Something Better Change

The Stranglers – October 15^th 1977 – Leeds Queens Hall

By late 1977, I’d been to a few gigs but they’d all been in Harrogate and quite small but with my brother living at home after finishing university, I could travel further afield with him, without my parents worrying.

On Saturday October 15^th 1977 Leeds University was hosting the Live Stiffs tour with Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Wreckless Eric and Larry Wallis. Being a fan of the Stiff record label, I wanted to go but it wasn’t the only gig in Leeds that night. My favourite band at the time was The Stranglers and they were playing Queens Hall on the same night. It was one I couldn’t miss.

Support was provided by Manchester band, The Drones, and one of the few punk bands from Australia to make it over here, The Saints. Again, this gig was so long ago that I don’t remember very much. It was a dark, dingy venue and with all the punks around, a little scary. Everything was running late and so we had to leave before the end in order to catch the last train home but we left it as late as possible, running to the nearby train station clutching my souvenir t-shirt and just made it with seconds to spare. It was a shame missing the end of the gig but the alternative was catching a lift back with some schoolmates and I think 13 occupants is probably enough for a Mk II Cortina.

Considering that The Stranglers were my favourite band for so long and that up until 1981 I’d bought all of their singles, it’s surprising that I didn’t see them live again until they appeared at Guilfest in 2006. I’m not normally one for nostalgia and I wouldn’t normally have gone to see someone from my past but they really rocked, despite Hugh having left to concentrate on his solo work, which he was also performing at Guilfest that weekend.

I saw them again recently, the first band I saw in my new home town of Sunderland. And they pretty much still came up with the goods. It was a bit embarrassing that they’re still performing tracks like ‘Bring on the Nubiles’, I would have thought they’d have grown out of it, but all in all they still gave us a good night out. Just a shame that we got locked in the park on the way home.

To The Urban Man

I’ve been to lots of gigs over the years, well I have been around a long time, and in that time have accumulated a lot of tickets from said gigs. So I thought I’d go through them and blog about them and see what, if anything I can remember.

Given that it’s been a pretty significant part of my life, there are undoubtedly a lot of memories tangled up in that box of tickets and hopefully as I work my way through the box, many will come flooding back. Though given that live music has usually been accompanied by a fair amount of cider it remains to be seen what my recall will be like.

At the moment I haven’t a clue what will come out as I start my journey through my life and whether or not it will be at all interesting. I don’t rate myself as much of a writer, I’m not much of a raconteur and my memory isn’t what it was but I’ll have a go and see what happens.

So where to start? In the absence of any other inspiration, I suppose the beginning is a decent point, though I’m not entirely sure where that is. Almost certainly it was a band called Wally and probably at the Harrogate Theatre on Sunday September 19^th 1976. There’s a chance that I’d seen them before at some other venue in Harrogate, they played at the Royal Hall in December 1974, but I have no tickets from this era though I still have a poster for the Harrogate Theatre gig so let’s start there.

So what do I remember about the gig? Virtually nothing. I’m not sure if I went with anybody, though I can remember talking to Paul Crowther about it the following day at school. Apparently the music had hit the resonant frequency of the spring that had been inserted in place of his stomach muscles and had made him feel decidedly ill. I’m sure I enjoyed it and I know it was loud. Really loud. Having only experienced music on the Dansette in my bedroom or down at the youth club, the volume of my music listening had been pretty low, so seeing  a real band in a decent venue introduced me to the knowledge that there was a whole new dimension to music listening.

The date here is probably quite significant. I was 16 and punk was about to hit with a force. Wally themselves were a progressive folk rock band and I was listening to a lot of that sort of stuff but then The Clash and The Stranglers et al changed all that.

I saw Wally a few more times after that, once at the Adelphi Hotel and also at The Royal Hall (both in Harrogate) before they finally split up after 2 albums, in 1978. After the death of the original keyboard player, Paul Gerret (more of whom later), in 2008, they reformed for a tribute show in April 2009 and have continued to play occasionally and record new material. I haven’t seen them in their reincarnation, somehow going back 35 years like that doesn’t seem right to me, though I still occasionally listen to their albums. Good luck to them though.

There were certainly other gigs around this time. I took Claire Exley to see Steeleye Span at the Royal Hall and even have a visual memory of sitting up in the circle on the right hand side. Heavy Metal Kids played there too and I know I considered going to see them but can’t remember if I did. But all these are only mere dalliances with live music as I was about to get into punk and Paul Gerret opened his music venue, PGs, in Harrogate…