GIG 0007 - Terminal at The Crown Hotel, Denbigh

 

We’d gone to see the local-ish heroes Terminal play their jagged new-wave set at The Crown in Denbigh — a triumphant hometown moment for their very polished guitarist Nige Peters, while the rest of the band had apparently travelled the gruelling Wrexham-to-Denbigh tour circuit.

We’d only just escaped school after being politely encouraged not to darken the door of sixth form again — a decision we graciously accepted and travelled daily in the opposite direction of the band to college in Wrexham. Being spectacularly underage, we fortified ourselves with Thunderbird Wine that older, more morally flexible friends bought from the off-licence. By the time we staggered into the tiny upstairs room at The Crown, we were already operating at what could generously be described as “festival levels”.

I distinctly remember dancing to This Charming Man, which The Smiths had put out the week before. This proves two things: one, I was very drunk; and two, my musical judgement had become deeply questionable.

By the time Terminal actually hit the stage, I’d progressed from “enthusiastic audience member” to “collapsed furniture accessory,” lying on the floor under a cluster of chairs near the front. My final memory of the evening is of vomiting dangerously close to the bassist’s mic stand — a moment that, I like to think, really added to the ambience.

A legendary gig, by any standard. Just possibly not for the band.

GIG 0006 - Terminal at Wedgewood Cinema, Denbigh

A year or so after my work as a teenage cleaner had ended at the cinema, I pitched a wild idea to the new owners. Picture this: bands playing live at the Wedgewood Cinema, decked out in white, with films projected over them during the set. Lewis, the owner—a decent bloke, easy to chat with—thought it was a cracking concept but reckoned it’d cost a bomb to build a stage up to the screen’s height. Not one to give up, I threw out another idea: what about a punk disco? Lewis gave it the nod, and for at least six months, the Wedgewood became Denbigh’s own punk rock mecca.

Every weekend, the town’s teenage punk crew—spiked hair, ripped jackets, and all—formed a gloriously chaotic queue outside, buzzing for the mayhem to kick off. We’d already be half-cut, our heads swimming in Bub’s lethal homebrew, toting bags stuffed with records for the DJ. This wasn’t some half-arsed Youth Club disco with a token punk track thrown in to shut us up. This was the real deal: wall-to-wall Discharge, Blitz, Peter and the Test Tube Babies, Dead Kennedys, Crass, The Ejected (belted out Have You Got 10p?—nah, not me!), UK Subs, Cockney Rejects, The Damned, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Slaughter and the Dogs (You’re Ready Now was a banger), Plasmatics, and heaps more. 

Those nights were pure chaos, and I’ve got a scar on the back of my shaved head to prove it. During a particularly mental rendition of Dead Cities by The Exploited, I ended up at the bottom of a pile-on, face-down on the sticky floor, barely able to breathe under a heap of sweaty bodies. Some daft sod thought he’d leap over the lot, only to clip my head as he landed. Blood pissed out for the rest of the night, but I kept dancing, too caught up in the madness to care. Eventually, I dragged my blood-soaked self to the Infirmary for stitches. That scar’s still there, a jagged little memento of those great nights.

Denbigh wasn’t exactly a hotbed of musical talent back then, but we had one band that made some noise: Terminal, a new-wave-cum-pop outfit with a slick, radio-friendly sound. They were alright, I suppose, though a bit too polished for my raw punk tastes. Still, I couldn’t resist grabbing their single Am I Doing It Right—a cheeky tune about a lad losing his virginity that had just enough edge to make it worth a spin. They played a gig at the Wedgewood Cinema, and it was a proper spectacle. Picture this: a stage rigged up on scaffolding, level with the massive screen, with a film flickering over them as they performed. It was electric, a proper show that felt bigger than our little town.

Where did they get the idea to put it on there and have a film projected over them as they played?

 

GIG 0005 - Black Flag / Black Flag Roadcrew / Vicious Circle

My soon-to-be step-brother Chris Vandal (same age, same questionable life choices) and I travelled from Denbigh to the legendary Dixieland Showbar on Colwyn Bay Pier to see The Exploited. Punk pilgrimage complete. Or so we thought.

We arrived to be greeted by two bouncers and the crushing news that singer Wattie Buchan had sprained his ankle playing in the snow, so the band wouldn’t be appearing. But good news — we got a free poster. Because nothing heals teenage disappointment like a rectangle of paper.

Since Denbigh had approximately zero punk gigs, we decided we were staying anyway and would extract maximum value from the evening.

First up: Vicious Circle. My main memory is their singer wearing leather trousers and me throwing a full pint of water at them. In my defence, the Punk Rulebook clearly stated you had to throw liquids at bands. It was practically etiquette.

Next came a hastily assembled band made up of Black Flag’s road crew, including Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye on bass. This was our accidental introduction to American hardcore, which was roughly 200% more aggressive than Colwyn Bay was emotionally prepared for.

Naturally, we responded with violence. Enter Black Flag and from the safety of the back of the pit, we began throwing coins and badges. Chris then removed his Sid Vicious padlock and chain necklace and launched it toward the stage like a medieval siege weapon. Had Henry Rollins not ducked mid-lyric, we might have accidentally assassinated him.

During the chaos, someone’s bullet belt exploded across the floor, gifting the crowd a handy pile of ammunition. An older punk with enormous blond spikes actively encouraged us to keep firing. One bullet eventually hit guitarist Greg Ginn on the head. He stopped mid-song, put down his guitar, picked up a folding chair and launched it into the crowd before storming off. The rest of the band followed. Honestly, fair enough.

Rollins returned to the stage looking even angrier than usual, holding the offending bullet and yelling:
“One of you fuckers threw this and spoiled it for everyone, good fucking night.”
Mic drop. Exit. End of Welsh debut.

After the gig, we mingled innocently with the band and crew and asked, “What happened?” A roadie shrugged and said some kids got over-excited. If only he knew.

Years later, Rollins immortalised the incident in his book Get in the Van and retold it on his spoken-word tours.

Some people get thanked in album liner notes. We nearly got thanked in a police report.

GIG 0004 - The Damned / Anti Nowhere League at Colwyn Bay Pier

Five years before I actually moved to Colwyn Bay, I arrived as a wide-eyed almost-15-year-old about to attend my first proper punk gig without parental supervision. This was serious business. I’d already seen and even met The Jam and The Clash, but those were balcony gigs — observational punk. This was going to be hands-on, down-the-front, getting-elbowed-in-the-kidneys punk. The Damned at Colwyn Bay Pier.

My mates Yosser, Shaun “Cret” Walton and I fought our way to the barrier, planting ourselves within gobbing distance of the support band: Anti-Nowhere League. I even had the tour flyer like some kind of sacred relic. The Damned had their Friday 13th EP coming out, and the League were causing national outrage with their version of Streets of London. It was 20 November 1981, and Colwyn Bay Pier was briefly pretending it was the centre of the musical universe. Motorhead, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Cockney Rejects, Desmond Dekker — all had somehow ended up playing this seaside pier that was held erect by rust and hope.

Being crushed against the barrier watching Anti-Nowhere League’s North Wales debut was, in my teenage brain, a spiritual awakening. Leather, chains, tattoos, biker boots and a very enthusiastic commitment to swearing — it was everything I thought adulthood would be. I decided right there that I would be in a punk band. Punk had been branded onto my heart like a slightly dodgy tattoo you get on holiday.

At the time, I believed every single outrageous story printed in Sounds and NME. Drug orgies. Farmyard animals. On-stage chaos. Backstage chaos. Chaos in the car park. In reality, they were probably perfectly polite blokes who mowed the lawn on Sundays. The fact they’re all still alive strongly suggests fewer livestock were involved than advertised.

I absolutely loved the scandal of them being banned from Top Of The Pops after allegedly fighting the stage manager, and the police seizing their single because of lyrical indecency. But so what! as a teenager, nothing says “great music” like mild moral panic. I remember belting out Streets Of London and a beautifully reworked version of Rock Around The Clock that had undergone what you might call “lyrical enhancement.”

The Damned — my favourite band — were almost overshadowed by all this. I do remember Captain Sensible introducing new bassist Paul Gray by proudly explaining he was better than the previous bassist at sticking carrots up his own arse. It’s strange what the brain chooses to preserve.

After the gig, because it was a pier and therefore an architectural cul-de-sac, we hung around to meet the bands. Dave Vanian cleverly escaped by combing his hair down and strolling past carrying a handbag before anyone clocked it was him. Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies, however, stayed to sign autographs and exchange insults.

The Captain was smoking. I asked for a drag.
“Piss off, have a wank,” he replied warmly.

As the tour bus pulled away, Captain and Rat leaned out of the window, gave the entire crowd the universal wanker gesture and shouted, “Thanks for your money!”

You’re very welcome. Thanks for the night.

John Lennon is Dead

 

It was a wet and miserable December morning, the time was about 6.55am. I was in Colomendy estate in Denbigh on my paper round. I had been doing it for about a year & Xmas was coming, normally for a paperboy the advent of Yuletide meant a big pay-day as the tips for your year long slog with scant reward would start flowing. This, sadly was not the case, my round cover the most affluent part of Denbigh, nice houses, nice cars, no tips. The other paperboys who did the council estates returned loaded with 50p's and pound notes, although there was little money within the households they served. There was plenty of cash flow, perhaps the phrase; 'the rich get richer while the poor get poorer' stemmed from the generosity extended to the paperboy at Xmas.

My BMX bike weaved its way along the dark pavements, door to door, delivering the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Times. For company, tied to the handlebars I had an Action Man radio, a waterproof birthday present which could transmit Morse code should I ever get lost in the depths of Denbigh. Radio One, as ever, poured out drab pap music, but it kept my 14-year-old mind on the job in hand.

The 7 o'clock headlines rang out across the sleepy housing estate:

'John Lennon has been shot dead outside his home in New York.'

I pulled the brakes on my bike, took the heavy paper sack off my shoulder and dropped it onto the wet pavement. A state of complete shock came over me, but I didn't know why, John Lennon had never consciously meant anything to me, particularly during my musical awareness years where the likes of Sham 69, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Clash etc. were my idols.

Leaving the sack in a puddle where it fell, I solemnly made the long climb up Vale Street and home to my sleeping family. I awoke my mother:

'Mum, John Lennon's dead.'

We lived in Ruthin in the late sixties as did John & Cynthia Lennon, and my parents would attend the various parties held by the neighbours.

My mother didn't get out of bed that day.

Dad’s account of this day (written in 2009) goes like this…

It was my day off. I dragged myself out of bed mid morning, turned the kettle on and then the radio.

The kettle boiled dry.

Shocked by the news, I never got my morning cuppa. I sat all day, stunned, as a crackly medium wave Radio City struggled to reach over the Welsh mountains. They played Beatles tracks all day back-to-back.

John Lennon had been shot.

The following day I was back at work for the Evening Leader newspaper. Myself and feature-writer Carol James were the only newspaper people John’s ex wife Cynthia would talk to at that sad time. We interviewed and photographed her at her home in Castle Street, Ruthin, whilst the photographers from the Nationals were dropping mind-blowingly huge cheques through her letterbox desperate for exclusive pictures and an interview. She tore them all up.

We got through the door because we were journos she could trust to be sensitive and not sensationalise how she felt about John’s death, having previously done a feature about her charity work a few months earlier and prior to that a promotional piece about her book A Twist of Lennon.

For me, the whole thing was made far more poignant since I’d been part of the 60s/70s music scene myself.

My band, The Executioners, had graduated from the local village hall dances, through the Chester and Deeside working-mens clubs, to earn our place on the Mersey Beat scene. We played the Cavern, The Iron Door, Tower Ballroom New Brighton and many other Merseyside Clubs, alongside the likes of the Searchers, The Big Three, Freddie Starr and the Midnighters, The Black Abbots, and the Undertakers.

Sadly, we were never on the same bill as The Beatles, so I never got to meet John Lennon.

It was spooky when some time later, I photographed Julian Lennon as a young man because at that time he was just like his father during the Cavern years.

Today, 29 years after his untimely death, John’s music is as fresh and meaningful as back then. It will live on forever. But I often wonder what he would be doing now had December 8th 1980 never happened.

GIG 0003 - Billy Joel at Deeside Leisure Centre

I was 13 and there purely by accident because I happened to be staying at my dad’s that night and he was the local press photographer. Not exactly the rebellious rock-and-roll origin story you’d brag about in the playground. In fact, I told absolutely nobody. My carefully curated Punk Cred™ would have evaporated overnight.

From what I remember, the show was… fine. Competent. Polished. A bit self-indulgent. The sort of performance that probably felt transcendent if you loved Billy Joel, and like a very long piano lesson if you didn’t.

The real highlight came afterwards. While my dad was busy photographing the star dramatically pretending to play a pinball machine, I was in the bar chatting to the band’s American guitarist. He confided that he loved punk and only played this “stuff” because it paid well and came with travel perks. Even at 13, I recognised the purity of that sentiment: sell out, see the world, complain about it in the bar afterwards.

That night marked my third and final visit to Deeside Leisure Centre as a venue. A fitting farewell, really, because I also proudly refused the chance to see Adam & The Ants and Blondie around the same time. I declared myself “too punk rock” to attend. My sisters went instead.

Naturally, they had a brilliant time. I have spent the intervening decades perfecting the fine art of regret.

GIG 0002 - The Clash / Mikey Dread / Jiving Daleks at Deeside Leisure Centre

Crass taught me more about life, idealism, and social awareness than my parents or any schoolteacher ever did. I didn’t agree with everything they said, but I knew every word of every song—and still do. What set them apart was that they rarely told you what to do; they just told you what it was about. They laid the world bare and left you to make up your own mind.

And they did it without fleecing the kids. “Pay no more than 45p” was printed on some singles. Stations of the Crass, a double album, cost just £3.25. They were against profiteering, and it worked. Records flew out by the truckload because kids could actually afford them. That principle stuck with me, and it’s a policy I carry on to this day with my own music. I sell at a price that covers the costs. Seldom do I break even, let alone make a profit. If I wanted to make money out of music, I’d have joined a fucking covers band.

The irony was that the ultra-low prices meant Crass records weren’t eligible for the official charts. But sales-wise, they were still beating the big boys. When ABBA sat at No.1 with Super Trouper, Crass’s single Bloody Revolutions actually shifted more copies. That blew my teenage mind.

I learned more about the world by sitting in my bedroom with a record spinning and the lyric sheet in my hands than I ever did from the pompous lectures of school. That was my education—raw, noisy, and a hell of a lot more useful.

“They said that we were trash, well the name is Crass not Clash, they can stuff their punk credentials ‘cos it’s them that take the cash.” (White Punks On Hope – Crass, from Stations Of The Crass, 1979).

See? I said I didn’t agree with everything Crass preached. Decades later, Steve Ignorant even expressed regret for writing that line. Crass certainly had their detractors—The Exploited, Special Duties, Garry Bushell—but I liked The Exploited, never really paid attention to Special Duties or their Bullshit Crass single, and once I realised what a cock Garry Bushell was (and still is), I was firmly on the Crass side of the divide.

But before I’d even heard of Crass, let’s rewind a couple of years…

I was back at Deeside Leisure Centre, watching The Clash. I had just turned thirteen, and Dad had scored me two press-pass tickets for their 16 Tons Tour—they always gave their tours names, which made them sound important. It was 26th January 1980. Punk rock was becoming a staple of my life, but I was also trying to impress my new girlfriend, Lynda. We perched on the balcony with the “dignitaries” while thousands of punks swayed on the covered ice rink below.

The Clash were already huge by 1980, and just seeing the size of the crowd was breathtaking. The pre-gig PA droned on with endless reggae, which seemed to stretch on forever and bored a lot of the audience. Then Problems by the Pistols kicked in, and the energy shifted instantly. The crowd pogoed in unison, the tension snapping into raw, kinetic excitement.

Deeside Leisure Centre was, at the time, the sixth-largest indoor venue in the UK. That sounded impressive on paper, but in reality it was a freezing concrete cavern that felt more like an aircraft hangar than a concert hall. It was vast, echoing, and probably the grottiest place I’d ever been to see a gig. 

The local support were Chester’s own Jiving Daleks. They kicked things off with raw enthusiasm and the sort of scrappy confidence only small bands seem to have when suddenly faced with a huge crowd. Their singer, Mazz, looked out over the sea of pogoing punks and shouted into the microphone, “Stop spitting at me—I’ll catch hepatitis!” The place erupted. It was brilliant. Their song Two Faced Bitch still rattles around somewhere in my head decades later—rough, loud and gloriously unpolished, just like the band themselves.

Next on the bill was Mikey Dread, the reggae toaster who would later collaborate with The Clash and inspire their track Bankrobber. Unfortunately for him, the crowd that night had been raised on Anarchy in the U.K. and New Rose. Laid-back reggae rhythms weren’t what they’d come for. Within minutes the front rows turned into a spit-launching artillery line, gob after gob flying toward the stage and glinting under the lights.

To his credit, Mikey Dread carried on performing, but you could see the moment he realised he wasn’t winning this crowd over. Then members of The Clash wandered onto the stage wearing long coats and dark sunglasses, skanking beside him in solidarity. They started spitting back at the crowd, turning the whole unpleasant spectacle into something that felt more like a standoff than heckling.

When their own set finally began, the atmosphere changed instantly. They were electric. They tore through songs from London Calling, which I barely knew at the time. I was only thirteen and too green to catch every lyric, but the sheer force of the performance hit like a shockwave. The details of the setlist have faded over the years, but the energy of it all burned itself into my memory.

When the gig finished the crowd drifted off into the night, but Lynda and I stayed in our seats waiting for my dad to finish talking in the bar. While we were hanging around we spotted Mazz and Sven from the Jiving Daleks milling about nearby. We asked if they knew where we could get a concert programme. Mazz grinned and said, “I can do better than that—I can get you backstage to meet the Clash.”

We followed her through a maze of corridors and past a line of fans who looked at us with obvious envy. A few turns later we were suddenly standing in the band’s dressing room. My little notebook was out immediately, my hand shaking slightly as I held out a pen. Paul Simonon signed first, smiling warmly. Mick Jones followed. Topper Headon was busy chatting up a groupie but still managed to scribble his autograph without really looking up.

Across the room, Mikey Dread stood quietly wiping spit off his coat, looking like he’d rather be absolutely anywhere else. Then there was Joe Strummer. Unlike the others, he didn’t just sign and move on. He leaned forward and asked where we were from. “Denbigh? That’s just up the road, innit?” I was stunned. Joe Strummer knew Denbigh. Looking back it probably wasn’t exactly obscure geography, but to a thirteen-year-old kid from North Wales it felt incredible.

Lynda, bold as ever, ended up perched on his knee while he signed her notebook. With a grin he added a couple of kisses after his autograph. For a brief second I considered squaring up to him for flirting with my girlfriend, but reality quickly intervened. I was a skinny kid and he was Joe Strummer. Some battles you simply don’t start.

Looking back now, that night felt magical: a grimy venue, a spit-soaked crowd, a punk band at the height of their power, and two kids from Denbigh suddenly standing in the dressing room with their heroes. I can’t remember every song they played, but I remember exactly how it felt. That’s the strange thing about memory—the details fade, but the feeling never does.

There’s a small detail that still makes me smile. On the album Sandinista!, the lyric sheet for The Crooked Beat credits Paul Simonon with singing the line “Class, class, you wanna learn to dance.” But every time I hear it, it sounds suspiciously like “Crass, Crass, you wanna learn to dance.” Maybe it’s just my ears playing tricks on me, or maybe it was a sly nod to Crass after they’d questioned the Clash’s punk credentials. Either way, that’s always how I’ve heard it.

As for Lynda and me, I honestly can’t remember exactly how long we were together. Our little school gang worked like a revolving door of teenage relationships—boyfriends and girlfriends swapped around regularly, like mixtapes being passed from hand to hand. If someone got “chucked,” things rarely stayed awkward for long. We were just kids. “Going out” usually meant sweaty hand-holding, snogging behind the bike sheds, and the occasional hickey worn proudly like a badge of honour.

The delicate balance of our little social universe nearly collapsed, though, when I briefly started seeing Claire—the mod. She had sharp clothes and pure Vespa energy, while I looked like I’d fallen head-first into a box of safety pins. How that combination ever worked I’ll never know. It didn’t last long. Just another blurry moment in the strange, chaotic orbit of teenage punk life.

GIG 0001 - The Jam / The Vapors ar Deeside Leisure Centre

For my thirteenth birthday, Mum got me a record player, a proper game-changer, and Dad upped the ante by taking me to see The Jam at Deeside Leisure Centre on November 29, 1979. That was massive—proper playground bragging rights. I was already buzzing about going to a real punk gig, even if it was on a bloody ice rink of all places. Deeside normally hosted skaters, but for big-name gigs like this, they’d slap thick rubber matting over the ice and call it a venue.

Trouble was brewing, though. The playground wars of ’78, when we punks were scrapping with Teds, had evolved into a new nightmare: half those Teds and even some ex-punks had turned into Mods, with their poncy shirts, fishtail parkas, and crap mopeds. I despised Mods as much as I’d hated Teds—total wankers. The Jam, though, were tricky. On their Setting Sons tour, with Eton Rifles climbing the charts, they had that raw punk energy I loved but were draped in Mod style, which made them a weird bridge between the two tribes. The venue was a powder keg: half the crowd punks, half Mods, all packed onto that covered ice rink, ready to kick off.

Dad, a pro photographer for the Evening Leader, had an Access All Areas pass, snapping pics at gigs and footy matches and was way over qualified and talented to be doing this stuff. He plonked me in a balcony seat with a can of Coke and buggered off to work the pit for a couple of hours. From up there, I had a front-row view of the chaos. Skirmishes erupted all night—fists flying, boots swinging—as the punks and Mods went at it. At one point, Paul Weller stopped the show, pointed into the crowd, called some geezer a “cunt,” and offered him out. For a thirteen-year-old, it was pure theatre, thrilling and mental, all from the safety of my perch.

Back at school, I had to spin a yarn for Huw Spew and Susan Forber, the resident Mods, claiming I was down in the thick of the aggro. No way was I admitting I watched it all unfold from the balcony like some coward—they’d have ripped me to shreds. 

The Vapors opened the show, riding the wave of their one-hit wonder Turning Japanese. They’d been discovered by The Jam’s Bruce Foxton, which gave them some cred, but for me, they were just the first of thousands of live bands I’d end up seeing—kicking off a lifelong journey to permanent tinnitus. The Jam themselves? Honestly, it’s a blur. I can’t recall a single song they played; the memory’s drowned out by the chaos of the crowd, with punks and Mods throwing punches like it was a sport.

Having Dad’s press pass was the real win. After the gig, I got to meet the band. Bruce Foxton scarpered straight onto the tour bus, but Rick Buckler was sound, signing my notebook with a grin. Paul Weller signed it too and posed for a cracking photo Dad took—proper chuffed with that one (you can dig it up online or in the book The Jam - The Day I Was There). I tried asking Weller what he thought of the show, but he just handed my book back and legged it without a word. Bit of a let-down, but hey! I’d just met Paul Weller!

Dad’s job meant he had to hand over all his negatives to the Evening Leader, so the only photo from that night was the one of me and Weller. Shame, really—those negatives are long gone, probably chucked in some newspaper office clear-out. Still, Dad came through with a mint 10x8 print of The Jam on stage, which got pride of place on my teenage bedroom wall until it vanished into the abyss of time. For Christmas, he got me the Setting Sons album, embossed sleeve and all.