Bit of a leap this but I’m trying to stick to the memory each record conjures up. This NEUROTICS single takes me back to a place that had closed down long before it’s release…

After leaving school, my best friend Paz attended sixth form college. This left me and Bainy, a tall, rangy oddball with a shock of spiky white hair, with little to do but live the early 80’s punk rock dream: signing on the dole and hanging out in legendary local record shop, Parade. Scunthorpe’s first purely independent record store, it was in the right time and place to ride the late 70’s/early 80’s indie label boom and soon became a magnet for local punks and assorted weirdos. One whole wall was a display of all the latest 7″ singles in stock. We still talk about that wall. The proprietor was a guy called Singer, something of a legend to us as he was a cool, slightly older type who had left punk behind for the more experimental post-punk and DIY electronics of bands like JOY DIVISION and CABARET VOLTAIRE. We got to know him through hanging around in the shop and he was a good guy, quietly spoken and affable, even leaving us to watch the place occasionally while he nipped off to the bank. Harmlessly sniffy about our enthusiasm for the latest CRASS or EXPLOITED releases, we’d pester him to play records all the time. One morning, I begged him to spin Dead Cities, the new single by THE EXPLOITED which had just arrived. As the song roared into life, he shook his head in exasperation and said: “but the bass just follows the guitar, it’s really boring.” Failing to grasp how he could remain unmoved by it, I continued to air drum, vigorously banging my head to the primitive clatter of ‘Dead Ciiiieeees’! It was a rare treat to be present when a delivery of records arrived and we must have plagued the poor man with our excited cooing as he unpacked them.

Parade was certainly in the right time and place for us in our formative years of musical obsession and we adored hanging out there, flicking through the racks and agonizing over which records to spend our meagre earnings on. Paz and me recruited our band EVASIVE ACTION’s second singer in Parade. We didn’t really know him too well but we thought he exuded cool with his fluffy Captain Sensible jumper and caustic manner. After we approached him with our offer, he uttered some wisecrack and agreed to do it.

Bainy (the spiky-haired oddball) and me spent much of our dole days in Parade, pawing over the latest second wave punk rock releases. We read all the coverage in Sounds (weekly music newspaper) and were enthusiastic about all the different strands: CRASS, Oi!, EXPLOITED, dabbling a little into the harsher side of things with DISCHARGE and DISORDER, although it took a little longer to connect with me. I was still puritanical about tunes and choruses and the sheer brutality of DISCHARGE, coupled with their ‘noise not music’ slogan, was fascinating but initially a little too much for my conventional ears. Regardless, it was all there, up on that legendary wall of singles.

After reading a gushing review of NEWTOWN NEUROTICS’ double A side single Kick Out The Tories/Mindless Violence (1981) in Sounds, Bainy decided he wanted it so off we went to Parade. I decided to get something else, figuring that I could just tape it off him and have the best of both worlds. I can’t remember what I bought that day but should have got my own copy of the NEUROTICS single as it’s a classic double A. I played my tape of it into the dust and never did manage to pick a copy up and in these days of eBay and Discogs, it is always just out of reach. ‘Kick Out The Tories’ is a rallying cry, a merciless attack on the heartless Thatcher government of the day (“when that bastard is in, unemployment grows”) but the hero of this double-header is ‘Mindless Violence’, a scorching, early JAM-like blast of tuneful glory. And just listen to that version which blends the song with ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER’s ‘Andy Is A Corporatist’. It transforms the NEUROTICS’ ardent attack on street muggings and random violent assaults, into an equally passionate rant against the scourge of nazi skinheads.

I digress. The LIVING WITH UNEMPLOYMENT EP I’m talking about here is my memory piece simply because it reminds me of Parade. Because it reminds me of that earlier single. It’s tenuous but feels good. A live EP lifted from their Kickstarting A Backfiring Nation LP set, the title track is their reworking of THE MEMBERS’ 1978 classic Solitary Confinement. The lyrics are changed from the originals’ angst-ridden ode to the loneliness of living in the big city, to a reflection of unemployment in Thatcher’s Britain. I’d never heard the MEMBERS’ original at that time and I had to wait for the internet to arrive before I could. The experience was slightly disconcerting, as the NEUROTICS version was so fondly ensconced in my musical brain. It can’t be denied though, that it is a glorious punk racket and, had I heard this in 1978, 13-year-old me would have been careering off the walls.  The NEUROTICS EP was released in 1986 during what I refer to as my ‘punk rock wilderness years’ (I’ll expand on this in a future post) when punk had all but disappeared from the usual sources, Sounds and NME (I was still to discover fanzines), Parade had sadly closed its doors and the remaining record shops in Scunthorpe now only stocked the ‘biggies’ of punk like CONFLICT and DEAD KENNEDYS. In short, anything with good distribution. THE NEUROTICS were on Jungle Records at this point (who also distributed CONFLICT releases) and I bought both EP and LP. The 7″ includes a scorching band version of ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER’s Airstrip One. The LP is an outstanding live recording which includes various punk poets performing in between songs, one of whom was PORKY THE POET, aka Phil Jupitus. Both these records take me back to those wilderness years, accompanied by a warm, fuzzy melancholy and are great examples of tuneful punk rock married with simple but effective social commentary.

Here’s one Parade anecdote to leave you with and I’d be willing to bet there are many more out there to be told. One time, when Bainy and me were lolling about flicking through the racks, a middle-aged, pompous looking woman came in with a record in her hand and a sour look on her face. She marched over to Singer who was sitting behind the counter, placing new arrivals into plastic sleeves and no doubt wishing we would just buy something and sod off. He looked up and asked in his quiet, kindly voice if he could help her. She slammed the record down on the counter, prompting Bainy and me to turn around and watch as she, very angrily, told her tale: her son had returned home to find mum and dad entertaining a small gathering of friends. Having just purchased a single from Parade, he proceeded to place it on the turntable, turn the volume up loud and play it for said gathering. The obscene filth that spewed forth from the speakers, she said, had traumatized the assembled guests. She demanded a refund and, while a red-faced Singer dealt with her request, she lambasted him for selling this kind of disgusting trash to children. After leaving the shop, the door crashing shut behind her, the three of us looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and carried on flipping through the racks. The record she returned? Reality Asylum by CRASS.

Parade shut up shop in April 1983, after struggling against competition from Record Village, but also crippled by a massive hike in business rates. It may have only been open for two short years, but for me and my friends it remains a shining memory of those crucial years and we still talk of it in reverential tones. I hope to interview Singer about Parade in a future post.

…Scunthorpe, 1986, driving through town in a shitty car. My mate, Jim, at the wheel. ‘Living With Unemployment’ by THE NEUROTICS blasts from the tape deck, a beautiful moment in time. The song ends. Singer Steve Drewett: “Thank you and goodnight!” Jim: “Thank you, now fuck off!”

Interview with Singer, proprietor of Parade here: https://personalpunk.wordpress.com/category/punk-rock/