Scratchy old 45s

The Cost Of Living EP / Radio Clash / This Is England / The Magnificent Seven / Straight To Hell / White Riot by The Clash

C'mon Everybody / ( I'm Not Your ) Stepping Stone / Black Leather / Holidays In The Sun / God Save The Queen / Something Else by the Sex Pistols

Kick Out The Tories / Mindless Violence by the Newtown Neurotics / Flares 'n' Slippers EP by the Cockney Rejects / Into The Valley by the Skids / Kids On The Street by the Angelic Upstarts

California Uber Alles by Dead Kennedys / All Out Attack EP by Blitz / The Serenade Is Dead by Conflict / Puppets Of War by Chron Gen / Reason For Existence, Demolition War, Religious Wars by Subhumans

 

No More Heroes by the Stranglers / Stand Strong EP by Vice Squad / Into The Abyss by Sex Gang Children / Warhead by UK Subs

Sun Is In The Sky by the Seers / XX Sex by We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Going To Use It / You Trip Me Up by the Jesus & Mary Chain / Lean On Me by the Redskins / Catch by The Cure / Being Boiled by the Human League / Kiss by The Age Of Chance

( And just to prove my old singles collection isn't all about Punk and indie... )

Fascination by the Human League / Bang Zoom! Let's Go Go by The Real Roxanne and Hitman Howie T / Pump Up The Volume by MARRS / Saving All My Love For You by Whitney Houston / Sue Sessions EP by Ike & Tina Turner / Kiss by Prince & The Revolution / If Your Heart Isn't In It by Atlantic Starr ( really... )

Gotta have some Adam Ant to finish:

Deutscher Girls / Young Parisians / Antmusic / Cartrouble / Zerox / Dog Eat Dog / Stand And Deliver / Prince Charming / Friend Or Foe

Letting the days go by

One of my all-time favourite songs in any genre from any era is Talking Heads' neurotic classic Once In A Lifetime. Just over four minutes of existential confusion with a jerky, New Wave Afrobeat, Once In A Lifetime still sounds like nothing else on Earth, even after three decades. I can vividly remember this song blaring out from radios back in 1981  -  my own personal Year Zero for music
( as previously mentioned here )  -   and being captivated by its strange, hypnotic groove and David Byrne's disconnected, paranoid vocals. I went out and bought the single ( probably from Stroud's Trading Post record shop ), played it to death, and thought to myself that I should buy its parent album, Remain In Light...

 

Well, thirty-two years later I've finally got round to buying that album. Hardly an impulse purchase!  And it's as great a record as I've always heard it was. Collaborating with producer Brian Eno and a host of extra musicians, the core Talking Heads unit build up layers of beats and grooves, mixing NYC New Wave with funk and with African polyrhythms, before David Byrne adds his nervy monologues to the mix. It's fantastic stuff and was clearly way ahead of any of the band's contemporaries, with the possible exception of The Clash. I really should have allowed this masterpiece into my life years ago...

Even James, my Dubstep-loving son, likes Once In A Lifetime! He says he knows it from the closing credits of Bill Bailey's Tinselworm DVD. He's got good taste, that Bill Bailey. 

I thought I'd dig out my original single copy of the song but, after trawling through my 250+ singles, I realised I don't actually own it any more. I know I sold / traded a lot of vinyl back in the '90s ( mostly to fund my Silver Age comic-buying ) but I'd be surprised to think I sold such an old favourite. In the words of David Byrne "My God, what have I done...?"

I'll leave you with a slightly unusual version of the song by that old Punk, Kermit...
Same as it ever was? Not really...

Recent Gigs Part Two: Ed Tudorpole / Chinese Burn

One of the first gigs I ever went to was a Tenpole Tudor concert at Stroud Leisure Centre, waaaay back in December 1981 when I was the tender age of 14. The band were riding ( relatively ) high on the success of two Top 20 singles, Swords Of A Thousand Men and Wunderbar, and were touring their second album, the massively under-appreciated Let The Four Winds Blow. Tenpole Tudor were an exciting, enthusiastic live proposition, with their Punky-rockabilly racket, medieval costumes and boggle-eyed, eccentric frontman, Ed. My teenage mates and I had a great time, jumping around and singing along to the bands' anthems, dodging the scary Punks and even scarier Skin'eads around us, and singing Happy Birthday to Mr. Tudorpole because 'twas his birthday that day. Ah, memories...
But now, a frightening 32 (!) years later, Ed was back in Stroud, this time appearing at the Stroud Fringe Festival with his one man show, accompanied only by a battered old acoustic guitar. Could he relive the magic of days gone by...?

Well, we'll get to that shortly. First of all I have to mention Stroud's favourite sons, the mighty Chinese Burn who were supporting Ed at Stroud's Queen Victoria pub. This was their third gig in three days at the Fringe and they were well-rehearsed and firing on all cylinders by this point. The last time I saw them play was at Stroud's Subscription Rooms a couple of months back, with Gloucester Street-Punks, Demob. Not their best gig, it has to be said, but even on their more ragged days the Burn are always worth watching. No problems this time, however. They stormed through a set of tuneful, Punk-pop firecrackers, to the delight of a packed-out Queen Vic, and even dedicated a song to your humble blogger. Cheers guys! After they finished with the obligatory cover of Beat On The Brat it was time for the main event...

 Ed sneaked out of a doorway and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of his acoustic while regaling us with hilarious, touching and witty songs and stories. A ball of furious energy with a wicked gleam in his eye, Ed Tudorpole is a captivating performer, a true English eccentric. Topics covered in his warm, friendly, funny set included Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols, moustaches, his teenage son, the merits of Mercedes versus Fiat, love, ageing and the pigeon-holing of artists as "Punk" or otherwise...

Here are Sarah and my mate Glenn's daughter Millie enjoying yet another of Ed's mad utterances.
( Ed actually made a bee-line for Sarah after the set, prompting her to splutter "I'm married... to him"  -  indicating me  -  much to Ed's disappointment. He said to me "Why do girls always mention their boyfriends to me? Why do they do that?" Bless him! She did give him a peck on the cheek before we left, so that will have to do... )

As well as many unfamiliar, but great, songs we were treated to some Tenpole Tudor standards like Throwing My Baby Out With The Bathwater and Three Bells In A Row as well as hilariously mangled versions of Friggin' In The Rigging and Who Killed Bambi?
After winning over a delighted audience Ed came back to encore with the most well-known of his songs... this time with a backing band...

Yes, Chinese Burn backed Ed Tudorpole  for a storming version of ( what else?) Swords Of A Thousand Men. With no rehearsal and having learned the song overnight, the Burn absolutely tore up the place with an awesome take on this old favourite, all clearly having the time of their lives. And that went for the audience too. To the untrained eye this all might have seemed like a bunch of drunk, middle-aged men shouting "Hoorah Hoorah Hoorah Yay!"... and that's exactly what it was... but it was fantastic :-)

After the set I got Ed to sign a couple of old pieces of vinyl for me and also bought the long-lost third Tenpole Tudor album, Made It This Far, from him. I'll sign off with his own words from the sleeve-notes of the album:
"God bless us all, love from Ed, Edward Tudor Pole, Ten Pole Tudor, Eddie Tenpole and all at no. 93..."

 Soundtrack: Rebellion ( Lies ), The Suburbs, Ready To Start and ( awesome new track ) Reflektor  -  all by Arcade Fire

Adam Ant at Bristol O2 Academy

A year on from the last Ants Invasion of Bristol, Sir Adam Of Ant returned with another storming set of Pop hits and Punk perversion. And this time I even dragged Sarah and her mate Jacqui along. Well... I say "dragged" when in fact they had both been obsessing over Adam for weeks before the gig and were ready for some Friday night Antics...

Due to Bristol Academy's ridiculously early doors on a Friday night we missed the support ( probably no great loss ) while having a drink over the road in the slightly more sophisticated Colston Hall.We made our way across to the venue and, after about 20 minutes of listening to some groovy old rock 'n' roll on the pre-gig soundsystem, Adam and his band appeared to rapturous applause.

Still rocking the Hussar / Napoleon / NHS glasses look ( well, it's certainly unique ) Adam launched into a set which veered wildly across his career from the S&M days of Whip In My Valise and Beat My Guest, through the Burundi beat of Kings Of The Wild Frontier and Dog Eat Dog ( "Brush me, Daddio!" ) to the MTV-friendly likes of Strip and Goody Two-Shoes. Just as he had done a year previously Adam concentrated as much on old school Ants material like Fall In ( a great singalong ) and a cracking version of Zerox as he did on Top 10 stuff like Stand And Deliver. It was a good half dozen songs into the set before he spoke to the audience, telling us that Kings... still feels new every time he plays it ( and it still sounds awesome... but it needs some Marco... ) and regaling us with the surely apocryphal tale of how he was inspired to write Lady. ( It involves going through Malcolm McLaren's pockets to nick loose change and meeting a 7' 9" naked dominatrix... all good stuff! )

Highlights of the set for me were an atmospheric Ants Invasion, a sensual ( of course ) Physical, an audience-pleasing Ant Music and a Rockabilly reading of Goody Two Shoes  -  never my favourite of his songs, but pretty damn special tonight. Even Vive Le Rock sounded good...

I'm glad to report that Mr. Ant's recent flurry of touring hasn't affected his performance ( steady! ) and Adam is in fine, enthusiastic, cheeky form, with his stage moves still sending people weak at the knees... including my companions :-)
And, it has to be said, his voice is in bloody good shape for a man of his age, still managing to hit some impressively high notes, although occasionally reigning it in somewhat when necessary. I do however miss the  bonkers Native American yelping of the old Ants' backing vocals on the Kings... songs. Adam of course still does all that but his band don't really rise to the occasion. Come on, guys! After all, ridicule is nothing to be scared of...
New song Cool Zombie was unveiled and sounded pretty good. It should be interesting to see how well his new album does when released. Adam's unlikely comeback has been pretty amazing so far
( I never thought I'd be seeing him play these wonderful songs 30 years after his first brush with fame ) and it would be fantastic to see him actually sell some records too. Again, it's unlikely... but the unlikely is something Adam has always specialised in.
After a final, mass outbreak of  "doing the Prince Charming" in the encore ( I can't believe I did that! ) Adam and band took their bows and left. And so did we... to have a few drinks and mess about in Bristol...

Oh dear! Time to go home...

I was a teenage Death Planet Commando

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first Death Planet Commandos gig, The Glass Walking-Stick proudly presents:
Part One of The Secret History Of The DPC...

Long before I joined the Punk band previously known as Primitive and embarked on a two-year mission of maximum rock 'n' roll I was also in a succession of almost bands, bedroom bands, made up bands. They went by such cringe-making names as Magus, Heretic, Vicious Bastard ( lovely! ), Perverse Society and Sons Of Evil. I also hit on the name Primal Scream which I thought sounded pretty cool ( I'd read about John Lennon going through primal scream therapy and thought it sounded Punk ) but I discovered some band from Glasgow already had the same moniker. Whatever happened to them? The name that hung around the longest was Sons Of Evil and my concerted graffiti campaign around my sixth form managed to convince people that we actually existed. Well, we did... sort of...

Alongside various fly-by-night band members such as Martin "Trev" Trevitt, Mark "Casey" McAsey and someone called "Spaz" ( according to my old diary, but I really can't remember him ) the Sons Of Evil were basically me and my mate Paul  -  pictured above on the drums.

And here we are again, propping up the bar in a Blackpool B&B. Paul and I were thick as thieves for many years and had various adventures, mostly involving alcohol and chasing after girls  -  although, in my case, too much of the former and too few of the latter :-)

Inspired by a thriving local gig scene ( bands such as The Lemons, Final Verdict, Major Detail, The Patrol, Ronald Rim Ram and Primitive themselves ) as well as by seeing bigger bands passing through ( Crass, Tenpole Tudor, Omega Tribe, Poison Girls, Newtown Neurotics ) we thought we'd give this Punk Rock thing a go. Paul tried guitar and bass before settling on drums, while I had always wanted to be a guitarist... well, ever since seeing old footage of Hendrix on the Old Grey Whistle Test, anyway. Unfortunately, I was never going to be the next Hendrix or even the next Joe Strummer, or even a competent guitarist for that matter. But we were young and had the old "three chords is all you need" Punk spirit on our side. We practiced in an old cow shed which had been converted into a snooker room, so we always had beer and peanuts to hand, and could always play a couple of frames of snooker when the musical inspiration was lacking. Which was quite often...

We never managed to break out of the cow shed and achieve international fame, but we did have a laugh and I started to write dodgy lyrics which got better as time went by and which I began to stockpile for future reference. Time passed and the Sons Of Evil retreated into the mists of obscurity. I gave up thoughts of being the next Joe Strummer, while nightclubs and horrible '80s suits began to replace Punk gigs and leather jackets. Until I found myself working with this young man...

In 1987 I was packing greeting cards for local card company, Paper House, when I met Ade, Primitive's frontman. I remembered Primitive from various gigs around Stroud and especially from the one above, a Battle Of The Bands at Stroud's Marshall Rooms which they really should have won, being the audience's favourites but, unfortunately, not the judges'. Primitive claimed to be "Gloucester's fastest band", being inspired by American Hardcore Punk, not the more stodgy UK Street Punk that had been so prevalent in the  previous few years. Ade invited me along to one of their practices at Time Out Studios in Gloucester Docks and I was impressed by their sound and their songs. It turned out their excellent Malaysian drummer, Lee, was going back home, leaving the drum stool vacant. It also turned out I happened to know a drummer by the name of Paul. A devious plan began to form in my mind. With all the arrogance of youth I proposed that Paul joined Primitive... as long as they took me on too as rhythm guitarist...
Cocky bugger wasn't I?

To be continued...

( Thanks to Mark B for this post's title )

The Damned / Adam Ant

Two trips down to the Bristol O2 Academy last week, to see living legends / Punk has-beens ( delete as applicable ) The Damned and Sir Adam of Ant.

The Damned were celebrating their 35 years (!) at the Punk Rock coal-face by playing debut album Damned Damned Damned and that difficult 4th LP, The Black Album, in their entirety. Even though I've been a fan of the band for many years and have seen them play live about a dozen times, I don't actually own any of their albums. ( Except for a well-wonky cassette version of Machine Gun Etiquette. ) So I was probably the only person in the packed-out venue who didn't know all the words to all the songs. Not that it really mattered: I was down the front from the first bass notes of Neat Neat Neat, yelling my lungs out to that caveman chorus.

According to Captain Sensible ( seen above in his lovely, fluffy

suit ) they sped through the 31-minute long album in only 29 bruising minutes. Twelve amphetamine-rush bursts of aggression from the ironic Fan Club to the howling Stooges cover I Feel Alright ( originally called 1970 ) via the most punishing version of New Rose I've seen them play. Not bad for guys in their 50s...

After the first set there was a short break when we could recover from the effects of oxygen starvation, intense heat and rugby-tackling Bristol boneheads, before the band came back to dive into the psychedelic, psychotic depths of The Black Album. Starting with one of my favourite Damned songs, Wait For The Blackout, then on through other crowd-pleasers like Lively Arts and The History Of The World ( Part 1 ), the band headed inexorably towards the 17- minute epic Curtain Call. It's like Punk never happened :-)

As ever, The Damned were enthusiastic and clearly having a whale of a time ( which is obviously better than a dolphin of a time... ), the Captain and Dave Vanian taking the piss out of each other and other bands ( the regulation digs at the Pistols / Clash etc. ) and drummer Pinch introducing one song as "A Fart In A Spacesuit" - of course! They encored with Love Song ( yay! ), Eloise ( not my fave Damned song but played perfectly ) and a blistering Anti-Pope. But no Smash It Up? Boo!

And here are a bunch of mid-life-crisis-sufferers prior to the gig. From the left: someone whose name I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten, Rob, Glenn and me, doing my best "will you hurry up and take the picture, I can't hold this smile any longer" pose.

Two nights later I headed back to Bristol in a downpour of almost Biblical proportions to finally see, after 30 years, my teenage idol, Adam "Stuart Goddard" Ant. Yeah, I probably had what we'd now call a man-crush ( or boy-crush... no, that sounds worse ) on Adam back in the day. But it's OK, I'm over it now, I'm not confused, not in denial ;-)

( Bloody Hell, the things that this blog drags out of me... )

Adam's obviously been out of the limelight for a long time and it was a worry for old Antfans like me that he would just be doing this to pay the rent, a Zerox ( if you will ) of his old self. After splitting from guitarist / songwriting partner, Marco Pirroni, the Live Aid fiasco and his well-publicised mental health problems, it had seemed that Adam had retired from the life of a dandy highwayman. Now he was back for a new Ants Invasion... but would it be Wonderful or Nine Plan Failed?

Standing in the O2's bar, surrounded by Punks, pirates and highwaymen of all ages and persuasions, I heard a mighty roar exploding from the crowd and had to force my way down to the front to see Adam and The Good, The Mad & The Lovely Posse hit the stage to the accusatory sound of Plastic Surgery. No starting with the greatest hits here: straight into the pre-fame cult classics. For every pop hit like Stand And Deliver ( manic! ) or Prince Charming ( regal! ) there were at least two of Adam's pervy B-sides and album tracks like Beat My Guest or Whip In My Valise or Lady ( he admitted on stage that Lady should have been the A-side of his first single, not Young Parisians ) ...all together now: "I saw a Lady and she was naked..."

Oh yeah, that reminds me - the band. The Good, The Mad & The Lovely Posse comprise of two drummers ( of course! ), a couple of what look like Californian session musicians from the '90s on guitar and bass, and the two Lovely ladies above on backing vocals and sex-kitten Antics. Never have so many camera-phones been hoisted aloft ( ooh, er! ) by so many blokes at one rock gig before! The band did a fine job of representing the Ants' sound, er... without actually being the Ants. ( But I still miss "Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee..." etc. )

The star of the show, of course, remains Adam, regardless of who's up there with him. Whilst obviously not as energetic a performer as he was back in his heyday, he's still got the charisma, the moves and the voice. And he's also open and funny about the ups and downs of his career. In fact, still a great frontman and still a star. And... still a sex symbol. A surprising amount of 20-something women ( and probably men too ) were literally falling at his feet. One girl next to me stripped down to her bra while she was dancing and later fell over the security-barrier in front of the stage. She said she was reaching to recover her handbag, but I think she was grabbin' for Adam ;-)

Antmusic for sexpeople!

Soundtrack: Beat My Guest, Friend Or Foe, Goody Two Shoes, Dog Eat Dog, Antmusic etc. etc.

Music Year Zero

1981 was the year I fell in love with music. Of course, I'd liked a lot of music before then but none of it had really grabbed me. When I was primary school age in the mid-Seventies I enjoyed the Glam Rock of the Sweet, Slade, Bowie and co. as well as the poppier sounds of Abba and 10CC, but I really had little interest in music beyond whatever song took my fancy on Top Of The Pops in any given week. In 1976/7 Punk Rock passed me by ( I'd catch up later ) but, as the '80s dawned, I began to listen to Rock ( Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Hendrix ) and Two Tone ( The Specials, Madness ) and the vaguely-defined New Wave ( Blondie, Squeeze, Undertones ) and even began to buy some of the stuff. My first single was Pink Floyd's mega-hit Another Brick In The Wall... not the coolest choice, I know, but I still love it.

Then I became an Antperson. Really. Punk underachiever Adam Ant had reinvented himself as some sort of Glam Punk Pirate and was making waves with his ludicrous-but-catchy musical blend of Glam stomp and Burundi beats. Songs like the mighty Dog Eat Dog and Antmusic bowled me over with their freshness and colour and I started drawing Adam's "Warrior Ant" logo on all my school books, bought all the Ants' back catalogue, and, er, wore a feather in my hair...

Adam's 1980 Kings Of The Wild Frontier album was my Bible and, as my musical Year Zero arrived, I eagerly awaited the follow-up. I bought the first single from the album, the title track Prince Charming, in HMV on the day it was released and had to endure the shop assistant's scorn, as he thought me an empty-headed teen pop fan: "Have you even heard this song?" ( What a twat! ) Although, to be honest, Adam's 1981 music wasn't as good as the previous year's - he was becoming too much of a showbiz "entertainer" for my liking - but it didn't really matter. I was now officially a Proper Music Fan. I had begun to buy music magazines ( starting with Smash Hits, progressing to Sounds and Melody Maker ) and was listening to Radio One every spare minute I had.

1981 was also the dawn of the Electropop era. Instead of buying guitars and Play In A Day books of chords, bands were grabbing cheap synthesisers and plundering the works of Bowie and Kraftwerk to create new, electronic sounds. And a lot of crap was produced. But the main movers 'n' shakers of the scene, the Human League, were way out in front. They, like Adam, had ditched their earlier cult sound and look, and were heading for the Pop big leagues. The Dare album was a massive seller, overflowing with classic song after classic song. The League may seem cheesy nowadays as they haul themselves around the nostalgia circuit but, in 1981, they had the tunes, the confidence and the ridiculous haircuts that would propel them to stardom.

Speaking of ridiculous haircuts...

The League's splinter group, Heaven 17, made their debut in 1981 with the wonderful single We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang, an irresistibly funky call to arms in a time of worrying Right-wing thuggishness. I bought the ensuing album and enjoyed it at the time but its sound dated as much as the band's ironic, Yuppie image, and it didn't survive my later Vinyl Purges...

Meanwhile, over in the world of Sensitive Boys With Guitars, here's Faith by The Cure. I actually went out and bought this album purely on the strength of a review in Sounds, without having heard a single track. ( Very trusting of me. ) Faith is probably the quintessential early '80s Goth album: doomy, gloomy and claustrophobic. Songs like All Cats Are Grey and The Drowning Man are as atmospheric and pretentious as you'd imagine, but not without their own certain, spectral charm. Little did I know that 6 years later I would meet a young girl called Sarah who was a massive Cure fan, and we would end up seeing the band play live many times...

In a similar ( jugular ) vein, The Cure's contemporaries The Banshees spawned this side-project by singer Siouxsie and drummer Budgie, a percussion-driven e.p. of overheated sexGoth torchsongs. It's all good stuff and, as a teenager, I was seriously impressed by the sleeve photos...

I went through a Heavy Metal phase at the time ( I wore my leather jacket to Punk gigs, my denim jacket to Metal gigs ) and there was no-one heavier than Motorhead. The classic Motorhead line-up were now big stars on the back of the awesome Ace Of Spades LP ( the title track was the second single I ever bought ) and they consolidated this popularity with the ear-destroying live album, No Sleep 'til Hammersmith. It pretty much sounds like having your head stuck inside a washing-machine full of bricks on spin cycle, which is obviously a very good thing. I always wanted to see Motorhead live back in the day, but I saw also-rans like Vardis instead. Which is probably why I still have my hearing today...

The tribal drumbeats popularised by Adam Ant ( which also cropped up in Other Voices from The Cure's Faith ) are given a Post-Punk, artrock twist by John Lydon's Public Image Ltd. on the deeply strange album, The Flowers Of Romance. Lydon and his cohorts blend surreal, nihilistic lyrics, splashes of synth and deep, cavernous drum sounds to spooky effect. "Reptilians... I won't let you in..." indeed! A long way from butter adverts.....

I didn't actually own the above Blue Oyster Cult album back in 1981, but bought it years later. I just had to include it 'cos I love the cover art...

1981's pop charts were certainly diverse! Former Elvis Costello wannabe Joe Jackson ditched his bedsit New Wave ruminations for zoot suits and horns as he put out a wonderful album of Swing-era covers. My Mum bought this album for my Dad, Pete, who loved the Big Band sound of Glenn Miller and the like, but I ended up playing it more than he did :-)

Reap this righteous riff!

As any regular reader of this 'ere blog knows, I'm a major fan of Bruce Springsteen. Back in 1981 The Boss helped out one of his idols, Gary "US" Bonds, by writing and producing his comeback album, Dedication, featuring the retro pop-soul classic This Little Girl Is Mine. A great, swinging r'n'b production with cool, call-and-response vocals and the unmistakeable sound of the E Street Band, this lost classic sounded like a blast of fresh air as it burst from radios in the Summer of 1981...

...my own Music Year Zero!

( If anyone else has similar thoughts on this year or any other year in music, I'd love to hear them... )