Sounds, August 20, 1977

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Not because they're malicious trouble-makers, but because there's something about their stance that authority can't tolerate. Latest event happened last Thursday, at the Bilzen Jazz Festival in Belgium. Normally a staid trad jazzers bop, this year Bilzen were presenting their first ever Punk Night featuring Elvis Costello, the Damned and the Clash. The audience were mostly hippies, with a sparse front line of punks who'd picked up on the fact that the iconography of today's teen rebels includes safety pins stuck through the ear, from the media. In front of the stage there was a wide press enclosure, with a few press rattling round inside. Then there was a big barricade, a fence of (barbed?) wire. Behind that fence, the kids were enclosed, scrabbling to get a decent view of the bands. Elvis Costello commented on the obvious stupidity of the arrangement, while backstage the Clash and the Damned were laying bets about who were going to get the fences down first. As to the kids — every time one of them whacked at the fence, one of the exceptionally heavy security thugs would literally slap them in the face... The Damned onstage commented bitterly — "This looks more like Belsen than Bilzen." They were right. The kids began throwing things, out of sheer frustration. As the guards' hostility grew more brutal, the missiles the kids hurled into the press pit grew more dangerous. From empty beer cans to full, from pebbles to rocks- to bricks. When the Clash started their set, the kids aimed at the stage, desperate to make their presence felt, desperate to get through, break down the barriers. Joe's guitar was ruined, Paul Simonon got hit-by a brick on the shoulder, and his cabinet busted. "Half way through the set I got a brick right through my cabinet — it's a drag 'cos it cost quite a bit of money. But we finished the whole set. We had to stop during 'Police And Thieves' 'cos Joe jumped down into the press pit 'cos guards with helmets were hitting the kids with barbed wire. We wanted them to pull down the barricades 'cos it was just like a prison camp with all that barbed wire fence round," said Paul Simonon, back in the safety of London. "I was just onstage with all these things coming over ... but it's different when you're there onstage with people watching you, you're there to do something, and you get such a tremendous feeling, you feel like a god, 'cos you've got control over so many people who want to see you play. You feel invincible even when the bricks are coming over..." Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come... << >> Sounds, August 20, 1977 Vivien Goldman reports on the Bilzen Festival, Thursday, August 11, 1977, Bilzen, Belgium, including The Clash and The Damned, with a brief mention of Elvis Costello's appearance. Sounds notes EC will play the Crystal Palace Garden Party, Saturday, September 10, 1977, London, England. Tim Lott reviews Brinsley Schwarz's Silver Pistol. Images Clipping and page scan. Elvis joins Palace party Sounds Elvis Costello joins Santana on the bill of the Crystal Palace Garden Party on September 10. More names will be announced next week. Tickets, price £4.80 in advance and £5.30 on the day, are available from all Harlequin record stores, London Theatre Bookings and Premier Box Office. Clipping. Old hippies never die: they just become someone's cult heroes Tim Lott Brinsley Schwarz Silver Pistol ‘DISCOVER THE ROOTS OF THE RUMOUR! said the cardboard scribbled sign in the shop flogging off deleted Brinsley Schwarz. With just as much accuracy it might have said, ‘HEAR NICK LOWE AND HIS BACKING BAND’ or ‘MARVEL TO THE MM FOLK/ROCK CONTEST WINNERS 1970’. Whatever, the line-up on the album sleeves was fascinating, magnetic. What are heroes before they’re heroes? And this band had one bona fide 1977 Jesus of Cool in Lowe, plus a bonus of the Rumour’s Brinsley Schwarz and Bob Andrews. In that shop I bought a copy of ‘Silver Pistol’, their third album, a substitute for a badly worn copy which had been languishing in my collection for ages. I had, God and United Artists forgive me, forgotten and neglected them. Such conduct was not only verging on the rude, but the unintelligent, because listening to ‘Silver Pistol’ again in the light of 1977 reminded me of a fact that I had taken for granted five years ago i.e. Brinsley Schwarz were the finest unsuccessful British band of the Seventies. Brinsley once said that the band were no more than the perfect vehicle for Nick Lowe’s songwriting and that’s almost true – except that on ‘Silver Pistol’ Lowe wrote only six of the twelve tracks, four being contributed by guitarist Ian Gomm and two others by some geezer called J. Ford. So ‘Silver Pistol‘ is only half Lowe’s creation. Don’t let it put you off, because it’s 100 per cent solid gold. Every one of Lowe’s compositions is a masterful lesson in how to craft pure, instant pop songs. It leaves no doubt at all the Lowe could be HUGE if he had the least inkling to, now that he seems to be steering himself more and more towards permanent culthood. One thing that hasn’t really emerged from the 1977 Lowe that was obvious 5 years ago is his flair for ballads. There’s no ‘Heart Of The City’ or ‘I Knew The Bride’ here. Nick’s compositions are strictly low (Lowe?) -key, songs rather than numbers. ‘Nightingale’ probably rates as one of the most beautiful pop songs ever written. Marketed as product by some huge record company, it might have been a near-standard by now, so simple is it, and so subtle, so pretty. He probably wouldn’t steer within a hundred miles of a song like that now, but that does nothing to alter its struck-through quality. The other prime ballad is ‘Egypt’, a slow, liquid, five-minute piece, atmosphere generated by Bob Andrews’ basic but effective keyboard work and Lowe’s poignant vocal. It ain’t all two-mile-an-hour stuff, though. The peculiar country tinged rock’n’roll that Clover pioneered and the Brinsleys admit to having copied (“..get back to the hills where Clover play” – ‘Range War’), punctuates the album on cuts like ‘Dry Land’, ‘Unknown Number’ and ‘Ju Ju Man’ (latterly covered by Dave Edmunds). The album has an undiluted air of simplicity and down-homeness that makes it a really happy piece of vinyl, forty minutes of country and city fun. It takes in all sorts of styles – even the sub-reggae instrumental of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Chair’ – and emerges with identity intact. I love it, every minute, right down the dog barking on ‘Egypt’ (it was recorded in the basement of the band’s Northwood home). It’s outdated history, didn’t stand a chance then and wouldn’t now. I don’t even recommend you try and get a copy because at least fifty per cent of the people I play it to think it’s totally boring. The other fifty per cent, however, acknowledge it as the masterpiece it is. Are even odds good enough for you? Cover and cover inset photo.

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• Wikipedia: Sounds