?

Jett – We don’t want an overkill. NO. The way we plan to do it is to get some records out that will show the sort of music we play and we want to continue to play the sort of venues we are able to do at the moment. We are not into the idea of touring around the country playing venues in excess of our drawing capacity.

T.M. – How did you feel about supporting Patti Smith?

Jett – It was great for the exposure it gave us, very enjoyable gigs. We suffered a lot with equipment hassles and several times we didn’t get enough time to get a soundcheck, so we weren’t very happy with the sound at those gigs, one of them was very good – I think we did four or five with her in all, the sound just wasn’t as good, but it was a great experience, it took us to an audience that we wouldn’t have reached otherwise, it was good for us, good exposure.

T.M. – You want to keep in contact then?

Jett – Yes, we like the kind of venues where you can see the whites of their eyes! Hammersmith Odeon is not so good in that sense, but the Roundhouse is more suitable because you can really see the audience in front of you.

T.M. – What about the Marquee gig, Hugh said that he didn’t want to play there anymore.

Jett – We’ve got mixed feelings about the Marquee, it doesn’t seem to be where its all at – at the moment the Nashville is a far more enjoyable gig to play for some strange reason.

T.M. – I read that Hugh and Jean cite Jimi Hendrix as the turning point in their attitude towards music. Can you illuminate?

Jett – I think that technical ability had gone as far as it was going to go at that time – the time had arrived when we felt that we should look for something totally different, as opposed to pure technical ability, because I don’t think you could surpass what HE was doing. So in that sense that was a turning point, and it was time to think of doing something different. Whereas at that point there were a million bands emerging trying to be Hendrix, and it had all been done, so we thought we would do something else.

T.M. – How do you feel about Doors, Velvet Underground comparisons?

Jett – It’s apparent that some of our songs must sound Doors-ish, it’s not the result of some conscious endeavour to do so. It’s just the way it happened. We do like the Doors – we listen to them.

T.M. – Why United Artists?

Jett – U.A. seemed to understand what we were trying to do. They could see that what we were doing was being appreciated and they were quite amenable to us saying our music they way we wanted to do it. They just seemed to talk more sense about the way we should sell the band, and that was it I suppose.

T.M. – A single is next in that case – is it “Grip”?

Jett – “Grip” will be released in January. It’s already been recorded. From that point I think we can expect to reach a much larger audience.

T.M. – Will the following L.P. contain the numbers you are best known for?

Jett – Yes, there will be songs on there that you are familiar with, and some new ones. We’ve loads of new ones in the pipeline, the problem at the moment is getting time to rehearse them, but we have all the ideas there.

T.M. So really you are prolific writers . At the live recording you slotted in three new numbers which was great.

Jett – Sure yes! We have got over two hundred songs at the moment, some are just sitting there, some we’ve played, some we haven’t, and some we’re leaving for a later stage when with new equipment we can get ideas together that will suit those songs. And some songs are those that really aren’t suitable for us that maybe we’d like to give to other bands, you know. I think we’ve got so many songs, we must have a song for every band in the business.

T.M. – So how important is the recording contract then?

Jett – Well it should ultimately mean that we will be able to do the things we want to do, in a musical sense. It means if we can get some successful records released we’ll have time to get together what we thing will be more interesting and enjoyable music. It’s difficult to get that together when you are working every night to make ends meet , when you can get revenue from record sales as well it enables you to do the things – you know, to develop your art in fact.

T.M. – That’s presumably what you have been going in the last year.

Jett – Sure… we’ve had a fuller calendar than practically any other band on the scene. I mean we’ve probably done more gigs this year than anybody, and although that’s nice, it keeps us in front of the public, and it reaches more people, we want time to turn out good records as well, because people are forever asking us and right from the early days there were always people saying “when are you getting your record out? We really like the songs – we want to hear them at home.” So obviously if you’re in the music business you want to sell records.

T.M.- Next year you are off to the continent?

Jett – Yea, we’ve got some dates already lined up in Germany and Holland. The tour is not fully set up at the moment.

T.M. – On your return, will you be doing as many gigs as before?

Jett – We’re certainly going to continue to play all our favourite venues, because we know that there are a lot of people who want to come and hear us…. And we want to play for them.

T.M. How do you feel about the punk movement?

Jett – I think that we were one of the first British bands to be labelled by the media as a punk band, but we’ve never regarded ourselves as a punk band, I suppose we’re on the fringe of punk. I think hat the whole concept of the new wave of punk bands is great because it means change, and the music over the last five years has certainly become incredibly boring with very few exceptions, especially around the small clubs and pubs… you see the same old bands doing the same old stuff and taking off each other, the whole thing is totally stagnated. So the mere fact that a new wave of bands has emerged that are doing something different is great, I mean it can’t do any harm, some of the bands are suffering from adverse publicity but this is really a storm in a teacup, it all amounts to nothing…. And all these chaps are trying to do is to play something a bit different, and add a bit of excitement to a very dull music scene, so that is good – we’re all for it.

T.M. – Can you see them developing well next year. Will 1977 be important?

Jett – Punk will go on for quite a while, and you’ll see new bands emerging and others dropping out like with any new movement, and eventually I suppose it will be time for something new, who knows what that’ll be.

T.M. – At one of your early gigs I read that the entire audience walked out?!!!

Jett – Oh that was amazing – yea…. Well it was in Purley, some sort of Conservative Club, over eighteens night, or something, and when we saw the public walking in in evening gowns we thought “they are not going to like us”, and we decided that we weren’t going to compromise our act, so we were just going to play what we normally played…. after all we had been booked by someone who had plenty of time to see what our act was about, and it wasn’t really offensive – it was just that we could see that these people were just into less interesting music than we were trying to create, and to these sort of people I think we’d only gain respectability when we were seen on the television. So at the beginning of the act I went up to the mike and said “Well you’re not going to like us so you might as well fuck off now!” So after a couple of numbers a couple of people started to leave and then a few more, and towards the end of the evening they were running to the door, they didn’t want to be the last ones out…. all four hundred people walked out and that was tremendous because it proved to us that what we were about was what we thought we were about.

That there was an audience that we could see that didn’t have the perception and the interest in music to even want to listen to us and it is often very easy to assess what an audiences reaction will be to us purely by the way they behave and the way they look…. So that was really good!

T.M. – So you were pleased that you weren’t appealing to that type of audience.

Jett – Well it would have been nice if they would have enjoyed us, but you see there is a large section of the population who are only interested in songs they know, and you can see them in all sorts of venues, people go along expecting to hear certain songs even though they have heard them before. So obviously if you hear a sound and you like it you’re going to want to hear it again, but there is a type of audience that only wants to hear what they know and love if you like, and there are other audiences that want to hear something new, you know. You can’t play original music to the sort of audience that only wants to hear stuff they have heard on the radio, or chart material.

T.M. – They want to play safe then?

Jett – Yeah, I think people are very scared of the unknown, in fact, even when it comes down to music,  a lot of people are scared to sit and listen to music they don’t understand – I don’t know! They have a musical complex in a way!

Interview with Jett Black made on the 16/12/76.

You can see them in Town in February, the single “Grip” is released on U.A. on January 21st – BUY IT AND BECOME A VICTIM.

Clearly, what was not apparent to the band back in December of 1976 was the extent to which record buyers would take The Stranglers to their hearts, leading to success that that I would bet was way beyond their expectation. So, Jet's assertion that with an album out, the band would continue to play their familiar pub venues came to nothing (with a few exceptions necessitated by bans!) as the band were propelled upwards and into the nation's Apollos and Odeons.

And what of these 200 songs (or song ideas at least)... do they exist anywhere? Certainly nothing particularly unusual appears in the early demo material that has surfaced to date. Maybe one day...

For thse interested, the review where Hugh espressed his contempt for Wardour Street's Marquee Club can be found here.

and

Part of the reviewed gig that took place at the Nashville on 19th December 1976 is available here.