Battle of the Not Punks

[Neige]

Easy:

Costello - Top

Squeeze - Top 5

Stranglers - Top 10

Boomtown Rats - NOT in the Top 50

[NMB]

Easy:

Costello - Top

Squeeze - Top 5

Stranglers - Top 10

Boomtown Rats - NOT in the Top 50

How can you get something so easy so wrong?

[Hugh]

But they were kind of a strange duck among punk bands. Guitar, good; keyboards, bad.

Very much so. Nothing about them really fitted, they were from Guildford for a start! They were genuine outsiders, which, in many ways, makes them the most punk band of them all.

The Boomtown Rats were from Ireland. Does that make them even more punk?

Hugh Cornwell was in a school band with Richard Thompson. I'd have liked to have seen what would have happened if Cornwell had joined Fairport and Thompson had joined The Stranglers.

[Rayge]

Nothing about them really fitted, they were from Guildford for a start! They were genuine outsiders, which, in many ways, makes them the most punk band of them all.

The geographical thing verges on sophistry. I mean, the Banshees from Bromley, the Damned from Croydon, Hemel Hempstead and Kingston-on-Thames, the Jam from Woking...

What made the Stranglers not punk (a judgment I was OK with at the time) was being old, I mean, really old (Jet Black was - and of course still is – a decade older than me!), being hippies (look at Greenfield's hair), starting out before punk (I saw them at the Roundhouse in May 1976, and hated them, although I've mellowed since) as a rock band - admittedly one with an unpleasant, confrontationist attitude from the two goons out front – that looked more to the Doors than the Dolls or Stooges or Ramones, and the aforementioned attitudes. Coming from older guys, the usual snotty teen punk rubbish took on a harder edge, and these guys clearly weren't art school cissies out on a tear. Of course, my encounter with Cornwell on a train journey, many times told here, may have coloured my opinion.
What was punky about them was the way that Burnel's bass often carried the melody line, which was true of many bands in the late 1970s.

What they were, in retrospect, were the very first UK post-punk band (just ahead of the Shelley Buzzcocks and Subway Sect), if you think, as I do, that post-punk was about taking punk attitudes and business practices (independent labels), and exploring other forms of music (often such 60s American bands as the Byrds, VU, Doors and Love) and using different instruments (synths!) and song structures in a very post-modernist way.

[The Modernist]

I think UK punk initially was an aggressive variant of pub rock, inspired by The Feelgoods as much as the Stooges. It quickly got packaged and given a manifesto by McClaren which was disseminated by 3 or 4 influential writers on the music press. It was during this process that The Stranglers got ex-communicated as not ticking some of the boxes, but, for me, they were part of it.

[naughty boy]

You two boys are very good sometimes!

[Rayge]

I think UK punk initially was an aggressive variant of pub rock, inspired by The Feelgoods as much as the Stooges. It quickly got packaged and given a manifesto by McClaren which was disseminated by 3 or 4 influential writers on the music press. It was during this process that The Stranglers got ex-communicated as not ticking some of the boxes, but, for me, they were part of it.

That's one way of thinking about it, G, but there's a lot of hindsight involved. After all, it's more than 40 years ago: how old were you in 1976?
And while the Feelgoods were an influence, they weren't mainstream pub rock, and The Ramones were the main influence on the ramalama stuff, while both the Clash and the Pistols name-checked the Stooges and Dolls...

[Minnie the Minx]

I'm fond of Costello, Squeeze and the Rats but none of them ever made me want to run around the house screaming yeah yeah yeah YEAH!!!

Stranglers.

[Matt Wilson]

Costello seems to be undervalued here I'd say. From '77 - '82 he released an album a year of new material, not to mention tons of singles and EPs consisting of at least another LP's worth of stuff. And during those six years he was as good as anyone. I like songs (and even some entire albums) from all of the other bands in the poll, but Elvis was leagues ahead of them in terms of consistency and quality of output.

[The Modernist]

I think UK punk initially was an aggressive variant of pub rock, inspired by The Feelgoods as much as the Stooges. It quickly got packaged and given a manifesto by McClaren which was disseminated by 3 or 4 influential writers on the music press. It was during this process that The Stranglers got ex-communicated as not ticking some of the boxes, but, for me, they were part of it.

That's one way of thinking about it, G, but there's a lot of hindsight involved. After all, it's more than 40 years ago: how old were you in 1976?
And while the Feelgoods were an influence, they weren't mainstream pub rock, and The Ramones were the main influence on the ramalama stuff, while both the Clash and the Pistols name-checked the Stooges and Dolls...

It wasn't just The Stranglers. 999 had ex members of Kilburn & The High Roads, and most famously, of course, Strummer had come from the101ers.
So I think there was a continuum from pub rock into punk. The McClaren/Westwood/Rhodes vision of punk wanted a year zero approach that very much separated and created a them and us - this is what punk bands look like, this is what they should say. But it was a construct, though a highly influential one which forms our notion of punk from 77 onwards. It is much less useful as a historical explanation of why that generation of bands appeared when they did and sounded the way they did. It's why we can have the endless, and somewhat tedious, arguments over whether The Jam should be considered punk or not. For me they should all be considered part of the same scene, given they shared enough in terms of energy and attitude.

[Matt Wilson]

I agree with G.

[sloopjohnc]

But they were kind of a strange duck among punk bands. Guitar, good; keyboards, bad.

Very much so. Nothing about them really fitted, they were from Guildford for a start! They were genuine outsiders, which, in many ways, makes them the most punk band of them all.

As I know Guildford, that is funny. It would be like saying "Fremont" in the Bay Area. San Francisco and Berkeley were the homes of Bay Area punk and Fremont is a large suburb south of both places.

Wasn't that always a critique of Weller too - that he was a suburban punk?

[Nikki Gradual]

Didn't realize they were from Guildford! That makes me like them more! (Having spent more time in Guildford than in any other city outside the U.S.)

They weren’t “from” Guildford as much as that was where they were based when it all kicked off. Cornwell was from north London I think, Greenfield Brighton, Jet Black Essex and J-J France. They were no more suburban than Siouxsie or most of the others. The Jam certainly didn’t deserve the grief they got for being from Woking. Like all revolutions it was very unforgiving of those that did not precisely fit the identikit. The Jam wore suits and were ostracised, The Stranglers were older and educated and couldn’t fit in, Yomp was a massive bellend and they all ignored him.

[The Modernist]

JJ wasn't actually from France tho'. Agree with the gist of what you say however.

[clive gash]

The other thing that separated them from the hipper/more thought-out end of Punk was their threat of violence was real - JJ beat up Jon Savage, the Eiffel Tower incident - rather than being a bit of edgy performance from The Clash or Pistols.

They were throwbacks.

[Nikki Gradual]

JJ wasn't actually from France, tho

No, rather inconveniently for my argument, he spent his formative years in, er, Guildford. The bastard.

[bobzilla77]

The other thing that separated them from the hipper/more thought-out end of Punk was their threat of violence was real - JJ beat up Jon Savage, the Eiffel Tower incident - rather than being a bit of edgy performance from The Clash or Pistols.

They were throwbacks.

Yeah I got that vibe. Mike Watt told me he went to see them at the Whisky in the late 70s, and somebody jumped onstage as was becoming common at the time. He said Burnel calmly walked over, karate-kicked the guy in the head, and knocked him unconscious, without missing a note.

[sloopjohnc]

Yomp was a massive bellend and they all ignored him.

On some topics, we can all agree.

[The Modernist]

The other thing that separated them from the hipper/more thought-out end of Punk was their threat of violence was real - JJ beat up Jon Savage, the Eiffel Tower incident - rather than being a bit of edgy performance from The Clash or Pistols.

They were throwbacks.

There was plenty of violence attached to punk from the off. The difference was The Stranglers were better at it!

Again this seems to reflect the rather skewed, and hypocritical, values of the time as if the violence is somehow more forgiveable if Bob Harris, rather than Jon Savage, is the recipient.

[Snarfyguy]

The other thing that separated them from the hipper/more thought-out end of Punk was their threat of violence was real - JJ beat up Jon Savage, the Eiffel Tower incident - rather than being a bit of edgy performance from The Clash or Pistols.

They were throwbacks.

Yeah I got that vibe. Mike Watt told me he went to see them at the Whisky in the late 70s, and somebody jumped onstage as was becoming common at the time. He said Burnel calmly walked over, karate-kicked the guy in the head, and knocked him unconscious, without missing a note.

Now that's entertainment!