running on impulse
I was so narrow-minded about punk rock and yet managed to lump in all kinds of other stuff under the same umbrella. It’s a paradoxical thing, as the great Frankie Stubbs might say. Like when we first fell for punk in 1977 and proceeded without question to listen to BLONDIE, ELVIS COSTELLO, IAN DURY, THE TUBES and others. Even JOE JACKSON and NICK LOWE couldn’t escape our enthusiasm. New wave? It all crowded underneath the same umbrella for us.
The connection with punk and some of the more ‘gothic’ material began for me with THEATRE OF HATE and their 1980 double A debut Legion/Original Sin. Legion in particular is a snarling punk beast, albeit with a post-punk sax solo stuck right in the middle, which made dancing to it a challenge for my teenage thrashings. Nevertheless, that’s where it began and as long as it had some bite, I was in. THEATRE OF HATE definitely had that and so too, on some tracks, did SISTERS OF MERCY. Here, Alice has the edge, with a building power and intensity that had me hooked straight away. On the flip, Floorshow is a drum machine-powered, tom-heavy rumbler, similar to THEATRE OF HATE’s sparse Do You Believe In the Westworld? I had both sides of this on heavy rotation at the time and really connected with its sense of gravitas.
As a teenager, I was running on impulse, particularly with music and, despite my punk rock trappings, SISTERS OF MERCY seemed to fit right into my world. So much so, I hand-painted their logo on to the back of my standard issue punk rock studded leather jacket. The main logo. On the back. Like a target. I’d be willing to bet that that would have got the Scunthorpe punk cognoscenti sniping about how the band weren’t ‘real punk’. I’d like to think that I didn’t care, that I was forging my own path and not sticking to the rule book. The truth is more prosaic. I was quite simply oblivious in my youthful enthusiasm and no doubt would have been mortified. Other band names painstakingly painted on to that jacket, which is still hanging in my wardrobe, are: THE ADICTS, MAYHEM, AMEBIX, THE ADVERTS, DEAD KENNEDYS, CHARGE, THE SYSTEM & ANTISECT).
Pondering this makes me think of cringeworthy moments from those days, moments we never gave a second thought to at the time but in hindsight have the ability to bring on furious blushing fits. My ‘Where were you in ’77?‘ t-shirt fits into this category, particularly when you consider that for the first half of 1977 I was listening to taped Sunday night chart shows, watching Top of the Pops and grooving in my bedroom to ROXY MUSIC, QUEEN, SHOWADDYWADDY and DARTS. Inevitably, some wise lag I didn’t even know pointed this out to me – “Ha! Where were YOU in ’77?” Ouch.
Listening to this SISTERS OF MERCY single I loved but haven’t heard in years, I do have to fight the urge to deride its hokey drama. I can fight that urge though. A lot of the music I’ve loved over the years has been overly earnest and dramatic and sometimes that is what I needed at the time.
Alice also transports me back to a sparsely populated Steve Bird disco at The Sherpa pub down Chancel Road, in my home town of Scunthorpe. My friends and I religiously attended these to drink, smoke and dance to our new records. I’m alone on the dance floor. Sometimes I liked it that way, the only time I’ve ever shown extrovert tendencies. I was always shy but the music I fell for in those formative years allowed me to overcome at least a part of that. Anyway, I’m letting myself go to Alice – or Too Drunk To Fuck – or Legion – or Big A Little A. My mates Dick, Jim & Paddy getting up for their current favourites like KILLING JOKE, ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN or THE CURE. My dearest friend Paz had recently left for the lights of Middlesbrough, but if he’d have been there, he would have been up for JOY DIVISION, SPEAR OF DESTINY or a multitude of other post punk shenanigans (I missed you mate). My friends weren’t punks, more indie/alternative types but we’d been close since school and got all tribal about non-mainstream music together. I remember getting punched on the way home from a night at The Sherpa by one of the locals because, he said, ‘you think you’re so fucking it dressed like that!’ Okay, I may have given him one of my hard stares – I honestly don’t know why because I’m a lover, not a fighter – maybe I thought it was a punk thing. I remember the night we saw ranting poet Seething Wells (RIP) there, local band PRODUCT OF REASON in support, a brilliant night. I remember buying a RAMONES bootleg cassette from a guy selling them out of a case, eyes darting around like some dodgy dealer selling drugs from his coat lining. Most of all though, I remember accidentally stubbing my cigarette out on my clothes while dancing to Too Drunk To Fuck by DEAD KENNEDYS and somehow managing to make it look like it was all part of my frustrated/angry dance shtick . I blush at that but it also makes me smile. Because when you and your friends are in the eye of that particular teenage storm, it’s your whole world. It is forever, yet all too soon, it’s over. Everything and nothing and you are never more alive.
While this record wouldn’t appear on any top ten of mine or accompany me to a desert island, I chose to write about it here because it does have the peculiar ability to transport me back to the eye of that storm. For the record, I also bought the Reptile House 12”, Anaconda 7” and Temple of Love 12”.By the time they released an album I had lost interest. Easy come, easy go.
Two anecdotes: At the time of liking SOM and having their logo on my leather jacket, our local haunt was The Priory pub, home to drug dealers, bikers and punks. It was run by a landlord and landlady who were pretty easy on letting us in at 15/16. A group of older, cynical alternative types spotted the logo on my jacket and engaged me in conversation about the band. So if I liked SISTERS OF MERCY, how many times had I seen them live? (sniggers). Oh, you’ve never seen them? (more sniggers). They had seen them and they were shit (all fell about guffawing). Hilarious, I know.
2nd anecdote: my partner Lyn went to a fancy dress party with her mates about 10 years ago. She went as a punk. She wore that old leather jacket with band names and studs still intact, SISTERS OF MERCY logo pride of place on the back. She looked great. After the party, she went to a local alternative disco at The Hangar, the place that used to be the King Henry pub – one of my first real gigs was THEATRE OF HATE there. On bumping into someone she knew, who was all punk rock back in the day, he eyed up her jacket and said two things: “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” followed by “SISTERS OF MERCY aren’t punk!” True story.
PERSONAL PUNK 