The Burning Up Times - Strangled.co.uk

Burning Up Times Issue 3
Heroes turned out to be possibly the
most important, most played, maybe best
song ever as far as I’m concerned. Still
not bored with it 30 years later. Despite
not being a particularly passionate music
fan in my early teens it was hard for
me to ignore the new music that was
coming through. I actually began to like
some of this Punk rock . Particularly
The Stranglers. After all, they were the
biggest of the Punk bands weren’t they? I
thought Straighten Out and Pretty Vacant
(eh? Ed :-/) were very good! Funny how
I could never fi nd the latter record in
the shops though. Obviously not paying
enough attention, the story of my life
(true! Ed.) The record that impressed me
most though was Down In The Sewer. My
best mate’s older brother had a copy of
Rattus and we used to play it full bore on
his radiogram, remember them? Part of
the furniture! Sewer’s brilliance combined
with the power of the radiogram, what
can I say? Things were never the same
again. Since I’ve been a Stranglers fan I’ve
always had the feeling that I was born two
years too late. I really wish I could claim
to have been there from the beginning and
witnessed some of those early Stranglers
gigs and the bad behaviour that was constantly
making the news. But I can’t. Bugger!
Barry Spooner, Nottingham.
Big brother says it’s
the band to hear!
1977 proved to be a watershed. I was
born in 1963, and in my teens. I had fairly
conventional musical tastes: Abba, ELO
and Sparks: This Town Ain’t Big Enough…
was amazing on TOTP when it came out.
They looked strange, very different, and
maybe the keyboards triggered something?
Too young to appreciate cutting edge
music, my musical tastes got a seismic jolt
in ‘77 thanks to my older brother. Punk
reared it’s head and he knew all about the
NME, Sounds, Record Mirror and I think,
if my memory serves me correctly, Melody
Maker was still living in the musical dark
ages back then. His school friends were at
that ripe record buying, gig-going age and
brought records home.
Two struck a chord with me: Rattus
and The Clash LP. I have never heard
anything since that stopped me in my
tracks and nagged the question: “what IS
this?” The Clash album was raw, energetic
and melodic. The Stranglers album was
melodic in a different way – there was that
keyboard sound for starters. Although
having quite a varied tempo (London
Lady versus Princess of the Streets) it
maintained an aggression throughout. I
was never struck that much with Ugly
but Toulouse, Grip, Hanging Around,
Sometimes and the grand fi nale of Sewer
just hooked me. The album cover too
was striking. The outer and inner sleeves
had a resonance, a difference, a certain
darkness – the visual image together with
the sound of the band just made sense
to me. I had not read any of the trendy
music press that picks and chooses their
fl avour of the month, it was a personal and
instinctive choice of my own. Following
my initial vinyl discovery, the momentum
was maintained through 1977 as The
Stranglers frequently visited the upper
regions of the musical charts, which I used
to avidly listen to on Radio 1 on Sunday
evenings. Although being a massive hit,
Peaches was never one of my favourites
– perhaps because everybody else liked
it? But I preferred some of the other
singles and those early TOTP appearances
such as Go Buddy Go, No More Heroes
and Something Better Change were
captivating to this adolescent. And what
a B-side Straighten Out was! 1977 was
it for me – when I really got into music,
when The Stranglers, The Clash and later
the Jam were my big heroes. I collected
press cuttings and started going to gigs
– JJ’s solo show at Digbeth Civic Hall in
1978 was my fi rst. I didn’t know how The
Stranglers were perceived until I read
NME but in some perverse way it made me
like the band even more. It’s fascinating
30 years on how history can apparently be
re-written and re-evaluated. With recent
Punk-style celebrations, The Stranglers
have seemingly been air-brushed out from
history. This may just be careless editing
or possibly journalistic bias from those
who may still bear a grudge. Maybe a
combination of both?
Too young to fully appreciate 1977,
I can only testify to what a pivotal year
this was in terms of the person I was
developing into and how profoundly
it affected my musical taste from then
onwards. Whilst some may care to argue
that the Stranglers were too old, were too
musical etc to be classed as truly Punk,
we should not forget The Stranglers and
‘77’s impact and cultural signifi cance
(pretentious, moi?) as it was at THAT
time, and not just try to look back with
revisionist glasses some 30 years later. Yes,
hats off to The Ramones, Clash, Pistols
and Damned, but it was equally The
Stranglers’ year: two hit albums, four Top
20 singles and TOTP too. More successful
than most of their contemporaries in
terms of record sales, if not in terms of
credibility. And who says having a big
brother has no benefi ts?
Paul Gunter, Hampshire
Shiny boots
My recollection of 1977 doesn’t really
count as my baptism of fi re as far as The
Stranglers are concerned, happened at
50