2013 - A brief reflection on some of my live highlights

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the previous 12 months and what fun we had. 

In no particular order here are some of my gig highlights from 2013. 

The Stranglers / The Godfathers – Birmingham Academy – March. 
Proving the old guard still have it this was an amazing double header.  The Godfathers still got the passion for it and some great new tunes.  The Stranglers were spectacular, a career spanning set, an eager crowd, still one of the best bands around. 

Stiff Little Fingers / The Men They Couldn’t Hang / Eddie Tenpole – Bilston Robin – April. 
The queue to get in shows the demand that Stiff still have.  Crowd pleasing set from Eddie, TMTCH were great and Stiff blew the roof off with a mix of hits and classics from their back catalogue, even throwing in a cover of Staring At Rudeboys as a encore. 

Ruts DC – Rebellion Festival – August. 
By the end of 2013 I’d seen the Ruts DC four times in 16 months but this was probably my pick of the bunch.  Playing at the end of a brilliant Saturday at Rebellion in the slightly more intimate Bizarre Bazaar stage they delivered a great set of new and older Ruts DC material but it’s hearing those old Ruts songs once again that gets the hairs on the back of the neck standing on end.  Truly Brilliant!. 

Pete Bentham & The Dinner Ladies / Angry Itch – Adam & Eve – June. 
Well this turned out to be a stormer of a night.  I’ve seen Pete & The Dinner Ladies quite a few times in recent years, usually at the Rebellion Festival but I always seem to enjoy them more in smaller more intimate venues (like most bands I guess) and this was a storming performance.  Making the night even more special was the discovery of one of the support bands, Angry Itch.  They just blew me away.  The Birmingham punks are only recently formed  so the fact they deliver their catchy fast tunes so tightly only adds to the summation that these guys are something special and worth watching in 2014! 

Beans on Toast – The Rainbow Pub – October.   
I love the intimacy of this venue so when Beans on Toast joins the crowd to perform half his set you know it’s going to be something special.  Brilliant, funny, though provoking and some great in-between song banter made this one of the best gigs of the year.  And support Gorgeous George weren’t bad either. 

Shellac – The Rainbow – November. 
Playing in one of the larger Rainbow venues round the back this gig was nothing less than superb.  One of the tightest bands you will ever see, all members are just so tuned in with each other the impact of each song is magnified.  The attention to detail in the songs is outstanding and the in-between song Q  & A sessions add another dimension to the night and show the band in a totally different light. 

The Damned / Ruts DC – Wulfrun Hall – December. 
The Ruts DC were on form again but the night belonged to the Damned.  Atmospheric stage props and a more varied set taking in most periods of the band added with some great playing and a great sound meant this tuned out to be a bit of a corker. 

Toy Dolls / TV Smith – Birmingham Academy – November. 
It’s easy to gloss over TV Smith and assume he’s just another ageing punk rockers treading water but there is much more than just those old Adverts classics.  A quite brilliant acoustic set showcasing the best of his solo material too, possibly the best performance of his that I have ever seen, not bad for the support.  The Toys Dolls are often passed off as a one hit wonder novelty band.  Sure there is a lot of humour in their songs but that belies their musicianship and the songs are catchy as hell.   

Birmingham Punx Picnic – Wagon & Horses – September. 
I only managed the Sunday but this was a great day out.  Ten band for a fiver.  With Eastfield kicking off proceedings and Hardskin finishing off, it was a great atmosphere and will be well worth visiting the Punx Picnic 2014. 

Punk Rock Chaos 2 - Wagon & Horses – September.  Hosted by Angry Itch another great night of Punk rock all for a fiver.  Angry Itch were brilliant again (and I got a song dedication!) and local heroes Rotunda rounded off proceedings – as the night ran behind a little things ended in a bit of a blurrr but another great night of Birmingham Punk Rock

The Undertones / The Nightingales - Slade Rooms - May
Apprehensive about seeing the Undertones as Feargal has such a distinctive voice but any doubts were immediately cast away with a greatest hits and more set, such a great back catalogue of tunes.  And the Nightingales were brilliant!

Louise Distras - Rebellion - August
What a year it's been for Louise, globe trotting the world (well some of it) spreading her political and catchy acoustic punk rock message.  Great set at Rebellion playing the highlights of her then soon to be released debut, Dreams From The Factory Floor.  Cannot wait to catch her in 2014.

In fact cannot wait to catch a whole bunch of live music in 2014.

MY TOP TEN - PETE BENTHAM

Pete Bentham - Top Ten Albums

 

This isn’t necessarily my all-time top ten albums as that probably changes every week and would be impossible to do. So I’ve picked ten albums that I have loved or been influenced by at some stage of my life. Don’t expect anything obscure or clever. Bill Shankly said that “Football is a simple game made complicated by idiots”. I think the same about rock & roll.

 

The Rolling Stones – Out of our Heads (1965)

 

This is their third album and the one where they really started to write their own songs, although it is still mostly rhythm and blues covers. For me it’s just at the right point in their development after they were a gigging R&B band and before they became a big stadium band. They were a great rock and roll band that wrote brilliant pop singles like Satisfaction. Also, they looked great at this stage. I picked this record but I could have picked something by The Who, The Kinks or the Small Faces all of whom I was obsessed with when I was a kid and mostly because they looked like bands are supposed to look – like a gang. I hated the way bands looked later on with long hair and double denim, like binmen or something. Then when punk happened I thought ‘Great, bands look like bands again’.

 

Recommended songs:  The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man, The Last Time, Hitch Hike.

Motown Chartbusters Vol 3 (1969)

I grew up in Widnes near Liverpool. The north  west has a big tradition of soul music as you know from Northern Soul/ Wigan Casino etc. Everybody had Motown, Atlantic and Stax records in their houses and this one is the best of a series of twelve albums that were released between 1967 and 1982. It contains classics like This Old Heart of Mine, Heard It Through the Grapevine, Get Ready and Roadrunner by my favourite Motown artist  Junior Walker & the All Stars. I always think that a great song is a great song whatever type of music or band it is and I think I got that from growing up listening to Motown. This is real pop music and I’ve always tried to make the Dinner Ladies a pop band in the best sense. Plus Motown production is so simple and raw. It’s nearly all just bass and tambourine.

Recommended songs: Roadrunner – Junior Walker, For Once In My Life - Stevie Wonder, You're All I Need To Get By - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars (1972)

This is probably in most people of a certain age’s list. In the early Seventies at the time of the prog rock nonsense, there was really only Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy and Roxy Music with any of the style and flash that you want from a band. I think a lot of great rock & roll song writing is about feeling like an outsider. I think it’s why most of the great rock & roll music has been made by young people because you have that feeling of alienation and not fitting in. I reckon that’s why Bowie’s Ziggy alien character appealed to a lot of kids like myself.  But some of us still have that feeling in middle age!

 

Recommended songs: Five Years, Soul Love, Suffragette City.

 

Dr Feelgood – Stupidity (1976)

The godfathers of UK punk. It’s hard to describe how fucking unspeakable awful music was for a few years before punk and how big an impact punk made on young music fans. Some people who weren’t there make ridiculous statements like the Sex Pistols were fake or were a boy band. The cultural impact of the Pistols was like a bomb going off. But the bomb had been planted a few years before by the Feelgoods. They had got onto the fact that rock & roll had lost its way and needed to get back to basics about three years before anyone else. Their influence was early raw rhythm and blues records and they had the short hair, suits, skinny ties and played fast short songs. They influenced loads of the early punk bands on both sides of the Atlantic. They also had Wilko Johnson, the world’s only rhythm guitar hero and the reason I’m in a band and play a black Telecaster.

 

Recommended songs: Roxette, Going Back Home, She Does It Right.

 

Modern Lovers – Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers (1976)



This was recorded in 1971/72 but wasn’t released until 1976 because it wasn’t considered fit for human consumption in the era of stadium rock and concept albums, when in fact it was just way ahead of its time. Jonathan Richman is probably the single biggest influence on my song writing because he fearlessly writes about anything he wants, even songs about shopping centres and government offices. He gives you a feeling of freedom to write about what you want and made me realise its ok to write about lorry drivers, cats and dogs, astronauts and stuff.  This line up also featured Jerry Harrison who later joined Talking Heads and David Robinson who co-founded the Cars Possibly my favourite album of all time.

 

Recommended songs: Roadrunner, Pablo Picasso, She Cracked.

 

My Aim Is True – Elvis Costello (1977)

 

There are hundreds of records that I could have picked from this era but I have to pick something from my favourite label Stiff Records, who also had Ian Dury & the Blockheads, The Damned, Lena Lovich, Madness and loads of other great mavericks. What I love about Stiff was that it wasn’t trying to be supercool, it was trying to be an out and out pop label like Motown and it succeeded. They got Ian Dury, a thirty year old disabled bloke to number one.  That could never happen now. They took on freaks like Elvis and made them stars. And isn’t that an important part of what punk is about -making ugly beautiful? That personal empowerment thing that people get from being a punk. Elvis is the master songwriter and this is one of the few albums you can leave on and every song is brilliant.

 

Recommended songs:  All of them.

 

The Undertones – The Undertones (1979)

There were two camps at this time; the political….Clash, Pistols etc and the pop…Buzzcocks, Undertones etc. I had a foot in both camps but I don’t know if it was the Motown thing again but I think I was more into the pop side. The Undertones were the band I most identified with as they came from a backwater like I did and so had none of the fashion and flash of a lot of the cool bands of the time. Songwriter John O’Neill seemed to have absorbed a lot of the same Sixties influences as myself and you can tell by his songs that he’d really learnt how to be a classic songwriter. I don’t think anybody has ever surpassed the first two Undertones albums in terms of pop punk. They are like the Beatles of the punk generation for me.

 

Recommended songs: Get Over You, Male Model, Billy’s Third

 

The Specials – The Specials (1979)

 

I love Two Tone as much as love punk. The Specials are the perfect band in every way. They manage to combine being one of the best political bands ever with being one of the best dance bands ever. Plus they have a great image and practise what they preach in terms of the DIY ethic, running their own label and supporting the anti-fascist movement.  With white and black kids joining forces and influences to create a new kind of ska, they have to be one of the most important bands of all time. They are my blueprint for the Dinner Ladies...sing about things you believe in but make it entertaining. It’s a much better way of getting your message across.

 

Recommended songs: Do The Dog, It Doesn’t Make It Alright, Too Much Too Young

Moldy Peaches – Moldy Peaches (2001)

I was knocked out when I first heard this. I remember seeing an interview with someone from 1976 about the first time they heard the first Ramones album. He said he laughed the first few times he heard it but then couldn’t stop playing it, making the rest of his record collection redundant. That’s how I was when I first heard this. Sometimes it takes someone to strip away all the bullshit and production and to just say something so simple and honest. It gives you that feeling of total freedom just like Jonathan Richman. I’m glad they didn’t carry on as a band, I would hate to have seen them get professional!

Recommended songs: Nothing Came Out, Who’s Got The Crack, Steak For Chicken

The Streets – Original Pirate Material (2002)

This was from a time in my life when I went from being married to living with a bunch of mates in a shared house and generally partying and clubbing a lot. It brings back great memories of that time. What I liked about hip hop and rap when it came out was it brought lyrics to the forefront again. Of course it’s gone shite now with the guns, bitches and bling thing. Mike Skinner’s mixture of  the everyday and the poetic reminded me a lot of Ian Dury and John Cooper Clarke, both of whom I love. That’s the nearest to a modern album you’ll get from me!

 

Recommended songs: Has It Come To This, It’s Too Late, Weak Become Heroes

On any other week this list could also have included:

Velvet Underground, Television, The Clash, Syd Barret, Bob Marley, X Ray Spex, The Slits, This Is Soul (1968) Compilation, Simon & Garfunkel, Kirsty McColl and loads of others.