It is the early to mid '70s, an awkward time for the awkward young men with a penchant for the music of the day and earlier. Probably a bit young for prog and still at school when the full hippie vibe was the freak flag of the day, earnest young men with spotty faces and serious record collections already under their belt. With developed tastes already embracing country, folk and other roots genres, they were a large and restless tribe, seeking a brand, seeking a label. No, I am not talking about the assault of punk rock; they were already just a tad too old and learned for that. And, anyway, we are ahead of ourselves, it being yet to ignite. I was there. I was (am) one of those boys wanting to be men. And pub rock was our saviour, whether we were old enough to go into pubs or not.
This is not the place for a discourse in this overlooked yet influential musical movement, beyond an understanding that it provided the loosening of the established masonry that punk would later pull down, if for however briefly. But, via Brinsley Schwarz, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, Dr. Feelgood and many others, a melting pot of styles and influences were put into the mix, thrown up in the air and allowed to land, with a ramshackle 4/4 beat and a cheeky smile, short and tuneful songs to put you on your feet. Out of the movement came many of the now established names of current music, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello being probably the best known, as well as the germination of what then did beget punk, Joe Strummer being a member of the 101ers ahead of forming the Clash. Resolutely tending to be avoidant and ambivalent of style or uniform, pub rockers were of all shapes and sizes, fashion often thrift shop, hair allowed to be long or short, styled or merely as nature intended, facial hair optional rather than a then spurned accessory. Proudly uncool, even. Eddie and the Hotrods fitted well that template. But, in front of the motley bunch of urchins on instrumental duties, they had a cataclysmic and archetypal angry young man in singer, Barrie Masters. They had been around for a while by the time of their break through, chugging out covers of 60's garage rock.
Do Anything You Wanna Do
I was too young to go into pubs, and whilst, yes, occasionally I did, these were not the London pubs that celebrated and created the movement. That came later. I had to rely on the inkies, the musical press, NME and Melody Maker, and the TV, Top of the Pops and Old Grey Whistle Test. And they provided me plenty. TOTP was the weekly chart show, Whistle Test more for the serious (and insomniac) polymath. I devoured both. I remember my first sight of the Hotrods, probably at home, half past seven on a thursday night. Crammed between dross like David Soul, I recall being so bloody excited. They were fast, they were passionate, they were exciting, making my head whirl. Instantly my favourite band, I bought not only the single, 'Do What You Wanna Do', but the album, 'Life on the Line', too. It being 1977, punk had begun, and whilst they certainly sounded punky, there was a touch more melodicism in the undercurrent of bass and the choppy rhythms. But they didn't look it, flared trousers may even have been involved, plus they had a singer called Barrie. Apart from Clive, there can be fewer less rock'n'roll names. And that, I guess, became the problem. A flourish of singles and they were gone, overtaken and subsumed by altogether rougher looking lads. Like the Damned and the Clash. The Sex Pistols, to all intents and purposes, had, by then, been and gone. (Although, for their infamous near debut, in February 1976 at the Marquee Club, guess who the Pistols were supporting? Yup, the Hotrods.) Because of all this and despite all this, for those brief moments and for that summer they were my favourite band.
Ignore Them
Of course, the band never went away. Sure, they broke up, reformed, broke up, reformed, Masters the only constant, and looked to be going on forever, the oldest teenager in town, and still looking good. (Well, quite good.) So it was a shock when, suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly, he died, probably a heart attack, aged 63. 2019 had been an eventful year, with a successful tour in support to similar 70s refugees, Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, followed by a celebratory gig, drawing back a legion of ex-members to play a "Done Everything We Wanna Do" concert in April. Was this a warning that the show couldn't go on forever? I don't know, but should anyone even be surprised that it probably will, the residual members of the last band, continuing into this year, first performance tonight? Somehow the Hotrods, as they will be, won't be quite the same without Eddie. And completely different without Barrie.
Week 3 of cutlery, the title now revealing the true needs of our admin guy: he didn't want posts about the transmission of food from plate to mouth, he wanted gore, guts and gristle, spoons eviscerating eyes, forks tining tongues and knives, well, knives carving, cutting, stabbing, slashing. I think.
This hit the spot? Buoyed by my recent referencing them here, I thought it not unreasonable to again revisit cartoon punksters, the Damned. The featured song, to my mind epitomises the glory and spirit of punk, a noisy, rudimentary canter through a couple of chords, short and to the point, waxing lyrically, if not that melodiously, about anything other than the moon in June. And, in the case of the Damned, more with a broad grin and a swagger than the sneer and spit of the Sex Pistols. OK, maybe not the peak cut from their career, but unarguably a synopsis of their sound and modus operandi. Mudhoney certainly thought so.
The Damned were in the right place and at the right time, London, the mid 1970s, all the original members part of the evolving scene that smashed, if but briefly, the reign of the older rock pantheon. Dave Vanian, vocals, Captain Sensible, bass, and Rat Scabies, drums, had performed together, along with future Pretender in chief, Chrissie Hynde, in the subtly entitled 'Masters of the Back Side'. Sadly, or perhaps for the best, no recordings were ever made, let alone live gigs performed. Brian James, the guitarist, had been in 'London SS', another not quite ever making it band, again with other alumni later to make names for themselves elsewhere, as members of the Clash and Generation X. (This I can't resist, Brian James then, the only one with the name his mother called him, right? Wrong, real name Brian Robertson, engaging possible confusion with this fella. Or worse.)
New Rose
So, 'New Rose', October '76, their first single and, more momentously, THE first UK punk single, beating the Sex Pistols to it by a week or five, credit being due to the savvy chutzpah of their record label, 'Stiff', and the no-nonsense, get on with it approach of then house producer, Nick Lowe. The parent album, 'Damned Damned Damned', swiftly following, it too the first in the field, the band joining the Pistols of the infamous 'Anarchy' tour of more cancellations than performances. A 2nd album, 'Music For Pleasure', followed hot on it's heels, adding 2nd guitarist, Lu Edmonds, currently in John Lydon's PiL. This wasn't any huge success and the band disintegrated.
Three years they were back, minus James and Edmonds, Sensible switching to guitar, adding aussie ex-Saint, Algy Ward on bass. As punk begat new wave, so the tone mellowed slightly, with cover versions appearing perhaps a little more necessarily, James having largely written the first 2 albums.
White Rabbit
In fact, if anything, as Vanian's image became increasingly vampyresque, it was the Goths to whom they were leaning. This became more overt as they moved forward, shedding and acquiring new bassists and additional keyboards along the way. Sensible gained a sudden unexpected UK number 1 hit single, 'Happy Talk', maintaining dual band and solo careers for a while, until he elected to leave the group, in 1984. This actually gave the band a boost, whilst he never quite stood the trajectory he had found himself on.
Grimly Fiendish
This song is, I feel, very redolent of Syd Barrett, and clearly fits in with the band trying, and failing, for their 2nd LP, to engage him as producer. (Erstwhile Pink Floyd bandmate Nick Mason did it instead.) Meanwhile, despite a top 3 single and their version of Alone Again Or, the band again fell apart in 1987. A short lived version built around residual duo, Vanian and Scabies, lurched into gear in the mid '90s, before they too fell out with each other. Then there was one.
In 1997 Captain Sensible and Vanian decided to relaunch the b(r)and, Sensible moving up to guitar, spending the next decade with various accomplices and little success. However, in the flurry of interest around the 30th anniversary of Punk, enthusiasm was re-awakened, together with back to back touring, and suddenly, in 2008, they were everywhere. In 2015 a documentary, 'Don't You Wish we Were Dead', was made, with a small clip here. It is worth the whole watch, if you can find it.
Evil Spirits
So, here we are, 2019, and, again, it is anniversaries that are keeping the Damned extant. With a crowd-funded 2018 album,'Evil Spirits', produced by Tony Visconti, and a tour of 1979's 'Machine Gun Ettiquette' doing the rounds, it is, indeed, neat, neat, neat.
Shhh, can you hear that? No, me neither. Not even the sound of a dropped 'H' is assailing my ears. Which is nice, if sort of lonely. While the membership of this merry band of bloggers gets ever smaller, sorry, more select, I'm sort of wondering where my buddies are. I suspect it is summer holiday time in Tarrytown and I know Turkey is short of one of us right now, possibly explaining why I am here instead, but I could do with a hand. Or two. Mind you, this is probably the only way I can gain any sway in the year end stats.......
I love this song, as good as any a reason to give it a hammering. It came first to my ears as a wee boy, it, 'Forever Changes' by Love, being one of the few records owned by my big sister's boyfriend, later husband. (The others were 'Honky Chateau' by Elton John, 'Please to See the King' by Steeleye Span and something, possibly a 'Greatest Hits', by Cream, a good if limited selection.) I didn't take to some of the noisier tracks of 'Forever Changes' but really liked the two written by Bryan Maclean, this one and 'andmoreagain', learning this fact as I devoured the sleeve notes. To be fair, I loved it until the strings and trumpet came in, trumpet being the devil's horn to my youthful ear, only later appreciating the additions as a masterstroke. Apparently the idea of Arthur Lee, guitarist and singer on most, maybe all of the rest of the tracks, and, arguably, leader of the band, later if not necessarily then, it is the hook that has stuck over the years. Lee had reason for the upper hand at that stage, being the only musician with any great competence, the original of the song cut with Maclean's vocal and the Cutting Crew, the famed session team, on backing, much as with the Byrds initial forays into the recording studio. This apparently left Maclean in tears, with Bruce Botnick, yes, that one, the engineer, then allowing the band a second crack at it themselves, the intervening frantic rehearsals cutting the much needed mustard at the second attempt, with added harmony vocals from Lee. (Much as I have tried, I cannot find that earlier version, but Maclean did record it again, later in his career.)
It has had a few covers over the years, most tending to replicate, understandably, the trumpet. Calexico, the mariachi influenced tex-mex collective fronted by Joey Burns and John Covertino, go a whole step further and give it even more of a centrepiece. They play Cambridge Folk Festival next month in the UK, I guess mainly to promote their 2nd album with Iron & Wine, but I will be sorely disappointed if they don't play it. (I'll let you know.)
The Damned were and are punks as seen by a cartoon illustrator, a vibrant and lively force on the scene for over 40 years. Never as infamous as the Sex Pistols or as name-checked as the Clash, they were actually the frontrunners, their debut single being the first of the class of '77 to get a release, of course on Stiff records. A number of personnel changes over the years, members leaving and, sometimes, returning, the one constant has been Dave Vanian, the draculike on vocals. Their style has gradually morphed into drawing on proggier aspects, with All Again Or ushering in this period.
Finally, ignoring rather more mundane runouts, such as the Boo Radleys and Sid 'n' Suzy, a more leftfield version comes from Sara Lov, erstwhile collaborator with neo-classical/electronica artist, Dustin O'Halloran. For the soundtrack of a movie and later appearing also on a tribute to that particular film maker, Wes Anderson, it remembers just enough of the original, ahead of launching into a new and delightful space. And no trumpet. Which, oddly enough, I find myself missing. Like I am now dependent on it.
On the one hand, punk music and reggae don’t appear to have much in common musically—one is hard, fast, aggressive, and loud, the other, more laid back, slower, and mellow. I think that it is fair to point out that both styles arose as music of angry, rebellious, disaffected youth, making their philosophical connections more obvious than their musical connections. And yet we know that there has been a strong merger of the two styles, by bands like The Clash, the Two Tone bands, and in the ska-punk genre.
So, how did this marriage get arranged? Not having a clue, I turned to Google, which served me up this article that makes the case that the matchmaker was Don Letts.
Letts was born in England, of Jamaican heritage, and ran a London clothing store popular with musicians from both the punk and reggae scenes. He was able to meet Bob Marley after a gig, and they became friendly. When the Roxy nightclub opened, catering to the emerging punk scene, Letts became the DJ, and began to spin reggae and dub songs, along with punk music, in large part because the scene was so new, there weren’t that many punk records to play. Apparently, the punks enjoyed the music, including Joe Strummer of The Clash, and members of The Slits and The Sex Pistols.
Meanwhile, Letts convinced Marley, who appeared to have a negative feeling about punk based on sensationalist tabloid newspaper articles rather than from actually listening to the music, that it was worthwhile. According to Letts, he went to collect some money from Marley, dressed in punk bondage clothing, and Marley mocked him, to which Letts responded, “They ain't no crazy baldheads, they're my breddrin.”
Shortly thereafter, inspired by the message and the music of punk rock (and by The Clash’s cover of the reggae song “Police and Thieves”), Marley wrote “Punky Reggae Party,” which referenced punk and New Wave, and namechecked The Clash, The Jam, The Damned, Dr. Feelgood (really more of a pub rock than a punk band, but whatever), as well as The Wailers and The Maytals. But even more importantly, Marley makes sure to point out that while all of those musicians would be at the party, “no boring old farts
will be there.”
Letts went on to a career as a musician, most notably as a member, along with former Clash member Mick Jones, of Big Audio Dynamite, which mixed many genres of music, including punk and reggae where his role was, mostly, to supply audio samples to the songs. But he is best known as a filmmaker and video producer.
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