The Stranglers - Cambridge Corn Exchange - 22nd March 2013

After my interview with Baz Warne I got a couple of free tickets to The Stranglers' Cambridge date, so myself went along 'guest-list style' to see them. Here's the review I sent to Grapevine Live...

Friday night in Cambridge was shaken by those veterans of the punk scene, The Stranglers. With a fantastic following there was no reason this was going to be anything other than enjoyable and after my interview with front man Baz Warne a few weeks back I was really looking forward to this.

The support was The Godfathers. Not a band I’m familiar with but a quick history lesson from a flyer lead me to believe they have a lot going on. They were once ‘Sid Presley Experience’ but some-time in the mid-eighties they broke up and The Godfathers were formed. So they’ve been in the business a long time and are one of the few survivors of the punk era, but ‘punk’ is a very broad term so rather than the obvious Sex Pistols and Stiff Little Fingers punk style, Godfathers almost felt a bit rockabilly at times.

Their biggest hit, the cheerily titled ‘Birth School Work Death’ is a real punk classic, plenty of fists raised in the crowd and the angst and frustration that goes along with it. Of course no live punk set would be complete without shooting down a heckler or two, and Godfathers did so in graceful style with the line ‘nobody is here to see you... twaaat’, which got a good cheer and we were all ready, to grab another beer, then see The Stranglers.

Blimey, where to start? The Stranglers have been around a while, a couple of line up changes here and there but still fundamentally the same, no nonsense, just good songs and a few laughs along the way. 

The set-list as a whole was flawless with the obligatory classics like ‘Golden Brown’ and ‘Peaches’, some great crowd participation for ‘Always the sun’. Newer ones like ‘Time was once on my side’ and even lesser heard tracks like ‘Toiler on the Sea’ and the properly punk ‘Something Better Change’ were just as well received as The Stranglers superb following were well up for it.

I was surprised by the amazingly bright back drop, I was expecting an ordinary band logo banner but the array of patterns and colours illuminating the stage was a clear indication that the band are going all out on this tour.

Plenty of jumping and cheers throughout but having not seen them live before I did wonder where drummer Jet Black was, but worries were quashed when he stepped up to rapturous applause to replace the brilliant first half drummer, Jim McCauley (who would later come back to play at the same time as Black for the finale).

There was a bit of an odd moment when Baz pointed out that there were youngsters (presumably with their parents) in the crowd and the lucky little blighters ended up in front of the barrier to prevent what would have been an inevitable injuries. Later on though, Baz almost looked a little embarrassed when he said the kids should cover their ears before playing the straight to the point love song of sorts, ‘Bring on the Nubiles’. But it’s always good to see such a broad range of ages enjoying properly good music.

The biggest response from the crowd came after a cheeky bass moment from JJ in which we were asked ‘can you feel it..?’ The answer was a resounding yes before ‘No more heroes’ got the room collectively bouncing with all manner of loutishness focused on the centre of the floor. Plenty of knocking about and the high spirits seemed to hang around afterwards with everybody grinning as they left the Corn Exchange.

Baz Warne Interview, Saturday 23rd February 2013

This little of hobby of mine seems to be developing into something very rewarding as on Saturday the 23rd February I had the chance to phone up Baz Warne of The Stranglers and talk about their upcoming national tour. This was my first ever phone interview and of course, as this was for Grapevine, so it was posted on their site (click here to see it GrapevineLive.co.uk/ )

And for the sake of my blog, here's the interview in full. 

Obligatory Stranglers Photo

RW: Good afternoon, Baz, how are you doing?

BW: Yeah I'm fine thanks, just drove from Bath to the North East and didn't get home 'til about 6, so I'm just sitting around in my skivvies.

RW: Well it is a Saturday after all

BW: Yeah, I'm gonna talk to you and then I think I'm gonna sit down and watch the rugby.

RW: Sounds like a good idea, I'll probably be doing the same. So my first question is about the new tour, Feel it Live, what can fans expect that will be different from last year's tour?

BW: Well, Obviously the most cliché and hackneyed answer is 'expect the unexpected', but we have 17 albums to choose from and while there are certain songs that have to be played we are going to make it as different from last year tour as we can make it. You know, last year we were touring behind the release of an album, we're not doing that this year, so we've taken a few more liberties with what we can play. I suppose in a lot of ways we want to keep ourselves happy as much as anything else, your main aim is to satisfy the audience and let everybody go home with a big smile on their face, we really don't want to, and have taken pains in the past to avoid getting too heavy into nostalgia and become a heritage act, which we could qualify for after 40 years. Maybe a couple of months before the tour approaches emails start flying around about what we're gonna play and this week we've been rehearsing, the final rehearsal was on Thursday and I came home yesterday and it was all sounding tight and punchy and rocky and ready to go. Generally we try to make it harsh, we like to call it the 'black blitzkrieg' so that's what it's gonna be.

RW: Sounds good, last year was a big year for the band with a European tour and the album ‘Giants’ getting a lot of praise from fans and critics, are there any plans to carry on working on new stuff this year?

BW: Well we're always cataloguing stuff, even if it's just an idea that you get in the bath and you sing into your mobile phone so you don't forget it. JJ and I are the principle song writers, that's what we do and then, if there's a designated time to get together to properly deconstruct these things then that's what we do and that's where the real ideas start to creep in. There are tentative plans to do another album next year, other than that I can't say, they are tentative. The original long-term plan was to take 2014 off and just do the festivals in the middle of the year, but as you pointed out, previous tours and last year’s tour were very successful. I mean we ended last year with a tour of Australia and New Zealand, I'd never been to New Zealand so that was good. When you go to places like that and the people are extremely enthusiastic and interested and it's all still an on going concern to them you have to wonder, we can keep this going for as long as people's brains don't explode! You know we still have a lot of ideas and we still have a lot of things to say, it seems to me while we're still compos mentis and we still have ideas we'll always try and do something.

Sorry, I am a bit long winded, so the short answer is hopefully we'll be doing something next year for a 2015 release, anymore than that I can't really say.

RW: Well obviously, popularity is still pretty strong but I did notice Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland aren't getting any gigs on this tour, are there plans to visit them sometime this year?

BW: That's a good question, in recent years we tend to start tours off in Ireland, but that would probably reflect in trends across there. Basically if somebody wants us to play there they'll get in touch, we don't ring around clubs and say 'please can we come and play', once the word gets out that the Stranglers are touring, then it's really up to the places to get in touch. We have had many successful nights in Ireland, but we haven't played there for a couple of years. Wales is a tricky one. It's probably down to venues, we've played Aberystwyth, Swansea, Cardiff all those places in the past but there's a lack of medium sized venues in cities like that, you can go to St David's hall in Cardiff, which is huge, and the arena, Swansea has very little, and it's just the feasibility of setting these things up. The last gig we did in Wales was in Aberystwyth about 3 years ago. I have to say though, when the dates do come out I like to see if we are playing those places, but there's a lot of Welsh fans that just travel over the Severn into Bristol, so that kind of caters for the south west and as far as Ireland is concerned most Irish fans see us in Manchester or Liverpool. But I completely agree with what you're saying to be honest, I would love to do these places again but it's kind of dictated by where people want us rather than where we want to go.

RW: So you're looking forward to getting back on the road, are you all ready to go?

BW: Oh yeah, the first gig's in Edinburgh and my girlfriend's from Edinburgh so I spend a lot of time up there, I love the city and yeah, we're all raring to go now. When we first start the early rehearsals and we pluck them songs out the air and nobody seems to really know how it's going to go or what to play and then as the weeks progress and the set starts to come together,  that's when everybody starts to get excited because it starts to become more of a show, we start having a production team come in to  get some ideas for the visuals and then the crew and busses the trucks and you know, it starts to form a real sense of occasion. The only thing that pisses me off about a British tour is when it's finished. It gets to when you look at the dates and we say 'oh man, we're nearly done' and for us, even at our age and for as long as we've been doing this, for us, playing live is really all it's been about, you know, making that connection with the crowd and it’s a true joy to see the cross sections that come out. A lot of the original Stranglers fans from the seventies are older than us and fans bring their teenage kids along. The advent of the internet and Youtube and stuff you just think about something, hear about something and nine times out of ten it's all there and you can find out where the band started, what it was all about back in the day and it's a real sort of passion people have when they add to that. It's like a family. A lot of people will base their entire lives around that month that we're touring. We're doing 23 shows and I know for a fact there are fans that will do them all, and of course on top of that you've got travelling, accommodation and it becomes expensive so we look forward to going out and giving them what they deserve. The excitement, it’s all multi-layered. I love to play, to see me friends, I love travelling and the hotels and the room service, all that shit, it's great fun.

RW: So did you enjoy playing at Cambridge last year?

BW: At the Corn Exchange? Always one of my favourite places to play, I remember many occasions there. And it's just close enough to London that a lot of the London squad come up and walking around Cambridge, as we do when we try and find somewhere to eat, there's gangs of black clad people standing outside pubs drinking, then they spot you and there’s a real camaraderie and it's fab, yeah. Cambridge is great and Norwich as well, it happens to be my birthday when we play at the UEA so that should be interesting. The UEA is always good as well, it's a smaller room, but we still manage to shoehorn Christ knows how many people in there, so there's always a good vibe definitely.

RW: It's all sounding pretty good, hopefully I'll be down Cambridge to see you guys, but just one more question, what song is your absolute favourite to play live?

BW: Normally we do a version of the old Bacharach track, Walk on by, and that over the years has stretched out into a seven or eight minute jam, so me and Dave Greenfield, the keyboard player, get to do a bit of wanky with the guitar which we don't often get to do, so that would be one of my favourites because I can step back from the mic stand for a few minutes and just play guitar. There’s a lot of interplay between Dave and myself, there's harmony lines so it's never less than interesting.

I have a real passion for Golden Brown too, I know it's the band's biggest hit and often gets the groans, sometimes a die hard fan will ask if you're going to do Golden Brown, we say ‘yes’ and they go 'aaaw no', but you have to realise that if there's 2,500 people there's probably 2000 that want to hear that song and maybe 1000 that come only to hear that song, so it kind of takes a life of its own. I just seem to remember hearing that song growing up when it first came out, when I was about 16 and I remember I was working in a shop when it first came out and I've always thought it was a fantastic. There are many others, Goodbye Toulouse, which we're playing on this tour, Toiler on the Sea, the list's endless Ryan to be honest.

After I said thanks for the interview and mentioned I should be getting my tickets the next week (pay day is always a week too late), Baz suggested I ask the promoter for a couple of free tickets, which I asked Grapevine to do (I hadn't spoken to the promoter before and thought it would be a bit cheeky to introduce myself by asking for free tickets). Grapevine sorted it so on March 22nd I'll be seeing The Stranglers at The Cambridge Corn Exchange (sweet).