"Every night before I go to sleep/Find a ticket, win a lottery/Scoop the pearls up from the sea/Cash them in and…”
The Meek Shall Inherit... Gobbing fans, coloured vinyl, having their gear ripped off, etc, etc. IAN PENMAN admires the soundchecks.
Camera Eye: PENNIE SMITH
A SINGING comes across the stage, and collides with its echo. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to-now.
The soundcheck constructions and interruptions Still interfere but they're merely making up the theatre for the night. Now, the coloured confidence of the lighting is unnecessary. The singing finds its place regardless, without the accustomed relief of the stage's rainbow.
This is another. One slightly familiar, massively closer. A hypnotic, fragile motif, somewhere over gift wrapping and labels, complaint and retaliation, pointless spite and the steep boredom of movement through a leisure industry.
To feel this feel you have to un-listen, for the gesture and angle lack extravagances. It is hard to tell whether there is 'mystery' at work, but there is definitely an unknown quality, the one usually referred to as a mystery.
And then there are three voices:
the First: "this is boring..."
the Second: "this is Heavy Metal…”
the Third: "this 'rock music' is dead…”
PAULINE cuddles into the front passenger seat, eating her favourite sweeties. Her bitter black hair is cellotaped into a spiky arrangement of plaits, and people don't pretend they're not looking at her (maybe she's a punk rock star!)
Robert Blamire, Penetration's bassist, is driving the car, one of two moving the band from London to Huddersfield for the opening date of a British tour; the second in Liverpool, the third back in London, the Roundhouse. Neale Floyd, one of the band's two guitarists, sits in the,back reading George Melly's Rum, Bum, and Concertina. I'm in the back, but I'm just a journalist, intrigued by the myth behind and upfront: life on the road!
The two cars stop at the inevitable (mythical) motorway services station; drummer Gary Smallman and new-ish guitarist Fred Purser vacate the other car with record company PR and Penetration's tour manager.
Everybody uh uhs the food - it's hard to tell whether it exists as anything beyond a projection of what you imagine it'll taste like, based on what you know it looks like.
We ha ha at certain rock bands, press articles; Penetration's debut album "Moving Targets" is faring a degree better than the second album of a certain other Virgin act, favourites though this other act reputedly are with the company. Relatives in the leisure industry.
That Second voice is mentioned, in passing.
HUDDERSFIELD is a fish 'n' chip shop town, a grey town. We arrive in the early evening, and the population looks grey as well, Friday-returning-home. A voice without a number says that developments suggest that for certain people the line between fish 'n' chip and rock 'n' roll isn't very clear.
In Huddersfield this seems appropriate, but doesn't really make much sense. Later, Penetration, waking up ,finally meet for the soundcheck in the night's venue, Huddersfield's Polytechnic - one of those late '60s institutions that make a brave attempt to appear bright and current and don't succeed, Penetration are greeted by two plain chaps from the Poly Entertainments Committee: sensible, 'punk' badges on sensible sweaters:clutching dinky cans.of pale ale like identity cards, chit chat of ho ho and yeah I know and so forth -they too make a brave attempt to appear bright and current.
Penetration seem slightly underwhelmed by their soundcheck, but I love it, and fell them so.
What? It's an integral part of it all! The soundchecks gradually improve over the weekend, stretching and shading to reach an incomparable point on Sunday afternoon.
The space operating between soundcheck and performance is something to wonder at , trace the clipping into place, the tidyng, timing, toughening. Falling into projection, the flecks of influence and successive levels, the piecing together of these, and sometimes the improvisation - this the most remarkable aspect: a stray noise suddenly seized on and stabbed, scratched , twisted into something other than 'self-indulgence' or 'communication' – it finds its place without the accustomed relief of a song's limited structure.
Penetration are good at this and sometimes, surprised, almost reluctant to admit to it. Pauline perfectly still, diminutive, hands slung in pockets, singing out of rainbow fatigues, her chill, piercing, mischievous voice cooing and snapping, often much lower than in performance, then raw and uninhibited into a curling, crashing lash of noise, still 'rock', not lapsing into endgame.
And left as a blunt echo in the emptiness, no-applause to justify its existence.
Within Penetration there is a potential and desire for experiment, a definite commitment, don't worry at the moment about any 'innocence'.
There's always the wiring and acoustic positioning as well- always the background, beforehand, rushing, rig. Tonight Neale's amp has burst somewhere inside, and obstinately resists repair.
The band's road crew have always been friends; it works. On top of this (always) are the 'Hounslow Mob' - six Penetration devotees from London who early on wiped out the line between 'follower' and 'friend'. They seem to lose jobs and the trivial like to pursue Penetration - they get a name check on the "Moving Targets" sleeve - shifting gear, flogging ephemera, forging autographs, dodging skinheads :They try to sell me a Tshirt. I try to resist.
Outside the Poly and into the car, descended upon by local fans, all of who look to be aged between 12 and 15; Pauline is bemused. Back to the hotel and some fish 'n' chips?
PAULINE isn 't feeling too good, her cold is worsening, and she's sick on the Poly gymnasium left wing before going on stage.
The band aren't wholly satisfied with the night's show (and the next one at Liverpool will bear them out) - but it is still v. good, good to be back, a homely chemistry between band and audience, a very pure reaction, romantic, begging, and it isn't distorted or manipulated.
After the encores, there's the dressing room ritual siege spearheaded by the eternal local-extrovert-fan - the one whose line between 'sycophant' and 'psycopath' is very suspect. Tonight's is a dumpling skinhead, whose reminiscences and nonsense loop and loop (the things Pauline has to put up with). The previous evening he'd been to see Buzzcocks, and got up on stage in "joost a fookin' Gee string! - gorrit in British 'Ome Stores like, walked in there, they thorr I were fookin' mad! 'D joost finished work 'tabattoir like…"
The psycopath asks Pauline three times how it feels being a sex symbol, and four times how he thought "present single were fookin' shit at first".
I ask Pauline how it feels being asked how it feels being a sex symbol- she is a married woman, after all ...
"I can't take it seriously, really…”
By the end ofthe night even the plain chaps from the Poly are drunk, asking for autographs on filthy pulp, leaving with the chorus of "Hurry Up Harry". Pauline's amused. I look for Huddersfield's street life but can't see it.
We leave in the morning with two parking tickets.
LIVERPOOL is a betting office city, a dull brown city. We arrive in the late afternoon and things look sadly shabby in the autumn sunshine, Saturday and deserted – Liverpool vs. Everton. There's a substitute voice.
Eric's Club is cramping and pleasant, a good rock club, Penetration are scheduled to play twice, the normal night time to be supplemented by an afternoon matinee for under-eighteens, an
Eric's tradition, even for the unlikeliest (Magazine?).
Penetration's soundcheck is even more absorbing than the last, but the afternoon performance is off-key, ill-balanced, unconfident. I slouch against a wall, out of range of pogo-spilt lemonade, picture Howard Devoto as Mr Punch, think about role diffusion and cheese rolls.
Somewhere between not being able to get a meal at the hotel and the second show one of the band's cars is stolen, the other broken into and left.
Into another place. Spurred on by the relative failure of the afternoon (Pauline: "We went down well, but to me it didn't mean anything, because I knew we weren't really involved, I want to get personal satisfaction out of it as well as the audience liking it…") the evening is faultless, exhilarating, unselfish and unselfconscious, fast, bouyant, joyous – when was the last time I thought I had to use that word?
I don't need to tell you how irresistible and irrepressible Penetration are on record but .at their live best the concealed and perfectly cautious undercurrents of the songs are cut open, charged, fully enjoyed. Confidence rises, Pauline especially thriving off the increasing momentum of the mood, more and more aggressively happy, improvising- in and out the vocal lines, stopping and laughing into the rhythm, texture, the band responding - shiver and smash.
The lovely thing with their music is its internal movement, in particular the emphatically judged, held back, launched drumming - hear the gathering introduction in "Nostalgia ". You have to un-listen to the power they present - it's nothing to do with bombastic, spewing, gorging Heavy Metal: this is a new, hard modern rock machine, perhaps unique…
Penetration don't mistake their position, don't merely transpose old treats and screen , them with a superfluous sense of the heroic or violent or perverse, some wet artifice or sentiment; the use of conventional tension and tone (and time) is responsive to an untainted attitude - a lineage between means and end, not mileage. They_keep their balance, and it smiles.
The darkening and crossing outline of "Too Many Friends", the lJevation and dizzy sensuality of "Vision", the judicious guitar in "Movement", all breathless, dangerous, and still undeniably… There's no guilt. The two versions are so appropriate - Smith's "Free Money" and Shelley's "Nostalgia" (what kind of co-incidence that the authors have the same initials?) - the dreaming, wish, and tender, curious unknowing of both; Shelley and Smith were aiming for that romantic, fully empty effect - money isn't free , nostalgia isn't promising.
But Penetration play those songs, Pauline sings them as though they had been written for no-one else. Echo is now used on Pauline's voice for that quiet, glittering "Free Money" beginning, and the combination of image, that tantalising voice , and a ringing, lonely reverberation there's nothing to compare it to now - a penetration which makes the word seem like it meant to whisper, or to sleep, ,then this snapped into the speed of the latter stage of the song, sharp and cold and sad.
In their own songs there's more often than not a plea or avowal; when disillusionment is present there's a feeling that the person has learnt rather than lost from the experience. Is this necessarily 'innocent'? - and is this the Penetration innocence so many have been at odds to convey? They certainly don't seem calculating in their actions... are they ‘innocent’?
Pauline: "I don't know. I think, well we can't notice what other people notice, but I think there is a certain innocence about us.
"I don't know why, but some of them (songs) sound sort of fresh, as though... it's something exciting for us, and we're not just going through the motions. We can't really tell like…”
At a high point in the Liverpool show Robert had fallen over - all six foot plus - but far from this throwing everyone off, they actually seemed to rejoice in it- all grinning healthily. (Falling over gets you accepted - Ed).
"We haven't created an image. Say, for instance, it.had been The Clash, and Mick Jones had fallen over, it would have been… well, he did fall over at the Music Machine - and had to kick Strummer when he got up. We just made a joke out of it."
Other things aren't so lightly taken... "Oh, at the moment there's one thing that's really annoying me - and that's this 'Heavy Metal' thing. Everybody's absolutely fed up with it; it seems to be the in term to use to slag off…"
The guitarists have their say on this. Not suprisingly, Purser more than Floyd, easy, 'cos he plays more lead breaks… "People say 'Oh, he's too flash, he uses technique too much' but I don't, I just play what I think fits.
"Yet people automatically think 'How shall we class him? Metal- because he uses a little bit of distortion and bends his notes.' They should have seen me about two years ago when I first started - then they would have seen a HM guitarist. HM is about self-indulgence, non-progression. When they do 'progress' the guitar or bass progress in speed or pose and the drummer in his solo.
"HM is some people's taste, what they like, but why should it be aimed at us and used as a slander?"
Neale: ''Probably just trying to annoy us…" And when I asked why they should want to do that, Pauline replied , "To corrupt our innocence.”
ARE they -pleased with "Moving Targets"? Pauline: "One thing we're not happy with is the luminous vinyl."
Did you have any say in that?
"Well, they did ask us, but when it was put to us, they said it wouldn't affect the sound quality.
We didn’t ' want 'THIS RECORD GLOWS IN THE DARK', And when we heard how bad it was we went mad…”
Who's working against whose interests?
Virgin gave Penetration a choice of (four) producers (yes, by jove, some companies give you no choice at all) and that aspect of "Moving Targets" did turn out well- if you can actually hear the Howlett/Glossop production under the fizz and grind luminous vinyl surface noise.
Pauline asserts that any act who claim to have 'complete artistic control' are telling fibs, and this is true. Penetration have never made a fuss, or name, out of it but it turns out that…
"We didn't have a contract until the Marquee gig, three and a half months ago. We had the one-off single, "Don't Dictate" with Virgin and we thought they'd sign us up after that, and they didn't. Then they released "Firing Squad" and we were still waiting…”
Robert: "They waited until like almost a week before the option ran out before they told us.
The Marquee gig was when they told us they wanted the album."
Pauline: "When we think about it, at the time (after "Don't Dictate") I don't think we were ready to be signed up - there's been a lot of changes in the band, Gary Chaplin left, and Neale came in, about February…”
"In the beginning we tended to be ignored by the rock press, and it used to get a bit annoying, like there were lots of other bands who we knew we were better than and who were getting more coverage. But in the long road it's worked out well, because a lot of bands who got coverage very early on in their career have burned themselves out straight afterwards."
SUNDAY, and back into London for the Roundhouse show. Camden is a whole-food restaurant town, a colourless town. Everybody has to hang about in the empty, draughty Roundhouse. Pauline plays drums; the soundcheck shrugs, balances. They play that incomparable version of "Free Money” but I seem to be the only person listening. Two reggae bands are on the bill, and plump, beatific Rastas in pumpkin hats and immaculate clothes potter about like characters from a Noddy story, pre-set to permanent go-slow.
Pauline goes off to Camden Lock market to buy clothes, new clothes. The audience begin to arrive; there have been suggestions that a crypto-NF skinhead pack - the 'British Movement' are intent on gaining entrance and experimenting with the creative possibilities of concussion.
The fish 'n' chips begin to fall in place, (Surely the rainbow doesn't end in the past?)
The audience is pure 1976; there is a lot of spitting - but only, funnily enough, at Penetration - why is it that no one ever seems to spit at reggae acts? (Man cool- Ed).
The audience react well although certain portions do seem to be intimidated by the presence of skinheads.
When I'm not watching some of the awful people at the front of the stage - waiting for Pauline and then spitting - I observe the crop-haired sector, methodically planning out how and who to disturb. Modern times.
PAULINE says she didn't understand the audience. There's absolutely no malice in her voice.
After the encores and the dressing room ritual tonight, it's on to an oppressively pleasant restaurant in Knightsbridge, Virgin have ordered a set meal for 42 persons, ostensibly in Penetration's honour. Pauline still seems distracted by the grubby, pessimistic feedback from the audience.
At one end of one of the long tables reserved for the Virgin party,-Messrs Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and cronies congregate. Jones runs through his public image variations - throwing food, throwing the table over, crawling under the table, broadcasting the wishes of his libido in a loud, childish manner. He also demands fish 'n' chips.
If only you could see your alternative street heroes! I remember Pauline's comment about people who've burnt themselves out , Glancing around at the general excess and veneer, I turn to Pauline and ask her what she thinks of the occasion, held in her honour.
She says that she doesn't really know, she can't taste the food very well because of her cold.
Now everybody - aaahhh!