I bought Red Mecca, possibly their defining album and still listen to it to this day (I even re purchased it as a download) with the same reactions. I would find them exhilarating, intriguing or just plain irritating depending on my mood. Featuring Mallinder’s distorted vocals, Farfisa drum machine and organ influenced by American Garage band The Seeds it’s a prime work of repetition that doesn’t outstay its welcome.įor the rest of the 70’s and early 80’s the band were like a damp stain under the carpet, always present lurking on the fringes. You would only hear them on John Peel or if someone you knew had bought a single. The apex of the intersection of the avant guard and the accessible occurred with the single Nag,Nag, Nag. Kirk started playing more guitar, the sharp dressed Mallinder started adding treated vocals and becoming a kind of front man. They also started to wrangle their way into the emerging punk world with support slots and although they might not have been exactly what Buzzcocks fans wanted it was all publicity.

Of course, as time when on ears became more accustomed to this sort of thing but also the band started to become a bit more mainstream. The instrumentation at first was a bit of red herring, a lot of early ‘compositions’ were tape loops and treated noises. Their first gig at a university disco ended up in a riot due to the audience not fully expecting a tape loop of a steam hammer as percussion accompanied by treated clarinet noises.It was the sort of gig reputations thrive on, for three guys influenced by Dada this was a major result.

The ‘band’ consisted of the late Richard Kirk on clarinet and guitar, Steven Mallinder on Bass and vocals and Chris Watson on organ. Recipients of this liberal thinking were early members of the Human League and, the Stones to their Beatles, Cabaret Voltaire. In an era where socialism was still a possibility it was possible for example to run an arts lab properly funded and pretty much free giving local youths a chance to make music of films without any real expectation that there would be a finished project.Īlso influential were Roxy Music who were huge in the city and Brian Eno in particular who was establishing the premise that you didn’t really have to be a musician to create music. In terms of punk noise however they had to wait until 2002 and the Arctic Monkeys.Īlthough Sheffield was a northern working-class town it wasn’t particularly downtrodden. In some ways the city bypassed punk and went straight for the new wave of heavy metal a couple of years later when South Yorkshire became the epicentre for the movement.

It also had incredibly cheap public transport and other public facilities, it was possible to live a relatively good life in Steeltown. It wasn’t exactly Venice or Milan, but it had a huge public housing stock, anyone who wanted a home could get one from the council although that might mean living in one of the many high rises that dotted the hills around the city. Sheffield had a long-standing reputation for its steel and compared with the likes of Leeds or Manchester at the time was relatively prosperous. The notable exception was Sheffield.Fifth biggest city in Britain. Manchester in particular asserted its position as the punk capital of the North but everywhere, even Norwich was able to boast a band or two. Not since the skiffle boom of the late 50’s had so many people been prompted to pick up a guitar, learn three chords and form a band. Post Sex Pistols/Grundy Interview at the end of 1976 punk bands appeared almost overnight across Britain.

Nag nag nag