Fifty years of punk, back to the basement where it all began!
Half a century after Punk properly announced itself at the 100 Club, we’re back in the same basement with three men who didn’t just buy the T-shirt; they helped print the thing – Marco Pirroni. TV Smith. John McKay. Same address, same low ceiling, same red walls and judging by the temperature, quite possibly the same ventilation system.
This could easily have become an evening of misty-eyed punk nostalgia. But thankfully, nobody seems particularly interested in that!
Marco Was There
First up, Marco Pirroni, taking questions about his new autobiography ‘Your Money Or Your Life‘ and, inevitably, also about that night September 1976. Pirroni was of course the guitarist in that first, hastily assembled version of Siouxsie and the Banshees that played the 100 Club Punk Special, with Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, and Sid Vicious on drums, but tonight he’s carrying anecdotes rather than a Gibson.
In conversation with the unflappable Paul Raggity, he provides his own insider take on Punk’s creation myth, and despite the occasion, brings a degree of realism, that sense-checks the reverence subsequently bestowed upon one of Punk Rock’s most iconic founding moments. It was his first gig after all, he tells us, and he didn’t really know what was happening. It just sort of happened!
The whole Q&A provides a fascinating glimpse of a journey from punk pioneer, playing with Sid and Siouxsie, to a dandy highwayman, outselling ABBA on his way to global rock stardom with his partner in pop Adam Ant. It’s a hell of a story and I’m sure it’s a book well worth reading. But if what he and the others had started here, on that September night in 1976, has made him happy, well he certainly wasn’t admitting to it tonight!
No Time To Be 70
Contrast that to our next act of the night, Tim ‘TV‘ Smith, the ever-young ex frontman of first wavers The Adverts and now leader of The Bored Teenagers. TV has continuously written, toured and performed since the 70’s, and tonight exploded on stage with his bandmates; BB Quattro on bass, Marc Carey on guitar and current UK Sub Stefan Häublein on drums to deliver a blistering set of Adverts songs, mostly taken from that seminal album ‘Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts’.
TV tells us he’s now 70, but from where I’m standing, he appears to have considerably more energy than most 40-year-olds, and with his former bandmate and partner in Punk Gaye Black in the audience too, he showed us all that 50 years have not diminished his enthusiasm for preforming in any way. “I was 20 when I wrote these songs… and I still stand by every word!” TV informs us, as he launches into set opener ‘No Time to Be 21’.
Tonight’s special Adverts set is a reminder of just how bloody good those songs are. ‘Safety in Numbers’, ‘We Who Wait’, ‘New Boys’, ‘Drowning Men’, ‘On the Roof’ and ‘On Wheels‘ follow without any need for introduction, before TV is joined on stage by a special guest –Richard Strange from 70’s proto-punk rockers Doctors of Madness – to belt out ‘Back from Ther Dead’.
The Bored Teenagers get it exactly right. No unnecessary embellishment. No attempt to make the songs sound contemporary. They simply play them hard, fast and with enough dirt under their fingernails to stop this becoming punk rock heritage night.
A rare outing of ‘B’ side to ‘One Chord Wonders‘ – ‘Quick Step’ – precedes the business end of the set, with TV inviting us to join the ‘New Church’ and delivering ‘Bombsite Boy’ then ‘The Great British Mistake’, before inviting another special guest to the stage. This time it’s his old bandmate from The Valentines, Mars, who’s come all the way from Bologna in Italy for the party! He joins the band on guitar for the crowd pleasers ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’, ‘Bored Teenagers’ and the set closer ‘One Chord Wonders’.
Bang. Bang. Bang. By now the 100 Club crowd are singing back every word. And it occurred to me (as the band left the stage to struggle back through the crowd to the 100 Club’s famously remote dressing room) that a better 45-minute Punk rock set you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere!
McKay Makes A Wonderful Racket
Then it’s time for John McKay’s Reactor. And this is where things get properly interesting. McKay has always been one of Punk’s great guitar oddities. While everybody else was learning three chords, he appeared to be working out how to make six strings sound like a sheet-metal factory collapsing down a staircase. With Siouxsie and the Banshees, he helped turn Punk into something darker, stranger and considerably less predictable.
Tonight, alongside Jen Brown from The Priscillas on vocals, Billy King on bass, Spike T Smith on drums, and Boz Boorer making a special appearance on sax, his latest band John McKay’s Reactor revisit material from McKay‘s 1977–79 Banshees period, taking most of the setlist from the debut Banshees’ album ‘The Scream’, along with a smattering of tracks from their second album ‘Join Hands’. From the first chord, McKay’s guitar still sounds enormous. Not enormous in the tedious rock god sense. There’s precious little widdling here. McKay leaves holes, then attacks them. Chords clang, notes scrape. Sounds hang in the air before another great metallic slash comes crashing through. You suddenly remember just how fabulously peculiar those early Banshees records sounded. They still do!
But, the potential problem, of course, is how to fill the Siouxsie-shaped hole up front. There’s no need to worry on that score, as Jen does this superbly! No impersonation, no fancy dress, no tribute-band theatrics. She tackles the material on her own terms while leaving McKay‘s guitar plenty of room to do the damage. And damage it does. At times Reactor are awkward, abrasive and almost wilfully uncomfortable. But these songs were never supposed to make you feel cosy. Listening now in retrospect, you can almost hear half the next decade being invented right there on stage. Post-punk, Goth, Noise, Alternative rock — call it whatever you like, it was all there.
Tonight’s set started with ‘Mirage’, ‘Carcass’ and ‘Nicotine Stain’, before Reactor treated the audience to accomplished versions of ‘Metal Postcard‘, ’Overground’ and ‘The Staircase (Mystery)’ before a stunning version of ‘Suburban Relapse’. It was great to hear those time signatures and rhythmic flourishes, created back in the day by the late great Kenny Morris, who along with McKay had already started ripping holes in Punk’s rulebook, But, although undoubtably nostalgic, they still sounded fresh.
“Who was here 50 years ago” asks Jen. A good smattering of Punk rock survivors raise their hands. “Well, Happy Punkaversary!” she shouts, as the band launch into ‘Switch‘, ‘Jigsaw Feeling‘ and the hauntingly brilliant ‘Playground Twist’.
As the familiar riff of ‘Hong Kong Garden’ rings out from McKay’s guitar, we all know we’ve witnessed something a bit special here tonight. This note-perfect rendition of probably The Banshees most well-known song seems a fitting way to end.
But there’s more. After initially some confusion about exactly how much more… we get a double encore of ‘Love in a Void’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ to bring proceedings to a wonderful climax.
A splendid night and a celebration on punk rock and the different things that grew out of it; Marco Pirroni took the attitude, added glamour and helped turn it into pop spectacle. TV Smith kept the words, the songs and the bloody-minded DIY independence. John McKay took the guitar apart without fear and rebuilt it into something altogether more unsettling.
Main Photo Credit / All Photos (except Marco Pirroni): PETER MCDONNELL
Live Videos: AUTOMORPH
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Writer, lyricist, and guitarist with The Viral Breakdowns, radio presenter and passionate protagonist of Punk! From teenage rocker in the seventies, to playing my own original music in far flung parts of the world, I have a love for fast, loud, short sharp tunes with attitude and edge. Based in Chelmsford, you can find me out and about on the Essex and London music scene or rooting through the racks of record fairs, markets and car boot sales, looking for hidden punk rock treasures.
Did you know that we are 100% DIY? We run our own game. No one dictates to us, and no one drives what we can or cannot put on our pages – and this is how we plan to continue!
