UK ’82 and the Grimsby Community Centre
Wonkfest 2019: the usual astonishing array of new and current bands playing 20 minute sets. Perfect, the antithesis of Rebellion festival, though I appreciate that they have new bands playing these days. The reformed old punk bands thing is just not for me. So it was that my best friend Paz and I found ourselves at Wonkfest, waiting to see who the second ‘secret band’ of the day would be (the first being US poppy punks THE DOPAMINES). The band took to the stage and I was sure I recognized the singer. The guitarist seemed familiar too, however the much younger bassist and drummer were not. As the mists cleared and the penny began to drop, said vocalist introduced the band, that voice also recognizable, albeit sandpapered by the years. “WE ARE… PETER & THE TEST TUBE BABIES!” Here I was then, about to experience a ‘Rebellion band’ to challenge my assertions. They launched into 1983 single The Jinx, managing to squeeze in Up Yer Bum and Banned From The Pubs among others within the 20-minute slot.
My thoughts? Well, the band were tight and note-perfect but of course, long gone was the cheeky, effervescent Peter who jumped around, took the piss out of band and audience and sang puerile ditties ideally suited to the teenage Gen Xers of the early ’80s. Instead, we were treated to a series of alarming facial expressions giving the impression that Peter might be experiencing a difficult bowel evacuation. Other original member, guitarist Derek, ably provided the catchy hooks while the rhythm section acquitted themselves admirably. It was… okay. Nostalgia is what it is and is never going to match its heyday. We all age and maybe this goes some way to unravelling my feelings here. I was fortunate enough to see PTTB in the early 80’s and so comparisons are inevitable.
23rd July 1982: a much younger Personal Punk is attending a beautifully scuzzy venue known as the Grimsby Community Centre, or Community Hall, to see PETER AND THE TEST TUBE BABIES. Situated on Duncombe Street, just off Freeman Street in the North East Lincolnshire town of Grimsby, the place has a rich 75+ year history of music events. It’s the small community centre room and it’s early eighties forays into punk rock that are pertinent here, as I attended a small handful of gigs there, a place that could feel at once exciting and dangerous. THEATRE OF HATE in 1981 was my first, a rather more sedate affair than the gigs I went to the following year but TOH were a bare-bones post-punk thrill. I bought their Who Dares Wins live LP at the gig, managing to coerce bassist Stan Stammers to sign it. He wrote on the back ‘Keep on rocking, Midi!’
What I do remember was what I thought was an American coming up to me worried about the small number of people there. I explained that with the venue not selling alcohol the older clientele would be in the local boozers until nearer stage time. That gentleman was actually Canadian, John Boy Lennard, Theatre’s sax player. That was the first time I saw them. They opened with ‘My Own Invention’ and I was blown away. I’m still seeing all things Kirk Brandon to this day.
local lad Karl Barratt remembers THEATRE OF HATE
The next time I attended the place was on 9th March 1982 to see Scottish aggro-punks THE EXPLOITED, supported by North London’s INFA-RIOT and Hull’s BORN B.C. I was 16. Myself and Bainy were deposited outside the venue by my sister’s boyfriend. we’d sat in the back seat of his car, clad in our identikit studded leather jackets and rebellious trousers, gawking at the gathering of pissed-up punks and skinheads outside with something akin to terror. Failing in our pitiful attempt to appear confident, we jumped out and made our way inside. These gigs were fairly nerve-wracking affairs for us wide-eyed suburbanites, populated as they were by a mixture of hardcore punks and feral skinheads, many of whom were either smashed on cheap booze or glued up. The place didn’t sell alcohol, so most of the punkers stood outside drinking their cut-price booze before heading in.
I’d already heard Hulls’ BORN B.C. on the jaw-dropping international cassette compilation Hardcore or What? on the Xcentric Noise label, a real game changer for international punk. I picked this up from the legendary Sydney Scarborough Records – we were regulars as Hull was an easy bus ride away – and their tracks stood out so I bought The Power & The Privilege EP (same label). They had a curiously appealing lo-fi sound that they successfully transferred to the stage: slightly out of tune bass, tinny, CRASS-like guitar and nagging, sarcastic vocals, treading the line between 77/82 admirably.
INFA-RIOT were, without doubt, the highlight of the night. Their 1981 Kids of the ’80s/Still Out Of Order (Secret Records) single managed to rise above its weedy production by dint of being so damn catchy and was already a firm favourite. I have always been a dupe for anthemic punk rock and it was this aspect of some of the so-called Oi! bands I was drawn to, though only a scant few could rise above the knuckle-headed, working-class male macho stereotype and ‘apolitical’ status – ie. flirtations with the far right. I’d assumed that the gang choruses would be difficult to replicate live without an army on backing vocals but seeing INFA-RIOT execute them effortlessly was a revelation. And they had EXPLOITED drummer Dru Stix standing in on drums for added intrigue. The band were tight, edgy and played a stirring set of punchy punk rock goodness.
Lee from INFA-RIOT came out, started with Emergency and threw the mike stand in the crowd, got them in a frenzy!
local Stephen Thundercliffe
I was into THE EXPLOITED. I was into CRASS too, despite the music press successfully setting the two tribes against each other. Age hasn’t been kind on the former but back then, my turbulent hormone tsunami welcomed their aggressive stupidity with gusto. I’d seen them at the Christmas On Earth all-day bash in Leeds the year before but that was in a big venue and I was way back in the crowd. This community hall in Grimsby was ideally suited to punk rock, being as it was a rudimentary little sweatbox – still my favoured type of venue – so the band were up close and the dancing was rough. You hit the floor, you got picked up. Good-natured brutality, still-developing minds responding to primal urges through primitive sounds. I was often out of my depth in these situations, a relatively sheltered teenage punk, but still drawn to the aggression, neurons in my brain firing off cheap thrills. My recall of this rite of passage is lucid: I can see the rough wooden floor of the venue rushing up to meet me as I fall, a ground-level view of stomping Doc Martens, the roar of the band meshing with the act of being slammed to the ground. There was blood. The less friendly interventions of the skinheads rushing in from the back of the hall to seriously rough things up added an unwelcome edge but we still left the gig sweaty and animated, having hurled ourselves about to two of our favourite bands.
I haven’t listened to THE EXPLOITED for close on 35 years so I dug out some of their records. It’s primitive, dumb and makes me blush but, for better or worse, it forms no small part of my restless teenage punk years and was fun to revisit. It also brought back memories of covering their song Dead Cities in EVASIVE ACTION, the band I was in.
Four months later and it’s along to the TEST TUBE BABIES gig. Fleetwood’s ONE WAY SYSTEM played main support. I knew of the band from their excellent but thinly-produced track Jerusalem on No Future‘s A Country Fit For Heroes compilation earlier in the year and I had their Anagram 7″ Give Us A Future, a promising punker. On this night, they were fantastic, playing a powerhouse set of brick-wall punk anthems. They later re-recorded Jerusalem as the juggernaut it always should have been and released it on 7″ vinyl, a hugely underrated piece of the UK82 puzzle.
The menacing skinheads were out in force that night though and there was one particular gang who seemed to coalesce around a huge specimen with murder in his eyes. I kept glancing around nervously to see what they were up to, as they had a habit of charging from the back of the hall into the crowd, attempting to up the violence ante. I don’t remember seeing any sieg heiling then but that very same crew turned up at a gig in Scunthorpe sometime later (at the ‘Yag House’ youth club) and spent most of their time staggering around draped in a union jack flag, while availing themselves of the opportunity to salute the Fuhrer at any given moment. Sat against the wall with a friend, watching this depressing spectacle, he pulled out an appropriate DEAD KENNEDYS quote, “in a real Fourth Reich, they’d be the first to go“. I left early, thoroughly dispirited.
I digress. PETER AND THE TEST TUBE BABIES were a triumph that night and we left happy and sweaty once again. In some ways, they were the perfect punk band for irresponsible, messed up teenagers, irreverent humour married with exceptionally catchy songs. They were funny, played bum notes, took the piss and had a great time, as did the crowd. it’s easy to sneer at songs such as Transvestite and their use of anachronistic terms such as ‘bird’ and ‘skirt’ 35+ years on and to anyone not suspended in amber in their teenage years, it is cringeworthy. They were young in a very different time, intent on having a laugh and taking the piss out of everyone, including themselves, while telling tales of being banned from the pubs, getting beaten up by Teddy Boys and copping off with girls down the local disco.
I only ever attended one more gig at this venue: on August 14th 1982, a pairing of anarchist big hitters FLUX OF PINK INDIANS and THE SYSTEM hit the community centre. My initial memory of this gig is of it being much darker, though that could have been the blacklight shed by the attending anarcho punters’ attire. The skinheads were present and correct again, no doubt relishing the potential for a bit of pacifist baiting and, prior to the first band playing, the atmosphere was tense. Wigan’s THE SYSTEM were a favourite at the time due to their sparkling ’82 debut The Warfare EP on Spiderleg Records, a label set up by members of FLUX OF PINK INDIANS. The EP is a cracking slice of po-faced punk rock, leaning marginally more towards the rock than many of their contemporaries and we loved their typically austere set. This just left the mighty FLUX OF PINK INDIANS to finish off the night. By 1982, the band had become a force to be reckoned with. Their 1981 debut Neu Smell EP on Crass Records had already become legendary, mainly due to the inclusion of the oft-copied Tube Disasters (also sampled brilliantly by rapper PROFESSOR GREEN), not forgetting the song Sick Butchers, responsible for converting many new vegetarians. They followed this with 1982’s debut LP Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible, a coruscating manifesto of protest punk and this is the time frame in which the gig took place. Their set was a masterclass in fierce political dissent as musical performance. I remember a tightly wound vocalist Colin Latter who refused to give up his intense stare throughout.
When FLUX played, Colin threw himself into the crowd on numerous occasions during their set.
stephen thundercliffe
The Grimsby Central Hall (recently celebrating an anniversary of the diverse variety of music produced there from Benjamin Britten to Hull’s Born B.C) The place is also known as the Grimsby Community Centre, or just the Hall. The venue was prepared to put such gigs on for the youth of the area. There were a few promotors around chancing their arm but the main one was Solid Entertainments.
From the early 1980s onwards, there were many gigs at the Hall. I had witnessed the first Punk Rock Wave and as a twenty-year-old was still keen to embrace the next and the birth of a subgenre called Oi (Just where have all the boot boys gone?). That original air of menace reappeared at some gigs but in my mind, from what I remember, there were few scuffles. The Hall never had a bar and the local pubs, the Smokers Arms and Freeman Arms would ask your age if you didn’t look over 65, so drink was smuggled in and backstage for some bands.
I think we might have been spoiled for choice – I can almost recall seeing in no particular order at the Hall, The Fall – Peter and the Test Tube Babies – Vice Squad- Bow wow wow – Holly and the Italians – Stray Cats – The Exploited – Theatre of Hate – Flux of Pink Indians – The Four Skins – Classix Nouveaux plus the local heroes like White Russia – The Sleepers – Dead Loss- The Funeral Service – Issue Three.
What comes back to me? The Exploited’s hair – the grand noise of the guitars plus the almost ordinariness of Flux of Pink Indians – How small Annabella Lwin (BOW WOW WOW) was. Peter and the Test Tube Babies went down well – I cannot remember seeing any merch (always a sucker for a T-Shirt) but getting to have a conversation with the bands albeit brief – alright !! was a thrill to be acknowledged.
I still go to gigs – I still go to the Hall in fact and have recently enjoyed seeing there Josie Moon and Chris Difford (Squeeze) plus the place now has a bar…
Dave Alucard remembers the Grimsby Community Centre
To finish then, a few words on the single: Banned From The Pubs is a celebration of cocky youthfulness, a three-track bruiser with crisp, solid production. The title track is a catchy laugh-riot about punks being banned from pubs, which was actually a thing. On the flip, Moped lads is delightful (“it’s the moped lads, they like to think they’re bad, if you hit ’em, they tell their dads!“) and Peacehaven Wild Kids, a mid-tempo teenage anthem about a local bunch of hooligans. Flippant UK ’82 punk at it’s finest.
The bands’ next single Run Like Hell, despite including the aforementioned lost-in-time references to ‘birds’ and ‘skirt’, is uber-catchy and perfectly paired with Up Yer Bum‘s middle finger salute to… well, stuff. Insolent, cocky and rude, it obviously hasn’t travelled well lyrically.
I was quite a fan for a while there. As well as these two singles I got their first album, the live Pissed And Proud set which is one of the best live LP’s of the time. I also bought the two 1983 singles The Jinx & Zombie Creeping Flesh, alas these were sold years ago during desperate times, a shame as they aren’t as mediocre as I remembered. I also caught the band live once more later that year when they appeared on the bill of what, thus far, is my all-time favourite gig: DEAD KENNEDYS, MDC, PETER & THE TEST TUBE BABIES and MAU MAUS at the Leadmill in Sheffield.
Maybe I’m softening somewhat but I feel bad for not giving my full-throated support to the current incarnation of PTTB. After all, it doesn’t seem like they ever actually split up and have recently released new material (2017’s That Shallot). It’s just a bit of nostalgic fun after all so, in that spirit, I gave the album a listen. All the key ingredients are in place and I did quite enjoy it but I guess I’m just not that hysterical kid anymore so nothing really connected.
I guess that these scribblings may render me somewhat po-faced but I do like a drop of humour with my punk rock from time to time. These days though, I’m more likely to turn to PIZZATRAMP or WONK UNIT. Nevertheless, I’m pleased Peter and the boys are still doing what they do and their section in the book Burning Britain, Ian Glasper‘s essential history of UK punk 1980-84, is truly hilarious.
Many thanks to Stephen Thundercliffe, Dave Alucard and Karl Barratt.
PERSONAL PUNK 